California bans legacy preferences at private universities

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will ban private colleges and universities, including some of the nation’s most selective institutions, from giving special consideration to applicants who have family or other connections to the schools, a practice known as legacy preferences.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Monday that will prohibit the practice starting in the fall of 2025.

The prohibition, which will affect Stanford University, the University of Southern California and others, comes at a time when institutions nationwide have been rewriting their admissions rules to reflect a Supreme Court ruling last summer that banned race-based considerations in the college admissions process. That case, which focused on affirmative action, revealed the extent to which legacy status has played a role in selection at elite schools.

The University of California, the California State University system and other public California campuses have banned legacy preferences for decades. But private colleges continued to give some preference to the descendants of alumni or major donors.

In a statement, Newsom said that “merit, skill and hard work” should determine college admissions. “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few,” he said, “which is why we’re opening the door to higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly.”

Schools with legacy preferences have argued that they have not compromised their high standards and that children of alumni who are admitted are highly qualified, or they would not have been accepted.

In a statement Monday, Stanford noted that the legislation would not take effect until September 2025. During that time, Stanford “will be continuing to review its admissions policies.”

USC said in a statement that the university used a holistic review to determine admissions, and that “all admitted students meet our high academic standards.”

“We are fortunate that USC remains a top destination for so many accomplished students,” the statement said, saying that the university would continue to recruit and admit “in compliance with the law.”

Many selective colleges have historically offered special consideration for the children or grandchildren of alumni, in part to reinforce endowments that pay for a host of campus programs and subsidize tuition for students of lesser financial means.

Students who are admitted with legacy preferences are much more likely to be white and wealthy than other applicants, and the practice has never been particularly popular with the broader public. In a 2022 poll by Pew Research Center, 75% of American adults said university admissions should not hinge on whether someone’s relative attended the school.

“If we value diversity in higher education, we must level the playing field,” Assembly member Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat who wrote the bill, said in a statement.

Only one other state, Maryland, bans legacy preferences at both private and public institutions. Illinois, Virginia and Colorado ban legacy preferences, but only at public universities and colleges.

After the Varsity Blues scandal in 2019, in which parents seeking to win spots in top-ranked schools for their children were found to have paid bribes and falsified their children’s credentials, Ting tried to push through a bill banning legacy preferences in California. That effort fell short.

But he did succeed with a measure requiring private colleges to report to the Legislature how many students they admit at least in part because of ties to alumni or donors.

Those reports showed that the practice was most widespread at Stanford and USC, where, at both schools, about 14% of students who were admitted in the fall of 2022 had legacy or donor connections. At Santa Clara University, Newsom’s alma mater, 13% of admissions had such ties.

A smattering of elite colleges have eliminated legacy preferences. For many, it is too soon after the change to determine the impact on admissions.

One example, however, comes from Johns Hopkins University, which quietly phased out legacy preferences beginning years ago.

Ron Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins, wrote last year that the shift “gave us more space and opportunity to recruit a broader array of talented students.” He said that the percentage of students in Johns Hopkins’ incoming classes who have a family connection had decreased to 1.7% from 8.5% since 2013. During the same period, the percentage of first-generation or limited-income students rose to 30.8% from 16.7%.

More recently, Amherst College announced that it would end legacy preferences beginning in fall 2022. The percentage of legacies admitted the next year dropped to 6% of the class from 11%.

Republicans as well as Democrats in the California Legislature voted for Ting’s latest proposal, which will punish institutions that flout the law by publishing their names on a California Department of Justice website. An earlier version had proposed that schools face civil penalties for violating the law, but that provision was removed in the state Senate.

The new rules will take effect Sept. 1, 2025, with the new process expected to be reflected in admissions to the entering class in the fall of 2026.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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