From Campus to Congress, Colleges Urged to End Legacy Boost

America’s elite colleges are facing growing calls to end the decades-old tradition of giving an admissions boost to the children of alumni — a practice that critics say is rooted in racism and bestows an unfair advantage to students who need it least.

Fueled by the national reckoning with racial injustice, opponents say they are gaining momentum in the battle over the contentious policy of legacy preferences.

Ivy League students are pressing administrators to abandon the policy. Yale’s student government took a stance against the practice in November. A recent vote of Harvard students found that 60% oppose it. Hundreds of students and alumni across 30 colleges have promised to withhold financial donations over the issue.

Civil rights groups are increasingly adding their support, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which is tackling legacy preferences as part of a campaign against systematic racism.

And a bill in Congress aims to eliminate the practice.

The proposal from Democrats would outlaw preferences for children of alumni or donors at colleges that receive federal money. It’s being pushed by the party’s progressive wing but has gained support from some conservative activists who want college admissions to be based on merit alone.

Legacy preferences give an extra boost to predominantly white and wealthy legacy students, while “leaving out millions of Black and brown kids,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York, a sponsor.

“There has been a shift in the consciousness of the country around issues of inequity and inequality,” Bowman said in an interview. “There’s a real yearning to right the wrongs of our past.”

In the heavily guarded world of college admissions, it’s hard to know exactly how many legacy students get a nudge. But at some of the most selective colleges, students with family ties make up 10% to 20% of the latest incoming class, according to data released by colleges in response to an Associated Press request.

On many campuses, the opposition is being led by students of color and those who are the first in their families to attend college. They say legacy status is one more advantage for students who are already more likely to have access to tutoring, test prep and other help applying to college.

Zoe Fuad, a junior at Brown University, said it reinforces a “cycle of inequity” that was designed to serve wealthy white men.

“By perpetually giving advantages to their descendants, we’re ensuring that those who were systemically favored continue to be favored,” said Fuad, 20, who leads a student group that’s challenging the practice at Brown.

Many prestigious colleges defend legacy admissions, saying it helps build an alumni community and encourages donations. Officials at Harvard and other schools argue that legacy status is just one of many factors considered in admissions, along with grades, test scores and pursuits outside school. At most, they say, it can provide a slight tip in a student’s favor.

Still, two colleges have ended the practice recently, giving opponents hope that others will follow.

Amherst College in Massachusetts dropped the policy in October, saying it “inadvertently limits educational opportunity.” Johns Hopkins University announced in 2020 that it had phased out legacy preferences. Since then, the school has drawn growing numbers of Black and Hispanic students, along with those from low-income families.

The pushback against legacy preferences is advancing amid a broader debate over fairness in college admissions.

Last month the Supreme Court agreed to review whether colleges can consider applicants’ race as a way to expand diversity. The court will take up lawsuits alleging that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina discriminate against Asian American applicants in favor of Black and Hispanic students.

In a rare moment of bipartisan unity, the conservative strategist behind those suits voiced support for the Democrats’ bill against legacy benefits. In a statement, Edward Blum said too many colleges “lower the admissions bar for the children of their alumni.”

Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, a sponsor of the bill, said it aims to level the playing field for minority students and those from working-class families.

“More and more of the good-paying jobs in America require a college education,” he said. “It’s important that ordinary students from regular backgrounds have a fair chance to go to these institutions.”

Most schools are not required to disclose how many legacy students they enroll and many keep it private. Among the nation’s 30 most selective colleges, only eight provided basic data on the subject in response to an AP request.

At those colleges, the share of legacy students in this year’s freshman class averaged 12%. The lowest share was at Rice University in Houston, where 4% of this year’s first-year class had legacy status. The University of Notre Dame said legacy students have averaged 23% of the student body over the past decade.

Legacy students outnumbered Black students in freshman classes at four schools: Notre Dame, Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Southern California. At Brown, the share of legacy and Black students was about even.

Harvard refused to disclose details, but data made public during its trial over affirmative action showed that family ties carry outsize weight. From 2014 to 2019, the acceptance rate for legacy applicants was 34%, compared with 6% for applicants without legacy status, according to an analysis by the suit’s plaintiffs.

Critics of the practice say it contributes to persistently low numbers of Black students at top colleges. During the racial reckoning following the killing of George Floyd by police, hundreds of students at Georgetown University signed a letter calling for an end to legacy preference, saying it “relegates qualified Black students to second-tier status.”

Historians have traced legacy preference to the 1920s as elite colleges sought to limit the number of Jewish students. It continued for decades at a time when the majority of college students in the U.S. were white men.

At many schools with legacy preferences, Black students were not admitted until the 1960s, said Michael Dannenberg, a vice president at the Education Reform Now think tank.

“White applicants have between eight and 16 generations of ancestors on which to establish an alumni connection,” said Dannenberg, who has opposed the practice since he was an aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy, the late Massachusetts Democrat, two decades ago. “For the vast majority of Black and Latino applicants, there’s maybe one or two generations.”

On college campuses, student activists say they continue to face resistance from school leaders who defend the policy. But at a time of rising populism in the United States, colleges are unlikely to find allies in Congress and other halls of power, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank in Washington.

Especially in the wake of the Varsity Blues admissions scandal, he said, it’s becoming more difficult for colleges to defend policies that benefit the wealthy.

“They are clearly vulnerable on this issue,” he said.

In the wake of that scandal, Colorado became the first state in the nation to outlaw legacy preferences at public colleges. California lawmakers required colleges to disclose how many legacy students get accepted.

Among campus activists, there’s a driving desire to change the perception that top colleges are ivory towers reserved for the wealthy. When Viet Andy Nguyen applied to Brown University as a low-income, first-generation student, he knew he was competing against wealthier students with alumni connections. It made him question whether Brown was really a place for people like him.

After graduating from Brown in 2017, he launched the nonprofit EdMobilizer with the goal of expanding access to college and ending legacy preferences. He has orchestrated a donation boycott at schools across the U.S., and he’s helping students fight the practice on scores of campuses.

It isn’t lost on him that he’s challenging a policy that could benefit his future children. He has faced resistance from some students of color who wonder why he wants to end it now, when campuses are more racially diverse than ever. But to him, the goal is to open doors for students who have been excluded, not to create “an elite lineage of people of color.”

“My kids will be fine,” he said. “They don’t need an additional bump just for being my offspring.”

China to Boost Supply of Winter Games Panda Mascot Souvenirs

BEIJING — 

China will increase the supply of merchandise featuring Bing Dwen Dwen, the panda mascot of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the organizing committee said Sunday.

The announcement came as Chinese media and internet users reported difficulty in buying souvenirs in the likeness of the chubby panda in a hard, transparent bodysuit. Many had queued for hours in cold weather outside a flagship store in Beijing but failed to get the soft toys and other decorations.

“We are paying close attention to this problem … we are coordinating (with factories) to increase supply of Bing Dwen Dwen,” Zhao Weidong, a spokesperson of the Beijing Olympics organizing committee, told a news conference.

Zhao said the tight supply of Bing Dwen Dwen was partly because the manufacturing plants were shut down for the weeklong Lunar New Year, which overlaps with the Olympics.

“This issue reflects the popularity of the Beijing Winter Olympics and also demonstrates the achievement of engaging 300 million Chinese in winter sports.”

Rarely have mascots sold out after the first few days of any Olympics let alone become household names so quickly. Some mascots remain almost in obscurity even during the Games, as was the case at the 2018 Rio de Janeiro Olympics with Vinicius or the 2002 Salt Lake City trio of Powder the hare, Copper the coyote and Coal the black bear.

Analysts from Shanxi Securities estimate the total revenue from selling Beijing Olympic licensed products could reach $394.80 million during the Games.

“One Dwen at each family” has become the No. 4 most trending topic on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, with 10.38 million viewers in the past 24 hours. Chinese internet users are calling for the organizers to meet the surging demand.

Many said on social media that possessing an Olympics souvenir would make them feel more a part of the Games, which has been devoid of most spectators as tickets to events were not sold to the public to curtail the spread of COVID-19.

“To show that I am actively participating in the Winter Olympics, I am making all efforts is get a ‘Bing Dwen Dwen’ home,” wrote a Weibo user named “famous European.”

US Congress Considers Bills to Boost Competition with China

WASHINGTON — 

With President Joe Biden’s broader domestic agenda stymied in the Senate, Democratic leaders in Congress have begun looking for legislative victories elsewhere, with a new focus on improving the U.S. ability to compete with China.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are attempting to come to agreement on legislation that would provide large financial subsidies to the semiconductor industry as well as generous research and development grants to support supply chain resilience, buoy domestic manufacturing operations and underwrite new scientific research.

The effort in the House follows a push in the Senate last year, which resulted in bipartisan passage of the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021. That bill proposed $52 billion in assistance to the semiconductor industry as well as nearly $200 billion more on research and development projects meant to bolster U.S. competitiveness.

The House is likely to pass its own version of the legislation, meaning the two chambers would have to come to an agreement on final language before a bill could go to the White House to be signed into law. It remains unclear whether an eventual House bill would garner any Republican support in that chamber, or whether compromise language would continue to attract the Republican support that helped the Senate’s original bill come to the floor for a vote.

But in a statement this week, the president made it clear that he would like to see the legislation on his desk.

Biden praised the “transformational investments” that the legislation would make. With the proposed legislation, he said, “We have an opportunity to show China and the rest of the world that the 21st century will be the American century – forged by the ingenuity and hard work of our innovators, workers, and businesses.”

Countering Chinese subsidies

In Congress, even among conservative lawmakers who generally shy away from government intervention in the economy, there is recognition of a need to balance the scales for U.S. companies that frequently find themselves in competition with Chinese firms that receive subsidies and other preferences from the government in Beijing.

When the Senate passed its version of the bill in June, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said, “This type of targeted investment in a critical industry was unthinkable just a couple years ago, but the need for smart industrial policy is now widely accepted.”

That comes as a surprise to many observers of U.S. policymaking.

“There is somewhat of an ambivalence, or confusion, in D.C. where, on the one hand, people want to say that China’s industrial policies are both very unfair, and also very important in explaining China’s competitive success,” Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow in the Economics Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA. “But then, they also seem reluctant to actually engage in those policies because they think those policies are actually very distortionary and ineffective. So, it sort of cuts both ways.”

Semiconductors in focus

Despite strong economic growth in the U.S. over the past year, a persistent shortage of semiconductors has caused some sectors of the economy – the automobile industry in particular – to lag behind. Supply chain disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic have been difficult to resolve, leading many members of Congress to propose funding to “re-shore” domestic production of semiconductors.

Both the Senate bill and the version being considered by the House of Representatives would funnel $52 billion in grants and subsidies to the industry.

However, China is not a major competitor of the United States when it comes to semiconductors. While China does make some semiconductors, the largest manufacturer in the world is TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. in Taiwan.

‘Decoupling’ seen as troubling

Some American companies that do business with China are concerned about the long-term efforts of both countries to achieve economic independence from each other.

“China is upset with efforts to increase export restrictions on U.S. goods, block Chinese companies from accessing certain U.S. goods, and restrict some direct investments in China,” Doug Barry, a senior director with the U.S.-China Business Council, told VOA in an email exchange.

“They worry about incentives to relocate production of some critical goods back to the U.S. At the same time, China is working to reduce dependence on certain goods like advanced semiconductors, while slow-walking promised market access reform and opening,” Barry said.

“Our members worry that these efforts signal mutual economic decoupling that’s not in the long-term interest of either country,” he said. “Both governments need to engage in direct talks to better manage differences, adhere to WTO principles, and ensure that Phase One Agreement commitments are fully met.”

Government interference ‘misguided’

Ryan Young, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told VOA that efforts by Congress to mimic China by trying to manipulate the U.S. economy are “misguided” at best, and at worst destructive.

“This falls into what I think of as the ‘But they do it, too,’ argument,” Young said. While it is indisputable that the Chinese government creates all sorts of advantages for certain sectors within its economy, he said, it doesn’t follow that the answer is for the U.S. to do the same.

Despite government support, large Chinese tech firms are burdened with substantial debt, operational inefficiencies and political meddling, he said.

Further, Young noted that the semiconductor industry, which the legislative efforts target above all else, has already taken steps to bring some of its production into U.S. territory, with chip giant Intel expanding a $50 billion complex of chip manufacturing facilities in Arizona.