On February 14th, student groups at 13 elite colleges announced that they are mobilizing against a different type of affirmative-action program: that which privileges the children of alumni.

About three-quarters of U.S. News & World Report’s top 100 universities give a boost in admissions to the relatives of alumni, according to an analysis by The Century Foundation, where I am a senior fellow. But student groups have announced that they plan to challenge such policies, which research finds tend to benefit white and wealthy applicants.

At the very least, student organizers say, they want colleges to be transparent about their policies and disclose any written documents outlining how legacy preference is weighed in the admissions process.

While universities typically disclose whether they use legacy preferences or not, they tend not to publicize details on how the process actually works—how heavily such preferences are weighted, for example, and how many students benefit each year.

In 2011, research on 30 elite schools from the higher-education expert Michael Hurwitz found that the children of alumni saw a 45 percentage-point increase in their chances of admission compared to otherwise equally qualified candidates who were not legacies, controlling for factors such as SAT scores, athlete status, gender, race, and “many less-quantifiable characteristics.”

Read the full article on ending legacy preferences by Richard D. Kahlenberg at The Atlantic