[mcdonje]

Let's say they get rid of legacy admissions. Kids of rich and powerful people will still ostensibly need college educations. Not all of them will get into the elite schools, so they'll be spread out among more schools. That'd increase the overall exposure between wealthy and other classes, which would benefit both the wealthy and the other classes because exposure to other groups helps for better understanding humanity.

It would also encourage rich kids to focus more on their educations so they can have a better chance of getting into their preferred schools. A more educated elite benefits everyone. I see no downsides to society as a whole, just downsides for some value propositions.

[academia_hack]

Really good point. I think at a macro level it makes a lot of sense to do that and if Harvard were a state run institution the government should definitely try to share the benefit. To some extent this is what the use of national entrance exams in many countries (e.g. China, India, Kenya) do, with varying degrees of success.

The problem is, Harvard's incentive is to make a university which is best for its students - not society as a whole. They'd rather scoop up the cream of the crop in terms of affluence+intelligence and then leave the dregs for everyone else. Legacy admits are one tool they use to do that.

I sort of suspect the abolition of SATs serves a similar goal, where a university class can be curated on more than intellectual merit without articles like OP's getting published calling them out for it and the equity arguments universities have made for doing so are either facetious or misguided.

[nemo44x]

I think you first have to ask yourself why does an institution like Harvard, or Yale, or any other elite institution exist? The formal answer of course is that they exist to give the best and brightest an opportunity to learn from the best and brightest. But this isn't why these types of institutions exist.

They exist to recycle/refresh and to create elites. Any society (and organization for that matter) will have a minority group of elites. A healthy society has a function that can recycle and select for elites. An unhealthy society does not do a good job of this and the elites are inbred and only legacy. This is the purpose of an institution like Harvard and why legacy admissions exist.

Now the "best and brightest" are connected with the "rich and connected" and new elites are born. Existing elites with kids that can't make it in with legacy are recycled into the general pool in time and new elites are made from the best of the general pool.

This is the social function Harvard serves. It's a good thing if the elites are being recycled frequently enough by moving weak elites into the general pool and with deserving candidates from the general pool replacing those weak elites.

[mcdonje]

Ok, and? Remove legacy admissions from that equation and you accelerate the part of the churn where weak elites go back into the general pool. The best and brightest get to rub shoulders with each other and the strong elites. Seems like by your argument, legacy admissions are not helping society.

[nemo44x]

I mean, they sort of do already. Not everyone gets in that is legacy. They also contribute to the endowment, etc. And it's sort of their (the elite establishment) place in the first place.

But I'm not making an opinion here (on if they should do this or just how much they should do), just explaining why Harvard exists. And it isn't just for the best and brightest to get together. It never has been and it never will be.

[TheCoelacanth]

I think you have that backwards. They exist to preserve privilege for legacy kids. They let in some of the best and brightest so that some of the prestige from their accomplishments rubs off on the legacies.

[nemo44x]

If only that then it’s a dysfunctional system. Ideally it’s a mechanism to recycle elites. Preserve elites that are of a certain quality, dispose of the low quality, and acquire new elites from the pool ensuring a high quality of elites that is not only tied to ancestry.

The cynical view is existing elites only steal from the best from the pool. I’m not sure empirical evidence supports this. The system probably over-selects existing elites. But it’s their system. I’d argue that AA was a tool to allow even more over-selection and preservation by consuming seats with unqualified and therefore uncompetitive quotas. Cultural cachet I guess and a moral justification for low quality elite preservation.