The Economist loves Daniel Golden’s book, “The Price of Admission,” which makes me wonder a bit about The Economist.

Quoting Golden, the magazine writes, “No less than 60% of the places in elite universities are given to candidates who have some sort of extra ‘hook’, from rich or alumni parents to ‘sporting prowess'”.

Let’s just examine that, shall we? Golden cites that figure in his book, attributed to a single source, who claimed that it was true for one—you got it, one—Ivy League university. The source wouldn’t say which university—perhaps because that, of course, would mean that you could then check it out and prove it wrong. Because as anyone who knows anything about college admissions will tell you, the idea that 60% of a class is slotted for legacies is absurd.

In other words, it’s a stupid statistic, and Golden was irresponsible to quote it. But The Economist translates that into 60% of the places “in elite universities”—not even just Ivy League universities, but elite universities generally. This is what you might call bad journalism.

If that suggestion were true, of course, legacy admissions would indeed be a dire problem. But it isn’t.

The magazine concludes: There are a few signs that the winds of reform are blowing. Several elite universities have expanded financial aid for poor children. Texas A&M has got rid of legacy preferences. Only last week Harvard announced that it was getting rid of “early admission”—a system that favours privileged children—and Princeton rapidly followed suit. But the wind is going to have to blow a heck of a lot harder, and for a heck of a lot longer, before America’s money-addicted and legacy-loving universities can be shamed into returning to what ought to have been their guiding principle all along: admitting people to university on the basis of their intellectual ability.

This may sound contrarian, or anachronistic, but to my mind, there are quite a few reasons for admitting people to college, of which intellectual ability is just one. A specific talent—the arts, writing, perhaps even athletics—might be another. And character—yes, character—could be another still. This person might not have gotten 1600 on his or her SATs, but what might he or she contribute to society?

I am probably old-fashioned, but to see universities as solely places for the kids with the best grades is to vastly reduce the scope of their mission, and in the process, lessen their value.