In the wake of a federal ban on affirmative action policies at colleges and universities, one state is taking another step towards promoting merit-based admissions.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law on Aug. 9 that outlaws legacy admissions at public institutions, the practice of admitting students to a university based on their connections with relatives who are alumni of the same school.
New York Sen. Andrew Gounardes, an outspoken critic of legacy admissions, expressed his frustration with the practice, arguing that it is effectively no different from affirmative action policies.
“It struck us as inherently wrong and unfair that the Supreme Court would strike down affirmative action policies and programs but allow something like legacy admissions to stay put, which is affirmative action just for another group of people,” he told ABC News.
“Legacy admissions is simply affirmative action for privileged kids,” he added.
Frederick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, expressed similar sentiments in the wake of the affirmative action ruling.
“If institutions can’t give you a leg up because of your race or ethnicity in a way that was theoretically intended to promote equality, it is really hard to understand why they can give a leg up to students whose parents or grandparents are fortunate enough to have gone to these places in a way that is almost inevitably going to promote inequality,” he told U.S. News.
Illinois is now the third state to successfully pass a legacy admissions ban, following in the footsteps of similar efforts in Virginia and Maryland earlier this year.
Legacy admission remains a widespread practice at many of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson found that 12 percent of Harvard’s class of 2024 had at least one parent who also went to Harvard, down from 16.8 percent of students in the class of 2023 for whom this was the case.
The survey also found that the majority of legacy admits (53 percent) came from households with annual incomes above $250,000.
Several other states, including Newy York, Massachusetts, California, and Minnesota, will also consider legacy bans during the upcoming legislative session.
Campus Reform has reached out to Gov. Pritzker for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.