The words “shocking” and “stunning” have been used to describe news that wealthy parents bribed, cajoled and consorted with shady characters to get their kids into America’s elite universities.
I myself was not shocked or stunned — no reasonably aware person should be.
Since when is it a surprise that rich parents are greasing palms to give their oftentimes useless progeny legs up in the world? How many stories have we read about ne’re-do-well sons and daughters of celebrities, business titans or nobility, raised under the protective cloak of wealth, privilege and little accountability, having everything handed to them — and then not measuring up?
It’s a story as old as recorded history.
Sure, some of the details are enough to raise an eyebrow at the extent some of these parents were willing to go — bribing sports coaches with tens of thousands of dollars to take young people on as phony recruits to gain admission or paying for stand-ins to take SATs and ACTs — but those are just newly imaginative ways to get around the system for anyone willing to spend enough money.
What’s difficult to understand is how parents believe they are truly helping their children, in the long run, by buying their way into advantageous situations. Not being able to stand on one’s own merits eventually catches up with anyone.
Perhaps it’s more about the parents themselves than it is their children. Rich men flaunt trophy wives. In the competitive and status-conscious world we’ve created for ourselves, we have trophy children.
Any parent can certainly understand what it means to have hopes and dreams for a child. My wife and I did everything in our power to raise our sons with expectations while working to give them reasonable opportunities for growth and success. But in everything they did or achieved, they did so on their own merits and they ended up on paths that were of their own choosing.
And they will be better for it.
Perhaps one of the positives that can come out of the college admissions scandal is that much of the hypocrisy of the system can be confronted, from the ridiculously outsized role that athletics has on campuses to the incongruity of schools striving for diversity and giving education opportunities to those who deserve it, yet still pursuing the highest revenues possible.
While I have not read that “elite” universities themselves were actively complicit in the admissions shenanigans that led to indictments, they had to have had suspicions. Meanwhile, huge donations from benefactors and legacies have long been the more conventional way that a parent ensured admission for a son or daughter — at the expense of a student with better academic credentials and who’s worked harder, but whose parents are of modest means and less influential background.
Thus are the so-called elite schools caught between the political and social values they publicly espouse and embrace regarding diversity in the student body, but they still want a solid measure of students whose families can afford — or are willing — to pay full-freight.
At the same time, the very value of paying tens of thousands to as much as a quarter million of dollars — or accruing six figures in student debt — for a degree is being questioned like never before, not least by families who are turned off by the ludicrous atmosphere of political correctness that prevails on so many campuses.
Last spring, during an academic banquet, I sat at a table with a young woman from an area high school and her mother. The student mentioned that she would be attending the University at Buffalo in a pre-med program — yet she somewhat lamented that UB was not her first choice, that she had wanted to attend a certain Ivy League school.
I don’t recall whether it was an admission issue, or whether the Ivy option would have been too expensive, or a combination of factors. In any case, I spent a few minutes encouraging her not to “look down” on her UB opportunity and to make the most of it.
Of course we all get what an Ivy League education can mean, but that young woman earned her way to an academic situation that probably made the best sense — and frankly is nothing to sneeze at.
My bet was she’d be fine. Anyone like her, I like their chances — and their potential to be useful, positive contributors in this world — over spoiled rich kids who have no concept of what it means to work and earn their own way.
(Jim Eckstrom is executive editor of Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)
