Taxes and legacy admissions

The NYT Magazine has an article today that tracks the debate about whether universities should abandon the “legacy advantage” in their admissions policies. The author notes that affirmative action has become the “political punching bag of the right” while legacy admissions – a significantly less important factor in admissions, but a factor nonetheless – has become the “political punching bag of the left.” The article concludes that neither affirmative action nor legacy status are going to go away anytime soon.

Oh, I know the time has come to cast away legacies – a relic of an aristocratic past, I know… For me, however, legacy status has a fundamental similarity to taxes. How so? Well, I am big on taxes. I only don’t like them in practice because they take a chunk out of the paycheck. But I believe in them, I don’t try to avoid paying them, and I think it is right that I should pay more if my income goes up (which it wont – see post on February 27). The devil within, however, gets happy when there is a rebate check in the mail. I do not send it back to the IRS with a note saying – here, the government needs this more than I do. I deposit it in the bank and think happy thoughts about next year’s vacation.

I feel the same way about legacy admissions: I agree that they are inherently unfair. Being in a household full of first generation college (to say nothing of post-college) grads, I certainly can say that I reaped no legacy benefit, and that offspring of this household reaped no benefit either, given their own educational choices. So of course, I am a wee bit wistful: when the first-time reapers, the yet-to-be-born grandchildren can finally lay claim to that privilege –pfffft! away it flies. I know, I know –and so it should. But darn it, can we wait just one more generation before we get rid of it? No no, I didn’t mean it. I like taxes, I don’t like legacies. Final answer.