Reply to Would You Support A Legacy Lottery?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No.

If colleges want to give admission to families that donate buildings, improve infastructure, renovate dorms, fund full rides for poor kids, or donate things like specialized expensive science equipment, bravo to them.

It is a small sacrifice with far more benefits to the student body as a whole, to give a spot to the kids of major donors, than any possible tiny negative of the perception from those rejected from the university that their kid's potential spot was "taken" by the offspring of a rich donor.

Dollar to dollar, the lifetime benefits to the university and the tens to hundreds of thousands of other kids at the university, of giving maybe1 to 3 spots over a 4 to 10 year window (depending on family size) every generation to the kids of big donors, is incredibly lopsided, with almost all of the benefits going to students who are not the donor's kids.

Anyone who is pushing for the elimination of legacy/donor preference in admissions is, at best, a petty and shortsighted fool.[/quote]

Reasonable logic. But then why limit to alumni? Why not just give preference to anyone who donates? Or give preference to anyone who pledges extra money. 
"Dear Mr. X: Although you are qualified, we cannot offer you admission. Unless you want to pay us $190,000 instead of $90,000. Then we'll take you."[/quote]

Buildings and science equipment cost many times over a few hundred thousand dollars.

If the Walmart family, a tech entrepreneur or some other rich tycoon 1% family wants to build a new football stadium at XYZ flagship university, who cares if their dumbest offspring get a fast tracked admission to the school, ending up one special case in a sea of 10,000 freshmen students.

Letting the legacy kids of big donors attend a university is an investment in the school that yields a benefit to all the other students that is many times more than the tuition itself, and a way better return than any other special admittance class that universities offer.

[/quote]

These are two separate issues: 1) Preferences for big donors (millions) and 2) Preferences for legacy who aren't big donors.

If I was running a college, I'd be annoyed that #1 was necessary, but I'd do it. I see no reason to do #2.[/quote]

Until your progeny was a legacy.  Then you would support it.

Maybe all the $1000 to $5000 recurring donations from everyday alumni are actually more important than the very very rare $100mm donation?

Why do you get to decide how they run their institution?  Because your STEM robot got denied from Stanford?[/quote]

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