Especially when the whole point of a "private" university is their exclusivity. Not only that they will lose their appeal in the first place, this has the potential to really mess up their endowments.
It's an ironic problem because California's public colleges already have an exclusivity problem.
Private universities enjoy tremendous benefits on account of their public benefits. If they want to have virtual sovereignty in how they admit students, they should be taxed and regulated like any other business.
If anything, non-profits generally have less responsibility. The Anti-Defamation League should not be forced to admit anti-Semites. You wouldn't expect Planned Parenthood to be forced to admit anti-abortion providers.
Charities have to disclose quid pro quo contributions in a way universities do not [1]. That's before we get to the favourable land use, permitting and employment protections (see: grad students) universities enjoy, or the student financial aid grants California provides private-university students or research grants and contracts it gives it.
> Anti-Defamation League should not be forced to admit anti-Semites
You're conflating being forced to admit people with certain characteristics with a ban on considering certain characteristics during admission. Very different. The analog would be the ADL not being allowed to ask applicants about their views on anti-Semitism, which is significantly less oppressive than what you suggest.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
This law seems aimed at asserting control over something which does not belong to the government. The first amendment enshrines rights of freedom of association. While there is no punishment, there is an effort by the government to cast scorn upon certain institutions. I would say this is not a legitimate purpose of the government. Again because of the first amendment, nobody should be judged by the government due to who they decide to hang out with.
Things like university endowments that give preferential admissions should be subject to at least some tax.
Universities and academia as a whole are far too focused on being machines for acquiring donations and other funding. Not that they don't need a lot of money, but things need to change so that acquiring it is not nearly such a focus.
Being a non-profit doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not the law can demand transparency.
I think people should be deeply wary of this logic of unilateral ex-post recontacting you seem to be raising.
I think it threatens the rule of law and contracting, social or otherwise.
Tell that to MIT or CMU - both of whom do NOT accept legacy admissions on principle (George Eastman and Andrew Carnegie being self made men).
They're both doing fine.
> Especially when the whole point of a "private" university is their exclusivity.
MIT is a private university that does not do legacy admissions, yet it has no problem maintaining its existence or its exclusivity.
That second group, why are they there?
Let's not let some abstract amorphous principle about some legal fiction prevent us from fixing things.
I would imagine there's a lot of overlap between those two groups
In fact I think it impossible to be part of the former without being part of the latter
I'd expect Harvard or a similar institution to be mostly full of the esoteric: people with an intense focus of study on something we've never heard of like some biological property of a specific type of plant or some 500 year old historical event that you have to travel to a national archive and learn a dead language to read about.
Ideally those people should be able to come from most economic and status backgrounds.
You forgot the third group: those that got a free pass due to diversity hiring. These didn't need to work hard at all.
The formula is to find something that happens < 0.01% of the time and scandalize it pretending it's 99.99% of the time. It's tired 1990s style tabloid nonsense repurposed in the public sphere.
Anyways, the Varsity Blues scandal was a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal and stuff like that should be the real focus.
This has been clumsily misreported by looking at incorrect numbers. It's acceptance rate as a percentage of applicants, not as a percentage of the total enrollment.
This entire sensationalist apparatus relies on sloppy reporting, imaginative thinking and fixing the facts around a presumed narrative. It can't withstand scrutiny because it's manufactured for ad revenue and content engagement.
Scandalous tall tales about Harvard letting in unqualified black students through a secret administrative backdoor is one of the ways grifters sell boner pills through podcasts and wordpress sites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions...
Also again there's flimsy evidence even here. Percentage of total student body isn't the same as percentage of applicants accepted nor are they necessarily related. For example, a wealthy benefactor offering scholarships could have switched their allegiances or whatever
They're sitting on a stack of applicants to the ceiling of 4.2 GPAs and good looking extracurriculars and volunteer work of all backgrounds. Literally all of them meeting the bar to be successful at $PrestigiousUniversity. Affirmative action is choosing how to pick from that stack.
But taking a step back, folks aren't really that opposed to "positive discrimination" when forced to actually reveal their preferences. We call positive sexism is chivalry, and positive racism affirmative action and it's broadly supported. The population most strongly opposed to positive racism are people who want or are indifferent to negative racism so it's hard to know how to read that.
Or... not and the results of polls heavily depend on how the question is asked. Apparently more people say affirmative action is good than bad. So maybe? Even the pew poll gets wildly inconsistent results depending on the question. The only consistent thing in all the graphs is the left/right split and you're more likely to be against affirmative action when it's selecting against you.
Can you please go into a little more detail about the irony you see, because as someone who works at a public university, it's not obvious to me.
These are public universities, but you are still more likely to get into a private university, legacy admissions or not.
> (2) “Independent institution of higher education” means a nonpublic higher education institution that grants undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, or both, that is formed as a nonprofit corporation in this state, that is accredited by an agency recognized by the United States Department of Education, and that receives, or benefits from, state-funded student financial assistance or that enrolls students who receive state-funded student financial assistance.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.x...
Seems like an institution is free to be fully private (not take state funded financial aid) and do whatever they want.
I'm not sure if the intended outcome here is that Standford stops accepting low income students on financial assistance.
Researchers themselves write and apply for grants, and the grants are for the researchers. The money goes to them and their research, not the university.
They are allowed to exist because they provide the public a benefit, which is degraded by legacy admissions depriving the deserving members of the general public of those slots.
Your other point is valid though: Public universities could set an example and compete more effectively for students who would otherwise go to a private university by increasing capacity.
Sure, but most of that research is done by actual employees, who were (presumably) already hired in line with hiring law.
> Public universities could set an example and compete more effectively for students who would otherwise go to a private university by increasing capacity.
This is certainly already the case. UC's are way bigger than private schools, and already some of the best schools in the nation. Could be even bigger, I guess.
The ‘punishment’ for breaking this law is to be listed on a website, so no one is stopping these schools from doing whatever they want, they will just be on a public list.
most of us have heard good things about stanford. They won't lose any reputation because that isn't what it is built on. Drake isn't in california but even if they were not being on this list (if they are not I don't know) wouldn't make anyone not go.
Eh, it's pretty fundamental to KKK's right to exist! Businesses (e.g., US colleges) have to comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts which curtail what they can set as their selection criteria.