"Prior to controlling for wealth, however, the results indicate that schools with legacy preference policies indeed have much higher alumni giving. These combined results suggest that higher alumni giving at top institutions that employ legacy preferences is not a result of the preference policy exerting influence on alumni giving behavior, but rather that the policy allows elite schools to over-select from their own wealthy alumni. In other words, the preference policy effectively allows elite schools essentially to discriminate based on socioeconomic status by accepting their own wealthy alumni families rather than basing admissions on merit alone."

So it's likely that if fewer people from wealthy families become alumni then alumni giving will go down.

They actually investigate this starting on p. 115 and find no significant short-term decrease based on observations from institutions that ceased consideration of legacy status.

I think the more important point this comment misses is that the family's wealth isn't going anywhere and their kids will still go to college, so it stands to reason that the alumni will still give, they'll just be giving to e.g. Arizona State instead of Harvard, which seems like a net positive to me. If people are being honest about their concern that donations from wealthy alumni are good because they subsidize education, those fears are totally allayed.

"Moreover, any loss in alumni giving at the elite institutions would presumably be at least partially, if not fully, offset by additional giving to alternative institutions where parents of wealthy students might donate as an alternative, and the wealthy students themselves would become alumni. "

I think that paper over-indexes on exactly that argument - that having a relative attend the school is just a proxy for wealth, so they would give just as much anyway if they went to a different school. It doesn't stand to reason at all that the donations will be transferred to whatever other school their kid attends, donations like this are not fungible and do not scale linearly - if everyone in your family for five generations has gone to Harvard, and your kid goes to Arizona State, you aren't suddenly going to build a family tradition of loving Arizona State. You're more likely to simply dilute the strength of the family-college connection and not donate at all, or donate a perfunctory amount and put the rest into the opera you attend these days. I didn't look up the authors of this study, but they certainly didn't bother to mention any familiarity with the field of fundraising, which isn't as straightforward as they make it sound. Even if the strength of connection was the same, do public schools have the same skills and desire to request donations as Harvard does?

To test that hypothesis: they should check the Arizona State alumni to see if the number of relatives who attended Harvard is just as good a predictor of donations to Arizona State, because it's equally as strong a proxy for wealth when you attend Arizona State as when you attend Harvard. My bet is that it's a very weak predictor!

That doesn't answer the question though, does it?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

The article clearly says there's no evidence of a "casual relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving."

Can you explain your point further? Maybe you are aware of better data than what was used in the cited study?

Maybe the individual legacy preferences don’t influence it but the knowledge they exist does. For instance, there is no statistical likelihood of winning the jackpot from buying a lottery ticket and people keep buying tickets when they don’t win - but if the jackpot just got removed, do you think that would affect people’s choice to buy a ticket?

Wouldn't that still cause a correlation between schools that have legacy scholarships and alumni giving? In your lotto ticket example, there is a correlation between the jackpot and the number of tickets sold.

Yes, that was what I was saying.

The "no evidence" comment is not made by the paper itself - it was made about a much weaker 2008 study. The linked paper actually claims that legacy admissions do increase alumni giving by implicitly favoring wealthier families. I think both papers have flaws.

The linked study literally says “our primary finding…is that there is no statistical evidence of a casual relationship.” It also controls for wealth: “after inclusion of appropriate controls, including wealth…”

Maybe we’re referencing different studies. Which are you specifically referencing?

No, we're not. It controls for wealth, and then says that the policy itself affects the wealth of alumni, which makes it entirely inappropriate to remove that as a variable. In essence they are arguing that legacy preference systems are not what motivates higher donations, but they are a causal factor in the outcome of higher donations.

"the policy allows elite schools to over-select from their own wealthy alumni. In other words, the preference policy effectively allows elite schools essentially to discriminate based on socioeconomic status by accepting their own wealthy alumni families rather than basing admissions on merit alone."

" we show that prior to controlling for wealth, there is a strong correlation between alumni giving and legacy preferences. This suggests that greater alumni giving at elite schools with legacy preferences is driven by the school’s ability to over-select from their own wealthy alumni populations—not a result of the preference policies themselves inducing additional giving."

I think you are pointing out a related but slightly different problem. The question being asked is not "Does admitting wealthy students lead to higher alumni donations?" but rather "Does admitting legacy students lead to higher alumni donations?".

The latter one is what is being measured when they control for wealth and conclude that the practice of admitting based on legacy status does not result, in itself, with higher alumni donations. But like you said, when it becomes a means to admitting wealthier students, it can result in the former. But the two questions shouldn't be conflated and measuring them as distinct questions is why it's important to control for wealth in the methodology.

They cannot be measured distinctly when one is a proxy for the other.

It seems like they are correlated, but I don't know that one is necessarily a good proxy for the other.

Would you apply that to, say, wealth and SAT scores?

> better data

I am personally aware of a very large donation to MIT with the express purpose of admitting the high schooler, and I am less acquainted with a similar situation at Harvard. I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related. The mistake from a scientific point of view is how to define legacy preferences and how to measure such impacts. It is certainly there, it’s an interesting question as to how to measure it.

>I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related.

You're comparing apples to oranges. The question is whether consideration of legacy status in admissions is causally linked to greater alumni giving. What you're asking is whether wealthy parents are willing to pay bribes to get their dull children into particular institutions. The two aren't comparable, because rich parents don't need to be alumni to pay bribes.

At the risk of sounding glib, I was asking for data and not anecdotes.

>The mistake from a scientific point of view is how to define legacy preferences and how to measure such impacts.

The paper looked to define legacy preferences using multiple datasets where the school measured the importance of alumni relations in admissions. The datasets had to agree for a legacy admission classification (e.g., both say that alumni relations are "very important" regarding admissions). The measure used in the studies that showed no evidence was the level of alumni donations. It's pretty easily quantifiable. Other studies cited show that when legacy admissions were abolished there was not a statistically significant change in alumni donations.

Lack of evidence is hardly evidence of lacking.