Every current SCOTUS justice graduated from either Harvard or Yale law schools. The Ivy League isn’t just about providing a certain standard of education. It’s about networking, continuing the connections that begin in elite prep schools and that serve to keep certain blood lines tied into the larger system of patronage. With rare exception, students admitted through merit alone are excluded from those social circles. Sending a layer of bright graduates into the world, who only get the formal educational benefits while being excluded from the unspoken social elite, gives these universities a shield against criticism of their key role in maintaining historic hereditary political and economic dominions. Bonus points for small quotas of non-whites, selected with much more stringent standards than the wealthy elites, so they can claim to be progressive educators instead of just exploiting the intelligence of those students.
The result is a system which maintains the aristocratic power and economic structures which in turn enable aristocrats to jump the line. So yes, it’s a problem.
Yes, it’s this one. Harvard doesn’t want to make a secret of the fact you can buy their education for money. They very much want you to know that. And they can justify it, too: it means they can offer more scholarships, and better facilities, and the opportunity for the very rich to network with the very talented, to the benefit of both.
The only reason anyone is coy about it at all is to preserve a veil of plausible ambiguity over which category any given individual belongs to. It would defeat the purpose of admitting rich dummies if those dummies ended up with an explicit asterisk next to their degrees. But in practice, I don’t think NASA is hiring lots of Rothschild scions and then feeling burned when it turns out they can’t do arithmetic.
This doesn’t mean Harvard degrees aren’t overvalued, or that privilege isn’t a cancer. But that’s not entirely Harvard’s fault, and the fact that it’s so expensive to buy your way in is actually kind of redeeming, if those bribes directly benefit people with real merit.
It’s news because it’s a rare glimpse into the conspirators’ own internal communications. It’s an open secret, but even implausible deniability is essential to maintaining the myth of meritocracy, and their reputation among the proles is built on that myth.
Their business model is selling out, but the attractiveness of the product requires the (implausible) pretense they are above selling out. Putting the crass bargain on full display diminishes the prestige of a Harvard degree, thus hurting “donations”.
I disagree that you disagree. Your ellipses incidentally elide over a very important qualifier in my analysis, which is that I’m evaluating only for class mobility. Critical thinking skills and being worldly might help, but they’re hardly sufficient or necessary factors in class mobility and economic destiny, since there are any number of factors that are often more powerful. The benefits of college outside of that are not considered. So unless you’re addressing college as a class equalizer, you can’t have disagreed with me.
Incidentally a lot of what you describe as being part of the benefit of going to college can be attained at the right high schools. Both my girlfriend and I both did, at different times and places. We were fortunate that way. The comparatively low quality of average US secondary education does not mean that universities are uniquely situated to offer students the kinds of critical thinking skills universities often provide, albeit in a more general way. Privately, I’ve long believed that every student in America deserves to have as a baseline the kind of education I received in high school. But as long as we’re going to require a BA for a job that pays $11 an hour, and as long as we can avoid paying for public education infrastructure, the easier it is to kick the can of all kinds of critical thinking skills and essential knowledge down the road to college. But there is no law or natural principle that says people have to learn certain things only in the modern industrialized university system.
AFAIK such things happen at basically every university in the USA - that one can admitted to a US university for his skill in various sports is a symptom of the same illness. Boggles my mind and casts serious doubts onto the quality of US university degrees.
So, Corey. You visibly think it “unfair” that a university would accept a student that it otherwise would not because the parents would can make a donation that would finance a building for the university. Do you also judge it to be unfair that all the other students will be using that building?
That the golden son/daughter wouldn’t have been able to earn admission on his academic merits does not diminish the good that such a donation enables for everyone else. The golden son/daughter gets an education (probably with better coaching and assistance than other students would get – but that would be the case anyway.
I find your argument against universities accepting donations to accept a student they wouldn’t otherwise to be counseling them to cut off their noses to spite their faces and would diminish the means available for everyone, in short, yet another socialist argument sounds “fair” but merely ends up making everything more equal by making everyone poorer.
So, people should be able to buy their way in the world?
Or, we could adequately fund all colleges and universities, or people could donate, you know, because they believe in the mission of higher education… without strings attached… silly, I know, but that might just work.
Blockquote So, people should be able to buy their way in the world?
Ah, you must live in the magical world of Oz, where people with power and money cannot buy their way in the world. for those of us not living over the rainbow and with at least a tenuous idea of how the world works know that buying their way is how people interact.
Blockquote Or, we could adequately fund all colleges and universities, or people could donate, you know, because they believe in the mission of higher education… without strings attached… silly, I know, but that might just work.
Yeah! That’s what we should do! Now all we need to do is make the wizard cough up mountains of gold to do just that!
/s
While I find the U.S. education system broken in how tuition has been allowed to skyrocket beyond any reasonable limits, blanket funding is no better. In France, the country I live in, Universities are theoretically free & anyone with a Baccalaureate is supposed to be able to enter (after paying inscription fees that while minuscule compared to U.S. tuition are growing ever more expensive). All that happens is that desirable paths are either massively filtered prior to entrance or >90% are flunked out after a year. TANSTAAFL, silly Oz inhabitant – unless you live in petrodollar economies like Norway and Kuwait or Venezuela where the Govt has enough surplus. Oops scratch Venezuela, they overspent on Socialism and are now reaping the whirlwind.
OH, it exists, so we should just shut up and accept it? Yeah, no. That’s not how you get change. I’m perfectly aware of how the world works, that doesn’t mean I should like and accept it, or not call out problems as I see them.
Oh, so you have great knowledge of the US education system…
Um… okay. Did you study here?
Oh, but that’s the way it is, so you should just accept it. I mean, where do you live, the land of oz with flying monkeys?
Oh, so you’re saying that people fail out because they can’t do the work? Hm. I mean, what about those poor rich people, how will they ever get by? /s
You’re suggesting payola as an admissions method. Where do we draw the line? What if instead of donating a building, you only donate a part of it. Or a wing? Or just the landscaping? Is there a dollar amount that should be the deciding point where one does, or does not, need to meet the academic requirements for entry?
If this policy were made formal “You can enter Harvard ether through academic merit and personal achievement, or by a donation of $1M or more”, do you believe this would diminish the standing of Harvard as a place of higher learning that produces top educated and worthy individuals? Do you believe others could feel that way over time?
What about the individual who did all the right things, worked their asses off, but just missed the cutoff because someone bought their spot? Do they deserve redress? What if the practice became more widespread?
Do you believe students would treat those that bought positions within the institution differently than those who worked to be there? do you believe that sort of division and atmosphere would be a positive addition to the institution?
Perhaps you’re right, perhaps if Harvard were to simply say “40 positions were purchased this year, the remainder of students entered the school on their own merits”, at least the policy would be transparent, and future employers or peers could then use that information to judge whether or not these students were real Harvard graduates in the new two-tier system.
I’m sure all of this would do wonders for the higher education system as a whole. All for a building or two! These institutions may not even need to bother with unrestricted, unsolicited donations any longer.
