The simple truth behind the college admission scandal

Comment published on New York Times online blog in response to news story by Kate Taylor, Jennifer Medina, Chris Buckley, and Alexandra Stevenson, “Admissions Scandal: When ‘Hard Work’ (Plus $6.5 Million) Helps Get You Into Stanford,” May 2, 2019:

As with other scandals and crime waves, what makes this newsworthy is not the existence of corruption but what makes it possible. This is the notion that a good education is something to buy. What is wrong is it is true. For it is the key prerequisite to a high-paying, satisfying career. Education is something that can be bought, and that must be. The educational debt crisis is connected to this.

A system that can be abused will be, and the rampancy will end when we live in a world where it is unlikely that anyone could think it makes sense to do such things.

The current movement of "democratic socialists," who favor a European-style social democracy, is what can solve this problem. As we need to take money out of politics, the media, criminal justice, health, and housing, we must take it out of higher education. Run on a business model, our universities now have bloated administrations and increasingly relegate teaching to low-wage temporary workers.

To get into a school like Stanford, instead of needing two things--the right stuff and a purchase or mortgage on future earnings-- the first alone should matter. Universities will still exist in a hierarchy of excellence and quality of teaching if not other services, but admission must be by "merit" only.

Agenda: Invest in people as such. Education should be not just for jobs but for citizenship and a good life. Rehabilitate the humanities, end most military and corporate research funding, and promote literacy from Stanford to the slums.