The College Admissions Scandal Is but the Tip of an Iceberg
On March 12, 2019, the education world was rocked by news reports of a college admissions scandal in which fifty people were indicted on criminal charges. There may be more to come. The buzz was heightened by the fact that those charged included Hollywood celebrities and the super wealthy, and the universities involved included some of the most elite.
Let us assume that there are two kinds of crimes: those that violate the milieu in which they occur and those that reflect the milieu in which they occur. I fear these college admissions crimes are the second type.
The milieu from which these crimes sprang has three elements. The first is a belief that the purpose of education is to get ahead in life and that a prestigious college is a means to that end. The second is the willingness of parents to impose their own idea of success — what it is and how to achieve it — on their children. And the third, which I want to focus on here, is an educational world in which money, directly and indirectly, affects admission to the best schools.
Since the time of Plato, education has had two competing aims: to help students get ahead in life, and to help them to find truth and enlightenment. At its best, education has done both. Students acquired important career tools while reflecting upon what it means to be human and learning the knowledge and intellectual skills to be enlightened people and good citizens of the world.
We are living in a time when the educational pendulum has swung far in the direction of job training. Schools’ self-promotional branding abounds in references to getting ahead in the global economy of the 21st century. Majors promising the highest-paying jobs are promoted; disciplines having nothing to offer but enlightenment fade. I believe education will better serve students and the larger society when a balance is restored between career skills and humanistic wisdom. These goals are compatible and they can cross-fertilize.
The second toxic element is a kind of family dynamic in which parents do not encourage their children to choose their life’s course, but choose it for them. And parents choose not only their children’s goals, but also the means by which to pursue those goals. They hover over their daughters and sons, seeming to chant succeed with every breath. Are the rising mental health issues among privileged youth any surprise? It is wonderful that parents want their children to be happy; it is not wonderful that they believe the key to happiness is wealth.
The third toxic element — evident in spades in the current scandal — concerns the influence of money. Having spent my working life in education, I knew that children of the super rich sometimes receive a boost in the college admissions process. But I had badly underestimated the extent of the phenomena until a couple of years ago when I read The Price of Admission, Pulitzer Prize-winning Daniel Golden’s 2006 book about the effect of wealthy and legacy parents on college admissions. The number of students given a boost on the basis of legacy parents and given more than a boost on the basis of significant donor potential, is staggering. This book makes the current scandal seem inevitable.
My own existential crisis came when I realized something closer to home. The practice of giving preferential treatment to legacy and super wealthy college applicants extends to many private high schools, institutions in which I spent over three decades of my life teaching. Students who would not have been admitted on their own merits were admitted because their parents were potential large donors. In hubs of great wealth such as Silicon Valley, “wealthy parents” does not mean millionaires. It means people whose net worth is eight, nine, and even ten figures. Yes, ten figures means billions. Will such money not bleed down into inequitable treatment of students? Will it not influence the direction of a school, its selection of top administrators, and its educational policy? Anyone who denies this has not seen what I have seen.
The dirty little secret of private schools and colleges is the admission of students solely because their parents have been identified as big donors. Among many documented accounts, Golden’s book includes this: Jared Kushner applied to Harvard with a mediocre high school record. His teachers believed he had no chance of being admitted. Then his father pledged $2.5 million to Harvard and Jared was admitted. I wonder what deserving student was denied admission to make room for Jared. Golden’s book is filled with cases like this, and they are not illegal. Whether they are ethical is another matter.
This is not to say that colleges and private schools are blind to issues of equity and social justice; indeed, one could make an impressive list of the (well-advertised) ways in which they try to address these issues, and most of their efforts, I believe, are made in good faith. Some of these efforts are even funded by wealthy donors. But we have to ask whether the ultimate effect of these efforts is to keep the same privileged people in their same privileged place.
I am not writing out of resentment of the wealthy, nor with a soak-the-rich sort of anger. I have taught students admitted on the basis of their parents’ wealth. Most seemed appreciative of the education they were receiving. I liked these students, and I willingly gave them my best efforts as a teacher. The interactions I had with their wealthy parents were overwhelmingly positive. There are wealthy parents who started out dirt-poor and whose stories of success against great odds are inspiring. But at the end of the day I believe that the admissions favors granted to big donors and the private school and college officials who court these donors have a corrosive effect on education and on a society plagued by increasing degrees of inequality.
So what distresses me about the cheating scandal is the toxic milieu of money-driven education from which the scandal emanates. The sensational headlines about the rich and glamorous college admissions cheaters will fade. But I believe the real problem — which will not fade — is not the few who used their money illegally but many who use it legally to make college admissions unfair and undemocratic.
I do believe it is fitting that admissions departments consider more than an applicant’s academic record. A good private school or college benefits from racial, economic, and cultural diversity, from talented musicians, from dedicated and disciplined athletes, from gifted leaders, and from nascent servers of humanity. A diversity of good ingredients makes for the best student body stew. But I see no justification for giving a leg up to students whose parents graduated from a school or whose parents will write donor checks in the millions. Affirmative action for the super wealthy — or super wealthy crooks — makes no sense. If the loss of those dollars means classes will not meet in a new building that looks like Googleplex, so much the better.
I hope that the scandal will prompt some soul-searching, and that serious consideration will be given to this proposal: Private school and college admissions decisions should be blind to the legacy status and the wealth of the applicant’s family.
At a time when our nation finds its democratic traditions in peril, our democratic hopes are threatened when our educational institutions violate democratic principles in the way they are run.
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