Angélica Gutiérrez, a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA Anderson, recently presented some of her work as part of Anderson's Human Resources and Organizational Behavior Workshop series. Much of Gutiérrez's work examines diversity issues and diversity management, racial inequality and gender backlash such as how individuals respond to women who are perceived to be counter-stereotypic of their gender. She graciously sat down with The UCLA Anderson Blog to discuss her work.
Gutiérrez says she came across a paper that discussed how many Ivy League schools use legacy admissions preferences when considering who they are going to admit. It raised a flag, occurring to her that in many ways legacy admissions policies mirror affirmative action programs -- but without the criticisms and scrutiny. The questions she asked were, "What may be an individual's motivations for supporting legacy admission preferences, but not also supporting affirmative action?” and “Who are the individuals that are likely to oppose or support these policies?" As Gutiérrez explained, both legacy and affirmative action policies may be characterized as violations of merit, given that they both base admissions preferences on non-academic criteria with affirmative action giving admissions preferences based on race and legacy admissions giving preferences based on family ties or birth.
Gutiérrez looked at individuals’ reactions to the two policies. She found that individuals who tend to want to maintain inequality and have a desire to support status hierarchies (where certain groups are clearly at the top and have a disproportionate share of resources and access to higher education and other groups, typically racial minorities, are at the bottom) tend to support legacy preferences. Also, the individuals who want to support these status hierarchies and want to ensure that certain groups have disproportionate access to resources tend to oppose affirmative action.
In short, Gutiérrez found that support for certain policies does not depend on the content of the policies but rather on the perceived effect of these policies on inequality and status hierarchies. Those who support legacy status when considering admissions tend to oppose affirmative action.
"These two policies have very different effects on status hierarchies," Gutiérrez said. "Whereas affirmative action policies seek to level the playing field and disproportionately benefit racial minorities, legacy admissions preferences tend to disproportionately benefit white applicants, because their parents and grandparents are much more likely than the parents and grandparents of racial minorities to have attended college. So, individuals who want to ensure that white applicants continue to have a disproportionate share of education and continue to be at the top of these hierarchies will tend to support certain policies, such as legacy admissions, that disproportionately benefit that group and disadvantage the other groups, typically racial minorities."
Gutiérrez also notes that there are other studies that demonstrate that there are no correlations between legacy admissions and fundraising, putting to rest the notion that admitting legacies serves a financial purpose for the schools in question. "Institutions need to examine the effects of the policies they employ and determine whether these policies are serving their intended purposes, such as fundraising (which they clearly do not), or whether these policies serve to maintain inequality and have other unintended consequences," Gutiérrez said.
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