Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to study the effect of this on donations and the endowment. There should be some measurable effect. Additionally, if there is an effect on donations and the endowment, it would be interesting to study the effect that that change has on endowment payouts. Does lower donations, due to lower legacy admissions result in less funds for University operations?

View on HN

My single datum indicates it results in a 100% drop in donations from families with a rejected student.

I haven't heard of studies on this but I would say the effect is potentially huge. For instance, just going by numbers of legacy admits at Harvard: www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html

And any natural experiment that could have been done due to JHU's change was probably messed up by the largest donation to a university, ever: www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/us/michael-bloomberg-johns-hopkins-donation.html

And given the size of Bloomberg's donations during his lifetime, I suspect the university also has assurances for more gifts in his legacy allowing to close the gap from former alumni no longer donating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com