The Nationwide College Admissions Scam

I work in higher education, so naturally, I have been following the recent bombshell of the indictments in the nationwide college admissions scam. But let me be very clear, the bombshell, at least for me, is that people are actually being indicted and charged.

The history of higher education in this country is not a history of meritocracy. It is a history of the haves over the have nots. College education is expensive, and not generally considered part of public education, because it originally was not something that most, or even many, people were expected to get, need, or even want. It was something for the idle rich, someplace for the wealthy families to send their sons to sew their wild oats before they came home, settled down, and started managing the family business/investments.

Obviously, that has changed. In the modern world, many people believe a college education is necessary. In fact, almost 70% of people who graduate high school enroll in college. And we do now expect people to get into college based on merit, mostly. (I am pretty certain Harvard, Yale, and other Ivies still have a legacy system.)

But the truth is, either via legacy systems, or Grandpa donating a library collection ,if not an actual library, to a college has long been a way to get a kid who might not make it in on merit, into a prestigious school. Let us be clear, wealthy parents have been paying large amounts of money for their children to get into University pretty much since the University system began in the United States.

So the fact that we think wealthy parents paying money to get their children into elite universities is a scandal actually shows how far we have come. The fact that our government is willing to hand down federal indictments on this scandal is amazing in and of itself. And it shows a growing commitment in our society to at least try and make opportunities for success available to all.

But honestly, I think the only people scandalized by this scandal were in the middle class. Rich people were already doing this, and poor people know that rich people do this all the time. It is only the middle class, who believe that one day they (or their children) will enter the realm of the very wealthy, that seem to be surprised that they wealthy actually use their money to maintain their status as the “elite”, and that their goal is to give their children every advantage over other children that money can buy. And oddly, other people, who are not themselves insanely wealthy, are willing to take those large amounts of money, and give preference to the children of the “elite”.

We hear so often about the idea that affirmative action is supposedly stealing spots in colleges away from deserving middle class (read: white) students to give them to less deserving poor (read: black or brown) students. Instead of suing schools for affirmative action, I would love to see a student sue one of the schools listed in these indictments for stealing a seat from that student who actually was meritorious enough to get in, and giving it to a rich kid whose parents paid someone a lot of money.

Will this solve the issues with college admissions? No. The system is so biased against students from lower income families, that even if we managed to get rid of every way in which a wealthy family could buy a spot in college for their student, lower income students would still be seriously disadvantaged.

We need to feel the same level of rage against our supposed meritorious system as we do those parents who paid a lot of money to an elite “coach” to help their kids get accepted. We need to put our energy toward universal day care, before and after school programs, school breakfast and lunch. And yes, free university.

The barriers to entry into college for so many students has nothing to do with merit. It has to do with starting from a disadvantaged place, with parents who have to work two jobs and so do not have time to read to their children, with trying to learn math when they have not eaten yet today, with not having time to do homework or take advanced classes because they work in order to help support their family.

If we truly believe in merit over money, we have to find a way for everyone’s merit to be judged on an equal footing, regardless of money. And that does not just mean not letting rich parents explicitly buy their children a spot in college, because middle class parents are also buying their children’s spots in college by moving to richer schools and paying for sports and extracurricular activities. It means we have to believe in the merit of the student, not what their parents have, and we have to give each and every one of those students the same opportunities to excel.

I think it is great that we think it is a scandal that rich parents are buying their children spots in University, but I do not think we really understand how deep that “scandal” goes.