In Washington, senators question elite colleges' legacy advantage

In the face of the mounting difficulties that face middle class applicants to elite colleges, U.S. senators questioned earlier this week whether institutions that give preferential treatment to the children of alumni and potential donors should be entitled to tax breaks.

"We need to think whether [having] these reserved spaces at our top colleges is a public policy that should be subsidized by the tax code ... and also whether it is in keeping with the requirement that as charities, colleges and universities operate in the public interest," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

Under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, educational institutions are exempt from federal income tax.

With the current session of Congress ending in a few weeks, the discussion is unlikely to yield any legislative action. But it introduces a new wrinkle in the perennial debate over whether college admissions are meritocratic.

The hearing, entitled "Report Card on Tax Exemptions and Incentives for Higher Education: Pass, Fail, or Need Improvement?" included expert testimony from several professors, Trinity (Washington) University president Patricia McGuire and Pulitzer Prizewinning Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden.

Golden, who wrote the bestselling book "The Price of Admission," testified that legacies are admitted at two to four times the overall rate. He also estimated that "legacy applicants enjoy a 50- to 75-point advantage on the old 1600-point SAT scale over students who do not receive any preference."

At the conclusion of his speech to the committee, Golden cited an interview with President Tilghman that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last summer. When questioned, Tilghman justified legacy preference by saying that it was "extremely important to the financial wellbeing of [the] University."

The reporter then asked, "And wouldn't they continue to be even if you didn't give their children the preference?" Tilghman responded that the University had "never done the experiment."

Alumni children made up three percent of the applicant pool for the Class of 2010 and 14 percent of the enrolled class. They were admitted at a rate of 39 percent, compared to 10 percent for applicants overall.

University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee '69 said in an interview yesterday that "the degree to which alumni remain engaged is related to the fact that the hope that if their children are interested in Princeton, and well qualified, their children will have the opportunity to attend."

"We have no plans to change our current policy which does pay attention to legacy status," he said.

At the hearing, Grassley also questioned the practice of giving preference to "children of multimillionaires whom the university hopes might give money down the road."

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Durkee, however, said "Princeton has no policy that gives any preference or special recognition in the application to financial status" and stressed that preference is given to children of alumni irrespective of wealth.

"The way we describe the significance of being an alumni child is, in a sense, a tiebreaker," Durkee said.