Some parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars, to bribe and cheat their children’s way into big name colleges. That means an equal number of deserving students were denied admission. Fifty people have been named in the scandal so far.
And that’s supposed to be a big deal? The college admissions scandal of the century? You can’t be serious.
Here’s a genuine scandal: the number of “legacy” students at top colleges. Take Harvard as an example. Legacies make up 14 percent of the undergraduate population. One in seven undergrads strolling around Harvard Yard are there because one of their parents strolled down those same ivy-league walkways.
That’s about 950 of Harvard’s 6,700 undergrads. Next September, 280 new legacies will cycle into the school. And that’s just one big-name school.
“Legacies” are students who have a parent who attended the college, which increases their chances of admission. If the parents put a little cash into the college coffers — a lot of cash is even better — admission chances are even higher.
People who work in Harvard admissions have said its applicants are so strong, the college could admit two freshman classes of equal quality. If Harvard got rid of the legacies, 280 more highly qualified students could be admitted.
To be fair, I’m sure some of the legacies have what it takes to do well at Harvard, but I’m equally sure the vast majority would not have made the freshmen class if they had to rely on their own merits. What are the odds that 280 of the top Harvard applicants each year just happen to be children of a handful of alumni?
Back to the college admissions “scandal of the century.” All that’s happened is the people involved in the scandal have taken the initiative to create their own “Make your own legacy” reality show. It’s the same kind of privilege for the same class of people, with a felonious twist thrown in.
Here’s another higher education story in the news recently: an affirmative action lawsuit was filed against Harvard. According to the suit, some deserving students are denied admission to allow students from various underrepresented races and ethnicities to attend.
Affirmative action, where one student is chosen over another for reasons other than academic merit, is real, no doubt about it, but its major beneficiaries are children from the white, privileged class.
Legacy students are obvious recipients of affirmative action. Someone moves their applications to the top of the pile for no other reason than they happen to have parents who went to the school.
Then there are the Jared Kushners of the world. Just before Jared, a mediocre student, was admitted to Harvard, his father pledged $2.5 million to the college. Trump’s son-in-law is among the ranks of super wealthy children whose parents “affirmed” their places at the colleges of their choice.
Our president is another mediocre student who went to schools he had no business attending. You don’t think Trump made it into Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania on his own, do you?
Plenty of other privileged, white high school students make it into college without their parents directly influencing the selection process, but everything about their existence smooths their way into the colleges of their choice. They grow up in educated families with parents who can afford to give their children all kinds of educationally enriching experiences. They’re likely to get the best educations at the country’s top K-12 schools. They sit down with private tutors any time they need a little academic help. Their parents can buy them SAT prep sessions and college admissions experts who tweak their resumes and write their admissions essays.
The happy accident of privileged birth is the strongest affirmative action program around.
When a few rich parents get their unqualified kids into some top schools, it lights up the news channels, sparks our sense of righteous outrage and gives us a titillating peek into the Lives Of the Rich And Famous.
But it’s more of a distraction than an important story unless it’s linked to the underlying issues. The current “scandal” doesn’t even deserve to be called the tip of the college admissions iceberg. It’s a few snowflakes resting on the top of the country’s mountain of educational privilege.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2019.
This “College/University Admissions Scandal” is symptomatic of a our Decaying Democracy:
The Constitutional Democracy of the United State, is based upon private property rights, a market economy, and the unfettered accumulation of wealth. These are the tools that our society uses through which individual and national ambitions for freedom and happiness may be reached. Could all this be illusionary and productive of neither, and, in fact, destructive of both when pursued in contradiction to community interests and achieved on the miseries or credulity of others? Can we look at our own enormous wealth and see, at the same time, our own decadence; the untrammeled pursuit of individual wealth and luxury that has been destructive of both community and individual interests as evidenced by a decaying system of Public Education, Public Health Care, and, in fact, the decay of the very health of our Citizens?—- all related to the centrifugal focus of our Society.
“……Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either……. Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide……” Adams to John Taylor, 17 December 1814
“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address was delivered to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838, titled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions”.
The question is: as a car driving toward a precipice; are we at the fulcrum or have we moved beyond?
Most of what David wrote is unquestionably accurate.
My question is: Who cares about the unqualified kids?
William “Rick” Singer, the coaches, impostor test takers, & score changers should be fired & get prison time, but the over-eager parents & wrongly admitted kids are simply fools. Don’t we all know dropouts who are impressive successes & college graduates – even of “elite” schools – who are unemployed failures? There are too many rich kids to count who wind up as criminals or societal leeches. Nobody needs to be a millionaire. From what we see, many of them are miserable &/or suicidal. A strong work ethic, good family, & sensible lifestyle probably matter far more than any imaginary desirable diploma.
The Lustre has worn off of the college degree. It’s way past time for employers to hire based on content of character and effort. Too much college fraud to trust a simple diploma.