You can’t tell me that this current scandal surrounding the admissions of lesser deserving privileged children to elite colleges is anything new. It isn’t.
What is different now is the degree of depravity to which some wealthy parents have resorted, and the size of the bribes which they have been willing to pony up, so that coaches, deans, teachers, techies and outside “facilitators” will falsify, photoshop and lay false claim to learning disabilities so that these precious underachievers can gain entrance to Ivy League and elite institutes of higher learning.
As far as I know, there were no nefarious means to game the system when I was going through the admissions process for college. We who strove to attend college knew only of the legacy advantage one might use to gain a leg up on the competition. What that meant was that if we had a parent or grandparent who had attended that school we might gain a few extra points toward acceptance. If that parent or grandparent had been a faithful annual contributor to the school, even more points might be applied. And if our privilege extended into wealth that had built a library or science building or the like on campus, we would be all but guaranteed a slot among the freshman class.
But not a lot of us had that advantage. Many of us in the suburbs of northern New Jersey in the 1960s were the Boomer children of men and women who had built their homes and families after World War II with hard work and lots of overtime. Those who had a college degree probably had achieved it through the GI Bill, or were born to some money before the war.
In my experience, most of us depended on our own hard work and initiative to build the high school transcript that would wow the admissions board at the college we wanted to attend. We looked for the little things, like making the Honor Society, or receiving senior awards in one of the few areas in which they were offered, to add value to our applications. We worked part-time jobs to speak to our motivation, and we cultivated the influential people who would write letters of recommendation for inclusion with our applications.
And, those who could, enumerated the family members who had graced the halls of the chosen institution for the cherry on top of the application.
As far as I know, there were no means of getting extra time for the SATs or ACTs, or being allowed to take the tests alone in a room with a designated proctor. Learning disabilities were unheard of, and athletic abilities served little advantage for the openings that were scarce as hens’ teeth in those days. But I have no doubt that children of great privilege did have parents who could buy their way into schools for which they did not have the “right stuff.” I just didn’t know any of them.
Back in my day no one had labeled “helicopter” parents, or “dragon” parents who smoothed, cajoled, or coerced our paths to college. We were lucky if our parents even knew in which extracurricular activities we were involved.
We, the kids, initiated the college application process though the guidance office at school. Parents offered input like “we can’t possibly afford to send you there!” Or “do you have the money to send in that many applications?” Or “how do you think you’ll get yourself and all your stuff all the way to a school out of state?”
Nowadays, I’ve heard, you practically need a paid consultant to navigate your course through the process of prepping for the required standardized tests, filling out the applications, filing the appropriate financials and FAFSA forms for student loans or scholarships, and ghost writing essays. Just getting through the application process requires a specialized level of education!
So, I guess it’s no wonder that parents who “only want the best for our children” are willing to go to great lengths to spare the kids the trauma of doing their own leg work.
But like any dad who coaches the Rocket football team so he can put his son in as quarterback without regard to ability, so are some parents willing to manipulate the system to get their kid into college even if he or she isn’t college material, or doesn’t want to go on to higher education.
Used to be, back in my day, that kids and their parents had to make certain concessions when it came to going to college. If you didn’t have the grades or the test scores for a name brand university, you started out at the local community college, with the intent to make your mark there and transfer later to the school of choice. If you didn’t have the funds to attend a private school, you started out at the state college with its lower tuition fees, with the intention of proving yourself worthy of a scholarship at another university later on.
Or, if you were smart early on in your high school career, you became a nerd, a curve-wrecker, who kept his or her nose in the books and borrowed the SAT study guides from the guidance counselor, so that the GPA stayed high and unspoiled, and the SAT scores ranked high in the percentiles.
Today, lots of people have lots of disposable income to designate toward securing an offspring’s educational path. But we only become aware of the abuses when people, whose white privilege should be more than enough to get a worthy student into a college, decide that their underachiever needs the full college experience at a name brand university. So, as the old saying goes, money talks. And a s**tload of money talks really loud. And that s**tload of money makes the admissions office accessible to any and all comers.
What makes my blood boil over the abuses that have come to light this week is that this is just another chipping away of the intellectual integrity of our country. In an age when we are dumbing down all aspects of education from elementary school through the bachelor’s degree, now we are selling the available slots on a sort of black market to the highest bidder, not the sharpest, most motivated, and most deserving minds.
In a nation rife with obscene wealth (due to unchecked capitalism), where a free or affordable college education for all is not an option, terrific, serious, highly motivated young minds are languishing in minimum wage jobs, piling up mountains of debt for their undergraduate degrees, while the dilettantes are blogging their ways through a “millennial experience” of partying and dorm life.
How’s this for a relatively reasonable solution? Those who have the disposable income to spend $15,000, or $500,000 , or $1.5 million to scam a lesser kid into college could underwrite the educations of the kids who really do score 1600 on their SATs, who really do excel in athletics, who carry a 4.0 GPA while working a part-time job, or come from poverty or a disadvantaged home, or struggle with a verifiable learning disability? Then they could live vicariously through the real achievements of those scholars, instead of through their own child’s fashion blog and 200,000 followers.
By buying their kids a diploma from the Big Ten or the Ivy League, these parents are demeaning the value of diplomas earned by legitimate students. In buying their kids that good old college experience, these parents are denying those kids the rewards of earning that experience through their own hard work. These parents aren’t buying prestige for their kids. They are, in truth, committing felonies while purchasing bragging rights to something that is as elusive as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, that of an education made from thin air.
Been going on for years. Way back to the 1960s and 1970s in the small town of Wayland. Money bought everything. If you were less fortunate you had to work your ass off to compete. Can never be stopped. Not with the almighty dollar.