U.S. Senators Young/Blum Column in National Review: Restore Merit to College Admissions by Ending Legacy Preferences

For generations, Americans have told themselves a simple story: In this country, talent, character, and hard work — not birth — should shape our future, determining how far someone can rise. That principle has guided our republic since its founding. Yet in elite higher education, admissions policies too often contradict it. Preferences for the children of alumni and major donors have become a quiet, but consequential, form of advantage. They have become the “artificial aristocracy” that Thomas Jefferson warned against.

Congress now has an opportunity to phase out these unfair “legacy” and donor preferences. Lawmakers should require transparency from colleges that benefit from federal funds and tax advantages. Public subsidies ought to align with public values, and fairness in access to elite institutions should be among them.

Jefferson believed a healthy republic should elevate a “natural aristocracy” of “virtue and talents.” But when institutions reserve special consideration for applicants based on lineage or wealth, they undermine that ideal and weaken public trust.

The data are difficult to ignore. Research from Opportunity Insights shows that, holding academic credentials constant, applicants from families in the top 1 percent of the income distribution are roughly 58 percent more likely to gain admission to “Ivy-Plus” institutions than similarly qualified middle-class students. For those in the top 0.1 percent, the odds are even higher.

These gaps are not explained by merit alone. They reflect structural preferences that tilt the playing field toward those who already start ahead.

Defenders of legacy preferences often argue that these policies are necessary to sustain alumni giving and institutional resources. The evidence supporting that is thin. Studies examining universities that have eliminated legacy preferences find no consistent decline in alumni donations. In some cases, however, giving patterns appear to rise and fall around a child’s application and admissions decision, suggesting that some giving is driven less by institutional loyalty than by whether alumni children are admitted. This is a fragile foundation on which to base national education policy.

Even when universities have been asked directly to justify these preferences, the case has been unconvincing. During the Students for Fair Admissions litigation, Harvard officials acknowledged they could not point to rigorous evidence that legacy preferences meaningfully increase charitable support. Assertions about financial necessity cannot substitute for facts.

There is also a basic structural reality that policymakers must confront: Admissions at highly selective institutions operate under fixed capacity. A preference granted to one applicant necessarily displaces another. That is not a moral judgment. It is simply how scarcity works. In a society committed to upward mobility, we must accept that no position is permanently protected. When we shield the top from competition, mobility becomes a slogan rather than a reality. 

The current policy environment is changing quickly. The Supreme Court’s decision ending race-based admissions has prompted renewed attention to fairness, transparency, and accountability in higher education. The Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” reflects that shift, emphasizing clearer rules, standardized measures, and outcome reporting. 

Whatever one’s view of the broader agenda, the compact highlights an inconsistency that deserves bipartisan attention. It proposes significant federal involvement in defining merit while leaving untouched one of the most powerful non-meritocratic preferences in the system: A framework that prohibits consideration of race but permits admissions advantages tied to ancestry or donor relationships is not a coherent vision of meritocracy.

If the federal government is going to attach conditions to grants, tax benefits, or other public support, legacy and donor preferences should be part of that discussion. At a minimum, we should insist on transparency. Institutions receiving federal funds ought to disclose how many applicants receive such preferences, the magnitude of the admissions advantage, and how those students compare academically to their peers.

Beyond transparency, Congress should consider conditioning federal benefits on the phased elimination of these preferences — and ultimately ending them outright, as proposed in the Merit-Based Educational Reforms and Institutional Transparency (MERIT) Act. This approach respects institutional autonomy while aligning public support with public values.

None of these reforms will erase the deeper inequalities that begin long before college admission — from disparities in K–12 education quality, to gaps in extracurricular opportunities, to access to informal networks that lead to internships and entry-level jobs. But removing formal mechanisms that entrench advantage is a necessary step.

In a closed, highly selective sector, expanding opportunity requires making room at the top. America cannot credibly claim to be a committed meritocracy while its most powerful educational institutions preserve a quiet back door for those already closest to power.

Jefferson’s distinction between a natural and an artificial aristocracy remains relevant. The question before us is whether we will continue to protect advantage rooted in wealth and birth, or recommit ourselves to a system in which virtue, talent, and effort truly matter most.

Todd Young is a U.S. senator representing Indiana. Edward Blum is the founder and president of Students for Fair Admissions.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/04/restore-merit-to-college-admissions-by-ending-legacy-preferences/