Racial preference in college takes many forms

A Federal District Court in Boston has agreed to take a fresh look at affirmative action in college admissions, specifically at Harvard University. A suit brought on behalf of Asian-descended students seeks to end Harvard’s current system of factoring race into admissions standards.

Opponents of affirmative action admissions propound that the only fair system on college admissions is one in which the academically bestqualified candidates are admitted without using any other standards, especially race. Using race, they contend, allows less-qualified black students to be admitted and thus to take the place of a more deserving student of another race.

How much of a part does race actually play in admissions? That depends on whether you mean direct or indirect effects. Since colleges and universities do not specifically state why each applicant is or is not accepted, there is no certain way to count those whose chances were enhanced “because they were black.” However, the number is certainly smaller than those admitted for other non-academic reasons. It is definitely much smaller than the number of students who receive preferential admission because they are “recruited athletes.”

And it is unquestionably true that the largest percentage of “less-qualified” African-American applicants comes not in the form of affirmative action admissions, but in athletic admissions. The University of North Carolina put up a laughable defense of its standards when it was revealed that 60 percent of the members of UNC’s mostly black football and basketball teams could read only at a fourth-to-eighth-grade level.

William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton, revealed in the book The Game of Life that 20 percent of students entering Ivy League (and similar) schools are “recruited athletes,” meaning the universities went out of their way to find them and to induce them to attend. Despite SAT scores 100 points lower than the class average, recruited athletes have a 30 percent greater likelihood of acceptance. Should athletic skill go the way of race and also no longer factor into university admissions? If it does, the repercussions will be much greater than those from the elimination of race-based considerations.

There is another form of preferential admissions to prestigious universities that is plainly racial in nature, and the beneficiaries are white. I do not mean the sort of preference that comes with money and connections. I refer here to “legacy” admissions, whereby a university maintains lower admissions standards for the descendants of its alumni.

Far more students are admitted as legacies than under diversity protocols. Harvard’s Class of 2021 included over 29 percent legacies, and most similar schools show similar figures. The dirty little secret is that such a policy is inherently race-based. It is race-based in favor of white applicants.

We cannot pretend that racial considerations in college admissions began 30 years ago and that before that it was a fair and level field. Race was a huge factor — for some applicants the only factor — in college acceptance or rejection for hundreds of years. If college and university admissions departments are required to eliminate race-based considerations, they must abolish the legacy system, which improperly rewards the beneficiaries of centuries of racial preference.