Political VIP Admits: Law School Admissions Veritae

Last weekend's  Chicago Tribune has an interesting story about how Illinois politicians pressure the University of Illinois - including the U of I School of Law - to admit comparatively less qualified applicants.  Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Trib managed to get its hands on hundreds of documents showing how this process unfolds.  This was the story of one applicant's admission to the law school:

State Sen. Chris Lauzen believed a student deserved admission to the University of Illinois law school in 2005, and he let the university's lobbyists know. The school's dean thought otherwise. "She won't hurt us terribly, but she certainly won't help us," then-Dean Heidi Hurd wrote to Chancellor Richard Herman. "She will almost certainly be denied admission if the process unfolds as we predict. But she can probably do the work. If you tell me we need to do this one, we will. We'll remember it though!" "Please admit," the chancellor replied. "I understand no harm."

This isn't a suprise to anyone who knows university and law school admissions.  We often hear loud complaints about race-based affirmative action policies and their impact on members of majority groups.  But there are several ways in which non-minorities benefit from affirmative action.  The most obvious are political pressure (whether from legislators, donors or trustees) and legacy status.  

Yesterday I blogged about how admissions committees must work through cases where applicants have criminal convictions.   The challenges are slightly different - but still vexing - for these VIP applicants.   A state school, for example, must take seriously its funding stream.  We might like to believe that a pure school wouldn't bow to such pressure.  But if a given applicant is at least as strong as the weakest accepted student, is it entirely unreasonable for the committee to reserve a few spots to insure strong legislative support?  And while many people might think it distasteful for a private school to allow a large donor or trustee to help a friend, admissions veritae suggests that allocating a few slots to VIP applicants makes a ton of practical sense.

The university application process is complex.  The first order of business is assembling a class fully qualified for the task at hand.  After that, however, each school will have its own priorities.  For now, at least, it seems that the University of Illinois School of Law - unlike the law schools at Michigan and Virginia - really wants to be the state's own law school.  The legislature will write checks to the law school and expect a little service in return.  The sausage factory is never very pretty.  But we do love our sausage!  

Comments

[Alfred]

Dan--thanks for this story. Two thoughts here.

First, one of the hidden benefits of the LSAT is that it provides an objective measure of candidates. My sense is that as schools increasingly emphasized the LSAT (perhaps because of their increasing focus on US News rankings), they have used the LSAT as a way of reducing pressure from politicians and alumni to admit applications.

Second, I'm not surprised that even major schools like Illinois receive this kind of pressure to admit students. What somewhat surprises me is that they've responded to it with offers of admissions.

[Jason]

I realize that this is widespread and not surprising, but I still find it troubling. Yes, certain non-minorities benefit from preferences given to legacies, large donors, and those with political pull. But not every non-minority has any of that going for him/her. There are only so many slots at the best law schools, and there are only a handful of law schools considered truly great. Because employers, and especially the academy, put so much emphasis on attending one of those few great schools, the slots at the bottom edge can really matter. If you are a graduate of one of the best law schools in the country, don't you want everyone who gets admitted to that school (including possibly your own children) to get there on some kind of objective merit? LSAT, undergrad school & grades may be imperfect indicators, but they are certainly better indicators than whether your parents are wealthy donors and know a state legislator. Going to a top law school is a key that unlocks professional and career doors, and I believe that the limited number of those keys should be distributed on merit and potential, not on lineage. Of course, I say this as a white male graduate of a top law school whose parents were poor, had zero connections, and never went to college, let alone law school.

[jd]

I'm not sure why you assume that political pressure isn't brought to bear to admit minority candidates a politician favors as well as non-minorities.

[Michael Alexander]

This story reminds me of something I heard a long time ago - that George W. Bush wanted to go to University of Texas Law School, but he was denied entry, so he went to Harvard Business School. If true, it gives me some faith - a guy from a powerful family who went to Yale was denied at Texas. Does anybody know if that story is true?

[TJ]

So far, everyone is focusing on the law school's integrity in this. But, of course, there is a more important public issue. The "pressure" comes from a legislator or trustee's implicit threat to use their position to advantage or disadvantage the law school, depending on how the admission decision pans out. If this was ever made explicit, i.e. admit my son or I vote to cut your funding, the real problem with this scenario would be obvious, and it is not whether the law school capitulates.