Harvard isn’t that bad at balancing their legacy requirements and fresh blood. Still beats schools that exists solely for an Athletic department.

Nepotism is rule of law EVERYWHERE except the US Military. I saw nepotism in college and in the corporate world but in the military no one gives a shit about where you came from or what your last name it. In the services, the only thing that matters is what military schools you’ve attended, what units you served in…

Which is why legacies are so important to places like Harvard. They donate $$$$$ which in turn is given to the MAJORITY of the university’s student enrollment who couldn’t afford to go otherwise.

More than 30% of the freshman class at Harvard University had one or more relatives attend before them. That should be illegal.

I wouldn’t go 100%, because I do believe in incentive, but it would get close. Say 50% after $5M (like it basically is now), 70% after $15M, 90% after $50M.

If you are poor you have to be exceptional in order to be able, if you are, to an Ivy league school.

A modest proposal: require universities to disclose “Legacy Admit” on the acceptance letters of all such applicants.

I recall a show where the citizens in a dystopian society would mentally and physically compete against one another every generation for the chance to win themselves a position in a utopian society. I don’t name the show because the ending is a huge twist/spoiler: the final competition is voluntarily rendering…

Yes! Let’s legislate more unenforceable bullshit! It’s worked so well for us so far. If only rich people’s lawyers didn’t find loopholes in all of this brilliant lawmaking.

Hamilton Nolan 2020

Alternate proposal: If you have more than X in wealth, you can keep your money or you can have kids. HamNo can decide what X is.

I disagree with this article. Although it would be cathartic, it’s not really the direction we want to go to tear others down. We want to elevate the masses. Harvard doesn’t need to bar its legacy admissions. But it should use its massive endowment to drastically expand the size of the university to allow it to serve…

That said, my personal respect is worthless, and a Harvard degree is worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars in earning power. So Harvard degrees are important.

The real problem isn’t Harvard’s approach to legacy students, it’s the rest of the world’s approach to Harvard.

Here’s a great way to do that: Make it illegal to attend an Ivy League school if one of your immediate relatives went to one.

This is not a good take. In America, doors shouldn’t be closed to you just because you’re parents went to school somewhere. If you have the merit to attend Harvard, then you should have the opportunity to attend. Harvard shouldn’t give you a boost if your parents went there (or donated to the school), but we don’t…

“More than 40% of the freshman class at Harvard University had one or more relatives attend before them. That should be illegal.”

Over 50% of students receive scholarships to attend Harvard, and do not come from wealthy families.

I honestly think it’s shifting that way for Harvard especially, but also Yale and so forth. Interestingly, the tech universities are still seen as being meritocratic and excellent- you don’t hear anyone talking shit about kids from MIT or Caltech.

Does legacy give preference? Sure. Even without it, though, we’d expect people whose parents went to Ivy League schools to be overrepresented in top tier colleges. There’s certainly lots of debate about how much of intelligence, skills, etc. are nature vs. nurture, but people with highly intelligent parents with…