Senate Bill Seeks to End Legacy Admissions
Credit: Allison Robbert / Bloomberg / Getty Images- A new bipartisan Senate bill aims to prohibit legacy admissions at all public and private colleges and universities.
- Similar bills recently introduced have stalled in Congress.
- The bill doesn’t provide details on enforcement and tracking mechanisms.
- A majority of Americans favor the abolition of legacy admissions.
As the number of colleges and universities clinging to legacy admissions policies continues to dwindle, a new U.S. Senate bill seeks to eliminate the practice altogether.
The “Fair College Admissions for Students Act,” bipartisan legislation introduced March 6 by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and John Kennedy, R-La., calls for a ban on legacy preferences at public and private colleges nationwide.
More specifically, it prohibits institutions from providing any “preferential treatment in the admissions process to applicants on the basis of their relationships to … donors to the institution … or alumni of the institution.”
“For Republicans and Democrats alike, it’s just common sense that decisions on who can access higher education should be based on merit, not money and connections,” Sen. Merkley told BestColleges in an email.
“I look forward to partnering with Sen. Kennedy on our bipartisan Fair College Admissions for Students Act, a straightforward solution to help ensure fairness in the admissions process by amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 to prohibit colleges and universities that participate in federal student aid programs from giving admissions preference to the rich and powerful. …
“At the same time, we must also ensure that institutions of higher education have the resources they need to increase access to low-income students and provide additional need-based aid, ensuring equal access for all students.”
If passed, the bill would go into effect on the first day of the second award year. That is, if it passed before July 1 this year, it would take effect on July 1, 2026.
This latest effort to abolish legacy preferences comes as states and individual institutions continue to abandon the practice.
Last month, an analysis from Education Reform Now (ERN) showed that 24% of four-year colleges still give preference to legacy students — children and often grandchildren of alumni. That’s down from 29% in 2022 and 49% in 2015.
Over the past decade, more than 452 colleges and universities have jettisoned legacy preferences. Almost 100 did so following the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ban on race-conscious admissions.
James Murphy, director of postsecondary policy at ERN and author of the legacy report, worked with Sen. Merkley on the legislation. He told BestColleges that having bipartisan support “sends a very good signal that this is important.”
Republicans, he said, “have talked a lot about merit recently,” and this bill acknowledges that “legacy preferences run contrary to any idea of fairness or meritocracy.”
This sentiment has gained considerable traction recently.
Studies show that legacy students tend to skew white and wealthy, leading some to call legacy preferences affirmative action for the rich.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned affirmative action and impeded campus diversity goals, many legislators wish to end legacy admissions, and colleges themselves are rethinking their policies.
In 2021, Colorado became the first state to ban the practice, followed by Virginia, California, Maryland, and Illinois. Similar legislation has been introduced in New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.
Connecticut lawmakers floated a bill in 2024, but strong opposition from Yale University, among other institutions, scuttled the attempt.
A relative handful of private schools have discontinued the practice, including Johns Hopkins University and Amherst College, which did so before the SCOTUS ruling, while decisions by Wesleyan University and Carleton College came after.
Yet all eight Ivy League schools sustain legacy preferences despite this growing momentum. Murphy attributes this intransigence to the “culture of wealth” perpetuated by these institutions, particularly among presidents and board members who fear losing donor contributions and roiling alumni.
He said it would take courage for an Ivy president to speak out against legacy preferences and advocate for the abolition of the policy as a moral imperative.
“The reason to get rid of legacy preferences is because they’re so obviously unfair,” Murphy said. “That’s it. They’re wrong. So why on earth would you bother holding on to them?”
Enforcement Mechanisms Remain Unclear
Running only a couple of paragraphs, the new bill lacks specificity.
Although it does not feature any discussion of penalties, it does allude to sanctions when referring to “institutions of higher education participating in federal student assistance programs.” In other words, colleges risk losing Title VI funding, including federal student aid.
But mechanisms for tracking and enforcement aren’t mentioned at all. Murphy said such details “would have to be sorted out for sure.”
One possibility would be to prohibit colleges, as well as organizations such as the Common App, from asking about family educational history on applications, although Murphy believes it’s more likely colleges would instead collect such information but keep it out of files read by admissions officers.
Still, it could be difficult to prove that legacy status did or did not influence an admissions decision, assuming that status is known.
Holistic admissions take several factors into account, except for race, so concluding that a student’s legacy qualification tipped the balance might be problematic. That said, if a college maintained or increased the number of legacies following a ban, it could indicate a lack of compliance.
Either way, Murphy doesn’t seem to think enforcement would become a problem.
“Colleges are not typically enthusiastic about breaking laws,” he said.
Previous Attempts to Ban Legacy Admissions Stalled
Murphy noted similar Congressional attempts to ban legacy admissions, each of which failed to result in a law.
In 2023, Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., introduced the Merit-Based Educational Reforms and Institutional Transparency Act. And the year before, nine Democratic lawmakers sponsored the Fair College Admissions for Students Act, which would decline federal aid to institutions giving preference to legacy applicants.
These bills remain stuck in neutral, a status not uncommon for this kind of legislation, Murphy said.
“It’s very hard to get bills through Congress on their own if they’re not incredibly high profile,” he said.
At the same time, there’s very little downside to enacting a law three-quarters of Americans support and that doesn’t cost taxpayers anything, Murphy argued.
Nonetheless, he doesn’t believe this latest attempt to ban legacy admissions nationwide will come to fruition. Instead, Murphy predicts more legislation will be enacted at the state level.
Even then, he said, eliminating legacy admissions won’t be enough to level the educational playing field. It must be accomplished in concert with removing other barriers limiting access for historically excluded students.
“You need to do several things at once: Get rid of legacy admissions, de-emphasize athletic recruitment, expand the pool of high schools that you recruit from, and increase need-based financial aid,” Murphy said. “Do those four things, and let’s see what changes.”