In the current American anti-elitist and anti-intellectual political
atmosphere, the ongoing college admissions cheating scandal makes great press,
with wonderful villains. But in truth, there is nothing here that we all didn’t
already know about the inequality and failings of the American higher education
system.
We already knew that Ivy League colleges were big
corporations that worried far more about building huge (tax free) endowments
and lucrative salaries and posh offices for the administrators (more deans than
professors in some cases) than about educating the students, despite their expensive
marketing propaganda.
We already knew that donating a building or endowing a chair,
or knowing a trustee or looking rich enough that one might be persuaded to make
a donation, was a reliable way of getting a child into the college.
We already knew that most college undergraduate education (and
a good bit of postgraduate education) doesn’t prepare students for the world of
work. Indeed, the so-called “distribution requirements” that for example
required a math major to take English literature or foreign languages, supposedly
to “broaden” their education, were really in place to ensure that the less
popular English departments or foreign language departments got enough students
to survive.
We already knew that SAT and ACT coaching schools existed to
help the well-off do better on their admission tests (though few know that research
shows that just taking the test several times is about as effective as an expensive
coaching school).
We already knew that Ivy League students tend to do better
on average than students from other schools, simply because they usually come
from wealthier families who could afford better private k-12 education (not to mention
better health care and nutrition) before college, and whose connections get
them better jobs after graduation. On top of that, these schools have enough applicants
that they can pick from among just the top 1% or less. In fact there is little or no evidence that
Ivy League school actually provide a better education than many state universities.
We already knew that the real point of going to an Ivy League
school for many students, and for many parents, is simply to be able to say one
went to that school – to get the “branding” of an Ivy League education.
Of course if one wants to work in one of the fields
controlled by “old boys networks”, like high powered Manhattan legal firms, then
attending the “right schools” matters, because one meets “the right people”. It
than case the old saying fits: “ It’s not
what you know but who you know that
matters.”
So titillating as this story is, it doesn’t really tell us
anything new about how the rich work the system to their advantage. Money
always talks!
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