The Illinois General Assembly unanimously passed and Gov. JB Pritzker this week signed what’s called the Admissions Based on Legacy Status or Donor Relation Prevention Law. It prohibits state higher education institutions from considering, for student admission, family relations with the applicant as well as past or expected donations from the family.
Good. “Legacy admissions,” as they are called, discriminate against anybody not born into the right family. Minorities were among those particularly disadvantaged by legacy admissions, at least until affirmative action counterbalanced it, and whites born on the wrong side of the tracks still face it.
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education says the law will have little practical impact because none of Illinois’ public universities currently give admissions preference to relatives of alumni. However, it’s unclear is whether current practices also give preference to donor families.
Illinois is the fourth state to pass a ban on legacy admission preference, according to the Chronicle.
The law applies only to public institutions, but let’s hope private schools follow the trend. Private, “elite” schools have long been the most notorious preference-givers to kids of alumni and donors.
-Mark Glennon
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
I suggest that we build on this progressive act and require public school teachers to send their kids to public schools as a condition of their employment.
Illinois laws do not matter unless enforced.
Enforcement doesn’t matter unless the punishment carries sufficient deterrent force.
Look at Illinois Statutory requirements for taxing bodies to file certified annual financial reports, then see Dolton (delinquent in filings for years).
Residents’ complacent false sense of security has made Illinois the sinkhole of value that it is today.
What about gov officials, elected persons having influence on who gets admitted? No idea how often it happens now, but I do remember reading articles about it in the past.
I guess a proactive law since there were no legacy admissions, but probably more for grandstanding.
As someone else pointed out, a better law would be to ban racist admission policies.
Good! Now if he will step up and attack racial admissions. No chance of him doing that.
For IL, the law to be properly written would of included out-of-state applicants and noncitizens displacing resident-citizen applicants. The state of NC had to pass into law a limit of no more than 10% nonresidents in the student body.
A friend of mine was a U of I engineering graduate, and his son was turned away from dads Alma mater because his program was filled by Chinese foreign students. So he went to Perdue U , after graduation he never returned to this state’; Illinois loss.
Yep, Old Joe saw a version of this at Michigan State University.
I don’t know… I suppose you’re right WP, that Illinois correcting this injustice is a positive step, but I care very little if a large donor to a college gets some preferential treatment for a family member. Perhaps my being the only comment so far indicates others also don’t have very strong feelings about this, but I could easily be wrong.