(Source: Princeton University)

Children of alumni, known as legacies, often receive preferential treatment when applying to mom's or dad's alma mater. How they fare once they're in is the subject of a new study.

The findings? Legacies face academic difficulties more often than athletes or minority students who benefited from affirmative action.

Read this snippet from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

A new study by researchers at Princeton University has found that the children of alumni -- commonly known as "legacies" -- are far more likely than minority students or athletes to run into academic trouble in college if admissions preferences got them through the door.

The farther a selective college lowers the bar for a given legacy applicant -- as measured by the gap between that applicant's grade-point average and the mean for that institution -- the lower the grade-point average that the student is likely to earn, according to a paper written by the two researchers who conducted the study, Douglas S. Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs, and Margarita Mooney, a postdoctoral fellow in Princeton's Office of Population Research.

What's more, those selective colleges that are the most committed to admitting the children of alumni have the highest dropout rates among such students, says the paper, published in the current issue of the journal Social Problems.

The paper says the researchers found that students who had received extra consideration in admission because they are black, Hispanic, or athletes did not have the same academic problems as legacies, as measured by grades or retention rates, even if college policies of giving minority students and athletes extra consideration in admissions appeared to have some drawbacks.

"We do not expect these findings to settle the debate on affirmative action," Mr. Massey and Ms. Mooney wrote. "We do hope, however, that they enable readers to place the issue of minority affirmative action in a broader context, viewing it as just one of several programs to target a subgroup of students affirmatively."

Barmak Nassirian, an associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said on Friday that the study's findings "just pile on more evidence that institutions ought to take a careful look at what they are doing on legacies."

You can find the rest here.

So the debate persists. Should universities continue to favor legacies in admissions decisions? Why or why not?