The Legacy Admissions - Essay Example

Argument Synthesis Introduction Legacy admissions have been a bone of contention among the educationists, media and the society as a whole, and had emerged as a topic of public attention in the early part of the decade, 2000. While examining two articles that came in the year 2008 on this topic, namely, Legacy Admissions are Defensible Because the Process Can’t be “Fair” by Thomas and Shepard (2008) and So Your Dad Went to Harvard by Megalli (2008), it becomes clear that the subject has its own positive and negative effects on our educational system. The basic issue under focus is of course that of merit versus preferences. The legacy admissions are of two kinds- admissions given to the off springs of alumni and admissions given to the children of famous and affluent personalities and families. In both instances, the core of criticism is that such admissions often overlook academic credentials and thus indirectly deprive other more meritorious candidates of their chance to get admission. While Thomas and Shepard (2008) have supported legacy admissions by citing many reasons including their minimal percentage compared to merit-based admissions, the financial benefits the educational institutions get from them, the faulty logic of their critics and also by raising the philosophical question of what could be called the parameters of merit (pp. 220-223). But Megalli (2008) has taken the diametrically opposite view by stating that legacy admissions are often the cause of racial and gender discrimination, statistical data show that they are not a negligible percentage of total admissions, the financial contributions from legacy students’ families are “paltry”, and that the academic and extra-curricular performance of legacy students are below others (p.229-231). All these points raised by both articles have to be scrutinized closer so as to arrive at a conclusive opinion. The first argument in favor of legacy admissions raised by Thomas and Shepard (2008) has been that if a student inside a state is given preference in admission to an educational institution inside the state, just because his family pays the taxes that sustain the institution, on the same logic, it can be argued that legacy preferences are permissible (p.221). But is the payment of taxes which is obligatory for all citizens and which cannot be skipped even if your student does not get an admission in a college inside your state, comparable to the payment of a donation for a legacy admission? This is the million dollar question here. It is common sense that the element of choice is present only in the case of a legacy admission and the tax payer has no such choice. And also the payment of taxes makes it obligatory for the state to take care of the tax payers’ welfare. Further, even a student from an affluent family has the same right as his/her family is also paying tax. Hence, though convincing on first encounter, it can be seen that the comparison is flawed. And it is to this aspect that Megalli (2008) is also drawing attention to, when she pointed out, with supportive evidence, this practice will eventually lead to discrimination (p.230). And the evidence has also shown that “96 percent of all living Ivy League alumni are white” (Megalli, 2008, p.230). The second major case in the article of Thomas and Shepard (2008) that legacy admissions amount to only a very small percentage of total admissions has also been contested by Megalli (2008) with the support of factual data. But while Thomas and Shepard (2008) have pointed out the comparatively less number of institutions where competition is so high that legacy admissions matter (p.222), Megalli (2008) has made a comparison between the percentage of all applications accepted and the percentage of legacy applications accepted in various ducational institutions and shown a disparity is there (p.230). But both these sets of figures represent only convenient manipulation and partial presentation of data to support one’s argument. Both sets are non-exhaustive. Similarly Thomas and Shepard (2008) have took the average SAT scores of legacies in one university to show it to be higher than non-legacies (p.222), Megalli (2008) has on the other hand taken similar data from another university to show that legacies perform less satisfactorily than non-legacies (p.231). This is an aspect of this issue which demands further exhaustive studies. And it is further argued Thomas and Shepard (2008) that through the donations from legacy admissions, better education is provided to non-legacy students even, and thus “quality” of education is maintained (p.222). Megalli (2008) is opposed to this view as she has found the legacy contribution comparatively meager as compared to other available funds (p.231). This is yet another statistical play with data and calls for deeper introspection to be proven either way. But still Megalli’s (2008) position is more ethically valid as it stands for “meritocracy” and against “elitism” so that long term goals of education are in focus (p.231) whereas Thomas and Shepard (2008) seem to be more inclined towards the lesser goals of education like maintaining the financial security and brand loyalty of educational institutions. Conclusion What both these articles (Thomas and Shepard, 2008; Megalli, 2008) have failed to emphasize is the need for a differentiation between ‘alumni legacy admissions’ and ‘celebrity and affluent-family legacy admissions.’ This separation is needed because the daughter of a black alumni member getting admission cannot be compared with George. W. Bush getting admission into Yale University with only “a C average from high school” (DeKoven, 2008, p.224). Personally, I believe that while the first instance is simply a matter of preference, the second instance is outright corruption. References DeKoven, R. (2008). Time to bury the legacy. In L. Behrens and L. Rosen (Eds.), Writing and reading across the curriculum (220-223). New York: Pearson Longman. Megalli, M. (2008). So your dad went to harvard. In L. Behrens and L. Rosen (Eds.), Writing and reading across the curriculum (220-223). New York: Pearson Longman. Thomas, D. and Shepard, T. (2008). Legacy admissions are defensible because the process can’t be “fair”. In L. Behrens and L. Rosen (Eds.), Writing and reading across the curriculum (220-223). New York: Pearson Longman. Read More