Researchers at Princeton University have found that students who received legacy admissions are more likely to face academic challenges than Blacks who were admitted under affirmative action admissions programs.
Despite their findings, the programs remain a target of critics, as anti-affirmative action groups look to duplicate the success of Michigan’s voter-approved ban on race-based preferences in college admissions. Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma are the next battlegrounds.
In a study published in the February 2007 journal Social Problems, Princeton sociologists Douglas S. Massey and Margarita Mooney used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen to compile a sample of nearly 4,000 students at 28 colleges and universities. They found that 77 percent of the Black students surveyed were the beneficiaries of affirmative action. By comparison, 48 percent of all legacies benefited from admissions preferences.
After compiling the sample, Massey and Mooney developed models that test claims about the effects of affirmative action, specifically the mismatch hypothesis, which states that those who get racial preferences do poorly in school because they are under-prepared. Their study looked at the college performance of three groups: minorities, athletes and legacies, students given admission preferences because their parents attended that school.
The authors say they did not find strong evidence for the mismatch hypothesis among minorities. Overall, legacies had the best grades, earning a GPA of 3.26 over their first two years, followed by athletes at 3.12 and minorities at 3.05. Although they earned lower grades, Blacks who received admissions preferences did not have unusually low grades and were as likely as other Blacks to stay in college and earn a degree.
However, legacies who enjoyed a greater admissions bonus earned lower grades. The greater the gap between a legacy’s SAT score and the institutional average, the lower grades they received. The odds of a legacy admit leaving school were higher when they posted lower grades than their schoolmates.
The gap between the SAT scores of Blacks and other non-affirmative action students did not mean Blacks would do poorly in school.
