It will soon be illegal for public and private universities in California to consider an applicant’s relationship to alumni or donors when deciding whether to admit them.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a ban on the practice known as legacy admissions, a change that will affect prestigious institutions including Stanford University and the University of Southern California.
California’s law, which will take effect Sept. 1, 2025, is the nation’s fifth legacy admissions ban, but only the second that will apply to private colleges.
I understand that donors/alumni want their kids to have tiebreaker rights. But it should have been banned the moment the DEI considerations were outright banned.
Not sure on all the specifics of CA’s admittance structure, beyond they banned race base admission in the '90s in favor of a system that guaranteed admissions to top percentile students.
But post Students for Fair Admissions DEI measures are still ok. Schools can’t use race alone as a plus or minus but they may choose to favor those from disadvantaged neighborhoods, 1st generation college students, and even good essays that share someone’s experience being a race.