Legacy admissions are crucial to America’s higher education dominance

America dominates on the world stage in many arenas, but in few as comprehensively as higher education.

Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT have such prolific global brands that H&M sells t-shirts branded with their logos. Netflix specials such as “The Kissing Booth” feature the college admissions process as a central plot device. Global Hollywood hits such as “Oppenheimer” show characters strolling around Princeton, plotting the next great physics breakthrough.

America’s university exceptionalism is an incredibly powerful competitive advantage. Every year, millions of students dream of coming to America for college, graduate school and beyond, often with goals of migrating to America and creating a new life here.

America thus attracts many of the world’s brightest young minds, fosters American values in them and grows the labor pool to continue driving dominant economic growth. 

This U.S. higher education engine is also durable in a way that few other institutions are. The top five companies in the S&P 500 nearly all changed between 2000 and 2023. The Top 5 global universities from 2000 (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Caltech) still reign supreme. 

I grew up in New Zealand. I train thousands of ambitious students from different countries as they embark on their journey to the U.S. and other countries, so my perspective is informed by what appears to make American universities so special through the eyes of our students.

If American universities want to retain their global dominance in the face of rising competition from China, the United Kingdom and Singapore, they must not forget where their powerful advantages come from. 

Legacy admissions is one of those advantages.

When I first heard of legacy admissions, I was perturbed. Legacy admissions do not exist at Oxford, Cambridge or virtually anywhere else globally. It is a distinctly American practice. It sounds unusual and quite unfair.

If you compare universities outside of America — even some of the best — there is a stark difference in many dimensions. The best American institutions have a sense of community, an incredibly engaged and proud alumni network, incredible facilities, resources, funding and scholarships and massive endowments that continue to support their supremacy in a global education arms race.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel, has given $500 million to Harvard University in the last four decades, providing $150 million of funding for specific initiatives tied to financial aid. He is broadening access to these universities. Would America have such a powerful donation culture in the absence of legacy admissions?

Oxford was founded in 1096. Despite its storied history, it has a far smaller donation culture and less engaged alumni. Its biggest donors — among them Bill Gates and Steven Schwarzman — didn’t even attend the university. It has no legacy admissions, and at points in its history, it has struggled financially.

In contrast, Harvard cultivates an amazingly engaged alumni community with frequent, well-attended reunions, advisory boards featuring all of their prominent alumni and an aspirational message that once you are a part of this community, it will become your community for life.

Legacy admissions — the practice of preferentially admitting the children of alumni — is one of the powerful, tangible characteristics that helps foster that sense of community. By going to these schools, you open up opportunities for yourself, but also your family and children. 

As a freshman from New Zealand attending Harvard with no connections to America, no alumni at any of these universities, receiving no benefits of legacy, I met classmates who had parents who were both Harvard graduates and played a big role in the community.

They were engaged in alumni boards, doing alumni interviews. They were so proud that their children had joined the community. I felt like I was joining a special, close-knit community that wouldn’t just educate me for four years, but would also have a magical impact on my life and my family, present and future, for years to come. It made me even more motivated to give everything I could to the community.

It’s true that many of the benefits of America’s best college would exist without legacy. But enabling colleges to give a bump to students who have a connection to an institution helps to establish a powerful sense of community in the institution, which enriches the experience for all participants. Legacy admissions currently skew toward white, affluent groups, but this is only because of the universities’ demographics 30 years ago. The legacy demographics of the future will be the demographics of these colleges today, which is, in general, very diverse. In a post-affirmative action world, legacy admissions may help to make the campus of 2050 more diverse than a world without it. 

Legacy admissions can also be calibrated. The “bump” of having parents attending the school can be adjusted up or down, but the right to be able to consider this as one of many factors for admission is critical. Psychologically, it makes admission to any of these universities even more desirable for prospective students.

A ban on legacy admissions would weaken this sense of community and alumni engagement. It would undermine some of the magic that drives students to work so hard to get into these universities. And this would weaken the competitive position of American universities on the world stage.

The elimination of the generational community in U.S. universities would transform them into a transactional, four-year academic experience that starts and finishes on a clock with students herded through academic buildings to a finish line, rarely to be seen on campus ever again.

Many countries’ colleges operate that way. The U.S. need only look at Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to see what a world with a more transactional university experience looks like, and to know that it is not the answer. The benefits of highly engaged alumni who donate at high rates should be used as many universities like Harvard do, to continuously provide more and more financial aid for students from diverse backgrounds. 

Recently, one of our Maori students, Koan Hemana, was admitted to Harvard from Rotorua, New Zealand on a full financial aid package. The strong community drives the resources that created this opportunity for Koan to attend Harvard.

In contrast, Oxford has no financial aid for international students and limited scholarships. This is partly because its alumni do not donate at anywhere near the same levels.

Legacy admissions may not be perfect, but they continue to help keep America’s best universities on top of the world stage at every level: diversity, funding, academic publication rates, student outcomes and alumni engagement. If we want the U.S. to sustain its global dominance in higher education, this is one of the competitive advantages we should be preserving. 

Jamie Beaton is CEO of Crimson Education.