All of this is completely alien to my experience. I went to LSU in New Orleans in 1967, and the tuition for the first semester was fifty bucks. I got in without athletic prowess (and boy, is that an understatement) or private coaching. After putting myself through school with work-study and summer jobs, I earned a B.S. and an M.S. degree and had a decent career as a computer analyst for 45 years.
The idea of going into debt, faking pole-vaulting expertise or handing over a king’s ransom to some shadowy agent seems insane to me. That parents would risk jail time or public humiliation to elbow their darlings into some ivy-league money pit is an indication of how corrupt and pointless the whole system has become.
The goal should be to turn out young adults who can understand and appreciate the culture, politics and technology of the world they will be living in. Having your child’s face photoshopped onto Usain Bolt is not going to do that.
3
Test scores and grades are not relevant for many college applicants.
Taking into account the college slots taken by legacies, jocks, affirmative action admittees, and cheaters like those whose parents were arrested in the college admissions bribery scam, there aren't many slots left for qualified but middle-class, non-minority kids at the top schools.
There is no easy solution to the problem because legacies, jocks and affirmative action seem to be here to stay. And, yes, some cheaters.
9
Amen, Frank. I'm a proud University of Idaho grad. Go Vandals!
7
It all boils down to two questions. Who am I? Who do you want me to be? Those who ask themselves the former are on the path to enlightenment. Those who ask others the latter are on the path to enslavement.
10
Harvard, home of the Z list, is publishing a study decrying the state of college admissions?
10
Well, if nothing else, maybe this revelation and conversation will put a chink in the belief that private schools or top tier schools necessarily produce the top thinkers, or that an education at these schools is necessary to accomplish {inset goal]. There has to be buy-in to this belief to perpetuate the craziness that produces too many applicants and the increasingly damaging tiger-parenting we hear about. That said, not all kids who get the best grades and scores and participate in all the things is doing it for this reason. Im saddened in part for kids like my eldest daughter who just wants to do more and more, but cannot even tell you which colleges are good or not. She's a sophomore and has the top grades and scores in her school, is a top performer nationally in a sport she has loved since she was 7, plays an instrument for the city symphony, takes classes at the local community college out if interest, and more academics, via application for permission, at her high school because then she can take more classes that interest her next year. Its nuts. And we keep telling her to quit things! We dont care where she goes to college, bc having had a broad educational experience that included academic probation, top universities, community college, private college, and top med and grad schools, we know that the most important thing to a fulfilling life is being curious, pursuing what interests you wherever it leads, and having enough skill to open doors.
11
It is transactional, because the world is transactional. The bottom line is that Goldman and McKinsey don’t recruit at second tier colleges. They recruit at the top because they want the best. It’s all well and good to tell kids that it doesn’t matter and that they’ll get a good education anywhere, but that misses the point now, doesn’t it? Life is hard and competitive, and starting off at a top school makes it easier. Kids aren’t stupid and they see that. It’s not the education that matters, it’s the resume and the connections. Don’t be fooled.
18
I took five years, to get a four year degree from an unaccredited Bible college that no longer exists. Top that!
7
The best undergraduate experience and education this country offers is at its good, better and best small liberal arts colleges not at Ivies or places like Duke, Georgetown, Stanford or Notre Dame that live on the stupidity of corrupt and corrupting Division I sports reputations.
Want to be taught by a Ph.D. and not by a graduate student? Go to a small liberal arts college. Want to spend your undergrad credit hours in classrooms with people who one day will be so exalted they won't deign to teach undergrads but right now are but two or three years being that themselves? Try those exalted universities from which mainly you take away with your degree admission to their alumni private dining clubs.
19
Having spent time at an elite private and at a large public university, I will tell you with certainty that the grading is much easier at private universities. Privates have much smaller classes with professors well-aware that the students sitting their classes have parents, many of them alumni, paying $70,000 per year for their kids to attend. Do you think the public university professor teaching a class with 100 students worries about giving a kid a D or an F? Definitely not!
Private universities, particularly schools working so hard to maintain/rise in the heavily-flawed US News & World Report rankings, troll for as many applicants as possible to improve their selectivity. These universities would never think of publishing guidelines that would encourage students who have no chance of being accepted not to apply.
11
At the core the problem now is how credible a degree do you have. If I see Yale + white person sport/activity I will now have a view. Is this person just gaming it? Did they pull strings? And I’ll haircut their accomplishments. Ultimately if a school does not get the best students they will decline. There is no faking life.
7
"It was a prime example of doing something as a parent that you don’t believe in."
But you did it anyway. Are you conveniently seeking late absolution?
4
One of the few Sopranos episodes I watched was one in which Tony accompanied his daughter, Meadow (?), on a college visit trip. In the course of the hour she is shown interviewing and he kills someone. Perhaps the parents perpetuating this fraud are acting even more dishonorably than this fictional thug.
5
Why, Mr. Bruni, did you give your seminar at Princeton, where students can bribe and pay their way in, rather than Queensborough Community College, where good students whose parents through scimping can send their kids for a quality education? Even YOU chose the "elite" and ignored the more typical and hard working students who have none of the benefits like money and fancy NYT writer's doing a "seminar" for them.
28
that rich people must cheat to enter a purportedly egalitarian system says as much about the rich as the system
11
Ah Frank, you finally explained where Trump arose from! Think of all the new little trumps coming up through the ranks!
4
A college degree means nothing if your character comes into question. It's a piece of paper!
Fork over hundreds of thousands a year for what you can get at a community college? I guess if that's your thing...it's America, good on you! But it doesn't build character.
I am not Pidgeon-holing those who go to school on a full ride due to their merits. Clearly this article and my comments aren't about them.
I was the worst student in high school. I graduated in summer school. Character builder.
I joined the Navy, spent 21 years. Character building.
If you don't have character? You have nothing.
America doesn't look fondly on those born on third base telling the rest of us how life works.
What purpose are you serving with your degree? Is it a higher purpose? What contribution will you make to society with that fancy degree?
Want to make an impact in life? Become a teacher.
Now that's character.
9
Both of our sons “got” in the very top echelon of the so called very competitive schools. No contributions, no alumni status, no sports. Both are white males. It is not an end in itself but it sure is better to have that experience than not to.
Same as money. Speaking from a personal experience of having none and having more than I really need - the former was fine the latter is better.
Articles such as this one always attack the system
and the culture of competition for the admission in these schools but never say why. Too many whites? Not anymore, the % is less than population’s share. Male? The same answer. Too rich? Half gets financial aid. May be like with everything else the progressives set their sights on the problem is that they are not in charge who gets in, and at end the ability is. Even the athletes have to meet some pretty high standards and they do. This bribery scheme has nothing to do with these facts anymore than some building inspector taking a bribe from a maintenance company has anything to do with NYT building’s ownership commitment to employee safety or who they hire.
5
Dear Mr. Bruni, Thank you for your very interesting column! May I suggest though teaching your journalism seminar next time at a public university near you? It takes a village to reduce society's obsession with the Ivys, and who can blame parents and students for trying to get into the Ivys when that is the (only) place where they can learn from brilliant journalists like yourself. Just a thought!
25
Ah, the sixties.
Turn on, Tune in, Drop out...
Just sayin', these times are draining the life out of our life, and pouring the dismay into our May.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out
"Barry Schwartz, who taught psychology at Swarthmore from 1971 to 2016, said in an interview just before he retired that his current students 'want to be given a clear and unambiguous path to success.'
'They want a recipe,' he told me. 'And that’s the wrong thing to be wanting. Recipes create cooks. They don’t produce chefs.' ”
I LOVE this.
11
Frank, Next time you teach journalism, perhaps try at the local community college. It would be interesting to read how the students from there are the different/same from those you taught at Princeton.
26
My ex-wife and I sent our son to a state 'university;' no special favors asked or granted but we did pay his tuition. He was a mediocre student who took a couple years to find his way after college, but he eventually found his calling. He recently graduated from Navy OCS and will be manning a warship in the South China Sea. The quality and integrity of the young ensigns--male and female--that he graduated with was simply astounding. They're the ones we should be hearing about, not these pampered brats.
125
Seems to be in America that everything is turning into a business--religion, war, education, public health, law. "If you've got the money, honey, I've got the time/If you've no more money, honey, I've no more time."
4
At the very root of this whole rotten system is the false idea that an extraordinary performer can only come out of an “elite” school. Simple-minded employers provide a grain of truth to this by acting on the halo effect conferred on elite school graduates. Our society is shot through with this nonsense right up to the Supreme Court where all the justices went to ivy leagues schools and on to Yale or Harvard law school – give me a break.
12
For all too many, the notion of achieving an education has given way to getting a credential in the easiest possible manner with as big a "name" on it as possible. These students are Eliot's hollow men, and women.
3
I love the quote: “Recipes create cooks. They don’t produce chefs.”
3
“That nothing in life is too sacred to be used for gain. That you do what it takes…to get what you want. That packaging matters more than substance.” Frank, that pretty much defines, not only the admissions process, but the American ethos in general.
To take possession of the New World, the founding Puritans packaged themselves as the “Chosen People,” and in order to secure power for white male elites, the founding fathers rolled out their marketing rhetoric of “All men are created equal,” and “We the people.” In order to establish and legitimize a male power structure, religions wrapped themselves in divine sanction. In order to accumulate obscene profits for a few, corporations stand behind the shield of individual freedom and a lassiez faire market that operates in a rational way, driven by unseen forces that will ultimately provide for all. America touts its empire of nearly 800 military bases around the world as a function of noble obligation of the world’s leading power. And, Facebook will bring us all together in a glorious technological kumbaya.
Americans can convince themselves of anything.
“Community, collaboration, love of truth” - sorry that’s socialism. And the values and critical thinking supposedly at the core of a liberal arts education are antithetical to our national commitment to self-delusion.
Moral Wages? Ha! That’s naked virtue without a pretty package; no one can recognize it. It’s too threatening. You might as well ask capitalism to be fair.
8
So where is the outrage against Harvard for discriminating against Asian-Americans because the admissions' staff thought too many were qualified for admission and it would 'distort' the diversity of its student body. No problem Mr. Bruni with affirmative action which gives extra benefit to students of color to pursue the holy grail of diversity. Hypocrisy has many names and forms, especially in the 'elite' liberal media.
1
musing to see that Mr. Bruni writes this, "The principles instilled in these children? That nothing in your life is too sacred to be used for gain," but fails, perhaps, to see the hypocrisy of writing this piece for his own gain -- nice plug for his book, nice link to a giant-sized photo of him on his website, holding forth on his moral righteousness, no doubt. Yes, undergraduate admissions needs improvement, as do so many of our cultural, institutional practices--maybe Bruni could donate all profits from his book to organizations/individuals working to change the system.
4
These colleges look like country clubs.
Not every college needs a sports program.
Not every college needs an arts program, theatre program...
These colleges have to decide who they want to educate.
Do they want a monster sports program?
Do they want to focus in on the arts?
Do they want to focus in on giving their students the proper tools to enter the workplace?
Do they want to prepare their students for higher education?
Let's prepare these students for life after college.
2
Test scores and grades are not relevant for many college applicants.
Taking into account the college slots taken by legacies, jocks, affirmative action admittees, and cheaters like those whose parents were arrested in the college admissions bribery scam, there aren't many slots left for qualified but middle-class, non-minority kids at the top schools.
There is no easy solution to the problem because legacies, jocks and affirmative action seem to be here to stay. And, yes, some cheaters.
1
It appears we have made the "l" optional in "learning opportunity"--or even worse, superfluous.
1
I find it ironic that Mr. Bruni quotes from a study produced by Harvard and mentions teaching a seminar at Princeton--thus feeding the narrative that Ivy League schools are where your kids ought to go.
7
As a retired educator, I frequently saw the effect of the pressure from parents on students. I witnessed a parent literally slap his kid in the face in the Admissions office.
On the other hand, as an educator, we were expected to make our numbers and graduate so many students, retention. It was disappointing to have to focus on the "numbers" and "retention" versus the quality in the classroom.
And then there was the cheating scandal here in Atlanta where educators are serving time for changing SAT scores, to make their "numbers".
I will wait to see if the punishment for these wealthy and elite schools will be comparable to the sentencing of the educators in Georgia. (8 of 10 educators in Georgia received prison time for changing SAT scores)
Probably not and this too will teach our students that money in America is in deed everything.
https://www.ajc.com/blog/news/sentenced-jail-atlanta-school-cheating-case/hqrXasCJkHzFiYO8liNr1J/
3
Money can’t buy you a degree from MIT. You have to earn it. My father was a Scottish immigrant whose first job was in the WV coal mines.
2
Excellent points, and well-made. Up until Frank drops "... I taught a journalism seminar at Princeton." Could have left out the last two words. This is the constant signaling that helps perpetuate the constant arms race. Maybe a better lecturer in journalism would have written, "... I taught an undergraduate seminar in journalism." to better mesh with the point of the essay.
4
What is even more ridiculous and scandalous than this scheming is the high tuition these colleges charge.
These colleges have built campuses, which are completely unnecessary. We need to re-think what is needed for the majority of students who are looking for a college education.
Professors - Desk - Chairs - Computers = around $5000. without room and board.
1
"[T]hrough this overwrought culling, we’re teaching a generation of children values that stink."
Frank, I couldn't disagree more. Yes, there are jerks out there -- and a bunch of them have now been indicted. But as the parent of a Stanford grad and two Columbia grads, and as someone who helped my kids in every legal way possible to get into those schools, I can only say that I didn't teach them "values that stink." I taught them how fortunate they were to have every advantage, and tried to show them by example the importance of giving back. My kids treasured their high school experiences and didn't spend their time on activities that would look good on their resumes. Instead, they did what they were passionate about. And still do.
No, my kids aren't perfect. But they are extremely empathetic, self-aware, have excellent values, and all now have jobs focused entirely on giving back and making the world a better place. And all their friends from these same colleges are wonderful young people who also are focused on giving back.
Obviously, some kids at elite colleges are spoiled brats (like Olivia Jade Gianulli). But my kids never once mentioned feeling like they were surrounded by self-centered jerks in college -- quite the reverse.
In short, your gross generalizations (college admissions process = doom) don't reflect my family's experience. Regardless of that process, kids will likely have good values if they're taught good values.
5
You overstate the extent and depth of the problem. All this desperate hustling and hand wringing is an elite problem for metropolitans such as the staff of the NY Times. The hollowing out of the middle class--especially in NY state, the most unequal state in the country--leads to this status anxiety among the elite. My suggestion is to move to a part of the country where the middle class is still the dominant class and most people don't fret over this sort of thing. Then send your children to a pretty good university. You will be much happier and so will your children.
1
Bruni, a boarding school, UNC and Columbia grad doesn’t get the obsession with elite education as a door opener? The world is crazy competitive. To own a home, afford private education where public schools are a joke, have access to quality healthcare, be able to take vacations and save for retirement is not possible at even $25/hour. So millions of families aspire to move up from the bottom 85%. And they are competing against the privileged offspring of the upper middle class and rich. Is it really any wonder that people stop at nothing for every inch of advantage. Communism did not evolve in a vacuum. These pathetic news stories are but a mirror of our culture. And Trump is our President.
5
Some nerve. Arguing, as these folks at Harvard and Swarthmore are, that things aren't working as they should be. In any case, they are correct of course. Things have gone off the rails. How could it be otherwise? The better private and public schools are packed to the rafters with rich (white) kids. The middle class is essentially gone. The rich get in to via a multitude of back doors, illegal or just wildly unfair. Only naïve idealists try the front door. Those aren't schools. They're country clubs in gated communities. Such conclusions aren't cynicism. They are healthy skepticism, justified by the facts.
At the core of the college admission process is a stark fraud: the schools demand knowing an applicant's aptitude for learning, but does not reveal its faculties' aptitude for teaching.
A Faculty Teaching Aptitude Test score would reveal whether a faculty CAN teach.
So a rejected application for admission comes from where? A faculty's administration that does not know if the faculty could teach that person anyway.
Geesh. What a fraud!
No sports recruiting; no legacy; no AP classes; no essays; no interviews; no standardized tests; no racial or economic diversity...no to all of it!
Standard test in Sept. of senior year to demonstrate proficiency in high school curriculum....then....admission by LOTTERY!
It’s the only way.
2
Whenever these college admissions appear I always want to say one thing...hey elite universities....INCREASE ENROLLMENT!!!!!!!!!!!! There is obviously HUGE demand. Hire more admin, more profs, build more dorms and lecture halls. So, I suppose Princeton University, for example, is too dim-witted to increase enrollment from their paltry level of just over 1000 incoming freshman to, say, 3000-500 freshman without losing the quality of the education and experience. Poppycock! They are smart enough to make it happen. The problem is all these elite schools want to continue being like the Patek Phillippe watch company...producing a small number of individually numbered, unique and oh so rare graduates. If all colleges would increase their enrollment, the world would be a better place. To take the Ivy League as an example, Cornell admits I believe about 4-5x the number of freshman as Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, etc. Is a Cornell education somehow lacking because it produces a larger number of graduates? And don't start talking about the impossibility of adding the needed infrastructure because of space. I live in Princeton and I know there's plenty of space; there's just not the will.
1
Our current Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin went directly from Yale University to Goldman-Sachs where his father worked and was there for 17 years before branching out into hedge fund managing and distressed property flipping. His father went to Yale. Was Steve accepted into Yale and then gifted a position ... excuse me ... hired at Goldman-Sachs on his own merits? Do pigs fly? In money land they do.
5
Just ran into a neighbor who shared this:
Sophomore son of a parent in a well off Union County NJ town is being forced to attend U Penn summer 1 month camp, even though he's protesting and doesn't want to go. His mom filled out the application, wrote the essay, and sent the $ in.
His mom currently makes his bed and squeezes the toothpaste out on his toothbrush, among other things...
snowplow mom of the week award?
2
The most miserable people I know are the kids of wealthy naval gazers. I’m grateful I don’t have too much and my kids, therefore, have to find their own path. Wealth begets moral rot when the family motto is “everybody has a price”.
Einstein said, “Education is what is left after you’ve forgotten everything you learned at school.” Today, one might say almost the same thing, with the word “diploma” replacing the word, “education.” I’m not sure when that change took place, but on talk shows, in newspapers and the like, you almost never hear the word “education” when talking about college. And the effect of this corruption is felt on all of us. Think: Did George W Bush get into Yale, or Donald J Trump into Penn on their merits?
Taking into account the college slots taken by legacies, jocks, affirmative action admittees, and cheaters like those whose parents were arrested in the college admissions bribery scam, there aren't many slots left for qualified but middle-class, non-minority kids at the top schools.
There is no easy solution to the problem because legacies, jocks and affirmative action seem to be here to stay. And, yes, some cheaters.
Nicholas Burgess still has his sights set to high for an inner-city Jacksonville kid. He should not be applying to Florida or Florida State. Community college and UCF and USF are his schools.
AMEN, AMEN, AMEN!!!!! Grades mean more than learning in our culture- - later on in life this evolves into money and power meaning more than ethics.
1
I had come to despair that we Americans so divided and angry with one another that nothing could bring us together. Not true. The college admissions scandal has united us. We all agree that this stinks.
It matters because it does matter.
1
I got through school on the G.I. Bill, part time jobs and yes for a brief period I used food stamps. I guess they call that socialism today. I called it a leg up. The riding was up to me.
1
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass managed to be humble, humane and empathetic without any formal education at any level from birth to adulthood.
The notion that college and university admission and education have anything to do with morality is simply ludicrous.
58
Wouldn’t it be great if saying “He’s hoping for Florida State” didn’t sound like an admission of failure? The attitude that anything other than an Ivy League school equals disappointment and mediocrity is absurd. It used to be a big deal simply to just go to college.
There is no shame in going to a state school. Education is what you make it.
These parents who worship Ivy Leagues need to get over it.
96
Where else are the wealthy going to spend their tax cuts? Certainly not on higher wages and decreasing income inequality.
I think cheating, and all the questionable values Mr. Bruni discusses, are simply an extension of the quest for wealth at the expense of all else. Both the schools and parents are fully responsible for this. These places are not tickets for educational enrichment, but instead part of a chase for wealth and privilege at the expense of all else.
It's kind of like what Jesus said, you cannot worship money and serve God.
3
The current scrutiny of the overall college admissions process in this country is only noteworthy because of the celebrity and 0.01% factor. There has always been the legacy admissions, the lowered threshold for athletes who carry a light curriculum, the affirmative action applicant, nepotism, mega stadiums, excessive administrators, million dollar coaches, and grade inflation.
4
Teach your children critical thinking skills. It will serve them well. I studied for my MCATs and LSATs working night shift as a RN in a trauma unit. Went to law school fist because it was easier and faster and studied at night in between patients. The hospital paid my tuition for working FT. I never knew study guides existed in law school. I read every case and law review article. I used the critical thinking skills I learned in engineering and nursing school. Finished law school early and started a degree program at the medical school. Taught at the medical school to pay my tuition and continued to work night shifts. End of story: 5 degrees, 2 doctorates all from state schools, 4 degrees paid for by the hospital. I self-studied for all of my board certifications and bar exam because I had to work FT and support a family. I learned to study fast and triage information because I had little time.
Flash forward to today-my niece attended a very expensive private high school in CT, Miss P’s. Went on to attend USC, which I lovingly call University of Spoiled Children, then X School of Economics. She was assisted and prepped through all. My dear sister helped with her homework and continues to assist her in her job. My niece still cannot do math. She lacks critical thinking skills. She has never failed and had to recover. I fear for her future.
4
This emphasis on status neither begins nor ends with college admission. In my department, we taught a seminar to first-year graduate students, in which every faculty member attended sequentially and explained their research. During my visit, I explained a current project focused on editing texts that would become useful to future historians. My colleague, the professor of record in the seminar, turned to me and asked, in front of our new students, “Why would you want to do that? How does it enhance your status in the field?” I was absolutely shocked that a person I had helped hire, a leader in his field, would be so shallow as to admit that what counted most to him was his ephemeral reputation. What a role model for students!
2
The best education for our kids should not follow a specific formula, but instead rely on principles: family support, mentorship and instilling a sense of self confidence without the relentless pressure of succeeding for someone else. So much talk about fairness, corruption, who deserves what.....it seems convoluted and off message.
1
The moral duty and ethics ship has long sailed out of the US of A. Now that the short era of general prosperity is at an end, it's person eat person again. Not much space for morals when you've gotta eat and look for shelter just to survive.
1
...“the gyrations that kids have to do to get in” to schools like Swarthmore has taught them that “the measure of success is the badge you get. The last thing we do is to teach them to care about community, collaboration, love of truth. All the values that are supposed to be at the core of a liberal arts education go by the wayside.”
Pull back to see the larger picture and this outcome is to be expected when a society of citizens devolves into an economy of consumers, which is what has happened in the past few decades.
The underlying cause is the effect on the individual psyche of persistent, pervasive, and ever more sophisticated marketing, the result of untold billions spent on research into human behavior and identity, and how to manipulate them. Marketing surrounds us the way water surrounds a fish, so ubiquitous as to be unnoticed.
Citizens have obligations and a sense of community. Consumers have only choices based on self-interest. As long as we are bombarded from toddlerhood with the ethic that "you deserve a break today," and "just do it!" the problem will only get worse.
5
@Matthew Hughes 'Citizens have obligations and a sense of community'
How so when millions are exempt from laws others are prosecuted for?
1
While reading this I kept thinking about the Johnny Depp movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which featured a number of “golden ticket” holders who bear an eerie resemblance to Mr. Bruni’s characterization of people whose every action is designed to garner favor and win the game of life — such as it is. Suffice to say that Charlie was unimpressed.
2
Let's not kid ourselves, the elite colleges are worth it based off of future opportunities, future pay, and prestige. For example, the author name dropped Princeton and I immediately had more respect for him. These elite schools have fantastic students with small class sizes and great facilities. Why wouldn't you want to go to them.
These students getting rejected are justified in feeling sad because they know they would have done well at these universities, but where denied. The worst part is that the colleges do not tell you why they rejected you.
1
What bothers me about this most is, whether or not your parents are wealthy, many kids' futures end up being very dependent on how invested adults are in them. The nation is going to be much stronger if we support kids from every background, financial and social. By the time I got to college age, my mother was out of the picture and my father didn't want us to go to college. No one valued education; no one had invested in our futures. But that would have mattered so much less if we had met a world that did care -- a nation willing to invest in us, no matter who our parents were. Every American is an investment, no matter their financial or social class, and rather than judge those who struggle, I hope beyond hope that we will begin to see every child as our own and do whatever it takes to help them succeed. I know for a fact that places like Brooklyn and Harlem are teeming with gifted kids whose chances of ever realizing their potential is greatly diminished because of their parents' incomes and their race. If we want America to be great, ever, let's get those kids into college.
4
I worked as a consultant to Educational Testing Service in the late '80s & early '90s. One of the things I learned was that, if you took the test in the fall & repeated it in the spring, you would usually have up to a 50 point rise in your score by being more comfortable with the test environment. The original for-profit SAT schools (Kaplin was the first I was aware of) got most of their results by familiarizing their students with the tests by giving them practice tests. There are also a variety of test-taking strategies to maximize your score, but they are equally available in books in the $20 to $40 range. I questioned then, and still question the value for most students of these elaborately expensive prep courses.
For example, go through a section & answer as many questions as you can where you know the answer or can calculate it quickly. Go through a second time & look for questions where you can eliminate at least 2 of the answers (you get points for each correct answer & lose points for each incorrect one - but you get more for the correct one, so a number of coin-flip questions will come out in your favor. Then pay attention to questions that take more time & work to figure out. It's a shame to never get to a handful of easy ones because you spent 20 minutes figuring out one that required a lot of work (particularly in math). If you have time left, go back & take a crack at the most difficult ones.
5
I am a current senior in high school, and this article comes at the exact time during which I am receiving decisions from many of the competitive schools to which I applied. The college admissions process has been one of the most academically, emotionally, and even physically taxing times in my young life. Frank Bruni captures my situation perfectly.
I have worked incredibly hard in high school, often coming home late after extracurriculars, sacrificing sleep to study, then getting up early the next morning to do it again. My grades and SAT scores are nearly perfect. I've started a club and organized charitable events. I'm told by classmates, teachers, family, and friends that they're sure that I should get into any school I want.
Despite this, I've received quite a few waitlists and rejections. My frustration is with the fact that I've put in all of my effort. I tell myself constantly that I cannot allow college acceptances to measure my self-worth, and that my life to this point has been my life, not a series of activities to put on my Common App. But I can't stop myself from dissecting everything I've ever accomplished and deciding whether or not it was "good enough" for the colleges I applied to.
6
There is no better example of degree meddling than that of W, our now infamous ex president who I think has a degree from an Ivy league school, Yale if I am not mistaken. I don't hear them boasting of him being one of their own. I hear he can't even leave the country for fear of being arrested by the world court for war crimes. Did he even attend his classes, and who did the work he handed in as his own. The moral wages of planted admissions is mirrored in the state of our countries environment, and political reality, which has flunked out miserably due to the unqualified people who have been given the responsibility to oversee it.
7
Mr. Bruni, I read your book, “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” last summer as my child was beginning high school. It was an excellently presentation of everything I see and feel, not only about the college admissions process, but about entry into the upper, upper class. I have recommended your book to my friends, most of whom could read it to justify their strategy for “helping” their children with college admissions as well as internships and first jobs. My push back with all of this madness is that the fact is, those strategies work! Yes, the parents hold great responsibility, and I can assure you that my children are being raised to be empathetic, kind, and law abiding, but the bottom line is, legacies and connection seems to give others an edge. My children have none. College and chasing college has become a huge industry, one that plays on the desire of all parents who naturally want better than we had for our children. Unless and until colleges either eliminate legacy admissions and set in place policies that allow college counselors to disregard the legacy or donor information about a student’s application, the madness will continue. May I suggest a reprint of your excellent book with an additional chapter that shows greater empathy for the parents who are baited into the madness, ones who wouldn’t even consider the immoral or unethical “side door”, just the masses of us who are struggling to give our kids their best shot.
8
The precious little Snowflakes are covered in grime. And the Children Of any “ stable genius “, Hollywood celebrity, or common Fraudster is given their very own gold-plated version of the Game Of Life. How to Begin to solve this : Require every 18 to 20 year old, Male and Female, to enter and serve two years of National Service, OR enlist in the Military, if able to pass the Physical and Mental evaluations. National Service : Helping Seniors, assisting Teachers in Classrooms, restoring National Parks, Environmental Clean-Up, this List is long and important. We don’t have the Money, because Millionaires need more Tax Cuts, eternally.
Some people will absolutely be lobbying Satan for Tax Cuts.
Seriously. .
9
Someone should write an article about the unvarnished masses of talented and hardworking kids who have no familial heritage of advanced education. They don't have the slightest clue how to leverage their accomplisments or even how to identify an undergraduate institution that is consummate with their achievements. The non-minority students don't even have the benefit of outreach programs.
To these students, this "scandal" is a laulaughable exercise in splitting hairs.
3
The problem is not the process. Any holistic one has flaws.
The problem is how we guide young adults. We ask them the wrong questions. We show them that happiness is in a brand. Happiness is a checklist.
Doing community service is something that as humans brings us joy. That’s why we teach it’s important as it also has immense positive consequences on those less fortunate. If you package it as a “have to do” it looses its appeal. So who’s packaging it like that? Don’t blame the colleges. They teach they value that. It’s those who are guiding kids to check it off their list. Instead we need to teach kids why we expect they do it. And to let them figure out how to do it that comes genuinely to them.
Teaching kids values that stink?
Have you ever guided a young adult to recognize true happiness within himself? To be genuine with herself? It’s a huge revelation. And when this process is done “right” —and that’s why I do think it’s better than any other that exists in higher ed worldwide—the young adult learns to accept himself for who he is, champion his true strengths and recognizes that happiness is about his true fit. Not about society’s.
Help them look within. They can do this. But they need our support and unconditional guidance. Yet we are complicit when we guide them to seek genuine discovery about themselves and turn it into a checklist. We are the problem. Not the system. Not the kids.
1
Boy, did this resonate, and I went through the overachiever routine 53 years ago. I learned in high school how to best manage the system so that I could be the first girl from my high school in a decade to get into Radcliffe (the female part of Harvard that admitted only 300 women). It was all me. Not my parents. When I got there, I floundered. I felt like I got in on geographic distribution, and almost all my friends felt that they had gotten in by some advantage (legacy, famous parent). I couldn't succeed. I felt stupid. And, when I got out, I had no idea what to do with myself. I wasn't grade motivated. The Harvard degree was what I was there for. I would have been much better off going to a non-Ivy school, where I could have the confidence to learn and grow. When I do alumni interviews for Harvard, I tell the college students that perhaps the best thing that could happen to them is to not get their hearts' desires and succeed in a place with a less awesome name.
2
My take on this: the child who follows the insanely distorted path needed to get into a top college has learned a profound and wrong-headed lesson. That is ignore your inner voice and give over your life completely the following the path proscribed by others. Don't think for yourself or have an original thought. Thus the perfect subject for any sort of future indoctrination or lack of moral courage is formed. Good for the world ?
5
And the ultimate irony to all of this is the action we learned about in the White House at virtually the same time this scandal was breaking. On one day we learned how to cheat the system to get into these elite institutions. And that is counter-balanced with the news that Trump went to great lengths to ensure his academic performance records from those institutions never met the light of day.
No wonder Americans are in such a foul mood.
2
The American mindset has been corrupted by the power of money.The parameters of morality and scruples have been pushed past the limits of decency. Win at all--or any--cost rules our society. Prestige is no longer earned, but is now purchased like a pound of baloney.
A new royalty has emerged based on wealth instead of bloodlines. Equal opportunity has been cast aside along with fair and honorable intentions. Our most sacred institutions have been compromised, and reduced to grubby receptacles of graft.
1
I fear that "good" people - I mean people who follow the rules and don't demand anything special with large sums of money - are considered naive and silly by those who get ahead in underhanded ways. Reminds me of Leona Helmsley who said something like "Only the little people pay taxes." We honest people who work hard, we're the little people. Meanwhile many cheaters end up in governmental and corporate high places. To them, merit is irrelevant; money is not. At this rate, children of privilege will always expect special preferences, and have the money and power to get them.
Wow! Who would have guessed that meritocracy is based, nowadays, more on your ability to pay (financial prowess) than your talents and hard work. Have we forgotten we humans are imperfect beings, with flaws and virtues combined, and that is O.K.? That not being admitted to 'Harvard' is no disaster, given that many colleges out there, ready and willing to accept you, have similar qualities...as they arise from the very students if given a chance. Colleges and Universities' main role is to help students to think for themselves, and develop social skills applicable in serving their community, and societal intercourse where the family counts, and where citizenship is exercised by participating in electing honest and able representatives, so this democracy may flourish. Given that our morals are in decay, an awful Trumpian foul odor permeates our very breath, a corrupt educational reach to gobble up college entrance has become reality, and where entitlement and privilege are the order of the day. We must allow our natural curiosity, and creativity, room to grow; and failure is part of the risk we take to enjoy life. "Happiness consist not in doing only what we like or must, but in enjoying all we do" (I wish I had thought of it long ago!). If we continue this unjust saga of allowing money to speak, and ditch our rich diversity and needed solidarity, we shall be slaves to a priviledged few dictating their whims as a mere transaction, killing our spirit. We must do better!
This question does not fit this article directly, but does having your child apply to out-of-state flagship public schools, where you pay out-of-state tuition rates, increase your child’s chances of admission?
2
Word to the wise: don't have children. No matter what biology is telling you through your feelings about raising little angels. There are plenty of people already, and many of them are worthy enough already. If they have kids and you don't, so what? You will be able to look at them fairly, that's what. So give the planet a break, and your ability to behave ethically a fair chance.
2
Mr. Bruni, I love your columns. Earlier this evening, I read Mr. Kristof’s column on a budding chess player. We are spending too much energy on Ivy-wannabees. Can we focus on young people who are first-gen college applicants who welcome the opportunities presented to them?
Social Media certainly cannot help either. In these times of vacation and lifestyle envy when viewing one’s “friends’ post” on FaceBook or Instagram where she show off , brag, preen and one-up each other, how can a teenager not get caught up in the necessities of demonstrating the same in his/her education bona fides ? It is so bogus. There are a lot of intelligent students and a lot of smart folks who attended college or did not. But, to be frank - there are so many persons who clog up the education halls without any real desire to learn. They go through the motions and can hardly anything of the curriculum which was served. I am dumbfounded by this.
Many professors know the experience some of us who have experienced the problem you describe in your class in journalism. The height of hubris at one Rhode Island college was for a child of a wealthy family to submit an essay assignment late that he had plagiarized, unwittingly, by hand, from one of his professor’s books. When the professor raised the issue with his colleagues, the only result was to speak privately to the student about the need for attribution of sources in assigned papers, fail the paper, and “keep the fish moving along.” College at most Liberal Arts colleges and universities is credentialing, helping the students “get that degree,” so they get a good job.
1
The evidence here is just way too sloppy for the point Bruni wants to make:
1) Bruni's story of the wealthy young woman who "felt like a fraud” and "had to take a leave" from the elite school that accepted her: Does Bruni know how many students feel that way in colleges across the country? Go to your average state college you'll find very bright (and not so bright) students feeling the same way. And they are taking leaves of absence in record numbers. And how many PhD students feel like a fraud? Pretty much all of them. This young woman's story captures her generation more than the anxious privileged. 2) About parents "spending upward of $1 million" on education prep: Why is Bruni so concerned about how the wealthy spend their money? Does he prefer they spend that money on bigger homes, a fleet of luxury autos, a bigger yacht? We can *definitely* argue that they perhaps shouldn't have so much cash (see Leonhardt's column today), but why the concern that the rich are wasting their money?
2
When I contrast the values exhibited by my father, a small town businessman in a rural American town, who lived those values himself, driving, for instance, miles through the dark of night to fix an oil heater for an old lady who had no money and no one else to help, performing for her a service in the word's original sense, with the values (it's the money, stupid) that animate corporate America today, I can't say I'm shocked at corruption anywhere it's uncovered.
American businesses may not export sufficient products to fulfill Mr. Trump's empty promises on trade, but over the last fifty or so years (let's say as a handy marker, since Reagan) it has successfully exported its venal, shallow. me-first-and-last values to much of the rest of our culture.
We do what we see others do, what we've been trained to do.
Why would the college entry process, which already presents insoluble challenges to "fairness," (Stanford admits under five percent of its self-selected and self-winnowed applicants) be any different?
As we see tweeted too often--and most misapplied--by the Tweeter-in-Chief,
"Sad."
1
I was a student at Swarthmore in the 70’s and got there with some great grades and scores, and non-sports extracurriculars that I loved. I received a great education at Swarthmore, that has served me well in life so far. As an applicant in the 70s, I had a few lower grades in high school, in classes where I failed a bit— I have kids applying to colleges now, and there is no way they could get into Swarthmore with any hint of failure. So kids and parents are driven to relentlessly focus on paper perfection. I don’t care about Wall Street jobs for my kids, but I want them to get a great education.
Schools seem driven by the US News rankings, and many of them act in unbecoming ways to improve their ratings — they directly market to kids they would like to attend, but also to kids who have almost no chance of getting in. You can’t have 10% acceptance rate unless you get lots of “ less qualified” kids to apply, who you can then reject. I feel that is the root of the problem.
I remember Barry Schwartz, and have sympathy for his position, but as a professor he was on the output end of the admissions process. The admissions process can’t produce kids for his classes who are open to an occasional failure, while selecting only kids who have “proven” that they never fail.
If you want more resilient students, who are open to, and value, a liberal arts education, change the admissions process. I know that isn’t easy, but it’s ok to fail a little on your way to the goal.
5
And you wonder why kids are committing suicide in higher numbers than before. You wonder why they cut themselves or anesthetize their feelings with opioids. Kids are under too much pressure. Too much push, push, push. Too many comparisons with others. They don’t have any simple pleasures anymore. Everything is for the resume. It is insane. I feel bad for this generation. My own daughter included. She survived okay and is thriving in college, but when the bribe scandal came out her response was that she wished we had paid a bribe for her to get into Yale. Then she laughed. But I am sure she meant it. They all feel judged by their choices. It saddens me.
3
Points well taken by Mr. Bruni. The great myth in all this admission unpleasantness is that gaining admission to an elite university or college somehow guarantees success in the post graduation real world.
In my forty plus years of management experience in consumer packaged goods, consulting and helping to build a billion dollar athletic footwear brand, I have hired and developed hundreds of graduates from elite, state universities and small schools.
The one consistent theme is that individuals from state universities and small schools consistently outperformed their elite school counter parts.
Why? Because nothing was handed to them. They were accustomed to working for everything. Their level of intellectual curiosity, analytical thinking, passion, problem solving ability and work ethic far outstripped their more entitled colleagues.
So high school seniors and parents take heart if you don't get into your "dream schools," in many ways unless you are headed to Wall Street, where status and banality rules, having an elite school education to wear on your sleeve is almost a curse.
Your disappointment will be the first of many in the real world. Get over it, you will be better for it. Learning from adversity makes for both a rich career and an even richer life experience. Moreover you will have the satisfaction of not gaming the system like all the hypocrites at the center of "Operation Side Door"and you will have done it "your way."
4
Look at someplace like the Supreme Court and think whether if that is your dream at age 18 whether it is all over if you don't get a top school. Look at the money given to top MBA program grads...
There is a reason why you don't see the rich at the less elite colleges- they are meant for "everyone else". For an upper middle class to fight for what is left on "merit".
The kids know the world the generations before created for them. The world is madness, the kids just understand the very real outcomes. The know that when applying for "top jobs" in the future, if you are not rich, that acceptance is your foot in the door.
Don't be disappointed in the kids. Be disappointed in the system that the preferred readers of the NYT thrive on. I've seen the education supplements to the NYT. It sells the system and does not really critique it. It is all about top schools, not better people.
The response to the buying of spots is comic. This is the system the rich, and the readers of the NYT wanted. The grotesque human development that results is merely an outcome that is entirely rational given the world that they created.
1
As an alumni interviewer for a prestigious ivy (though you would be mistaken should you infer that I had any special ability or influence), I encountered one applicant who really just wanted to go to the perfectly good other college that his brother attended. I thought telling that to the interviewer took a special insight.
1
Frankly, this all seems perfectly logical in a world where tuitions have ballooned so high, student debt is at an all time high, etc., etc. You’re upset kids are gunning so hard for the best colleges? They best private schools cost as much as the worst ones. Who wouldn’t want more “band for their buck.” You’re frustrated that students are asking for a “recipe” for success from their college? Really? They paid for it - how can you possibly blame them for trying to get a return on investment!?
“They don’t know how to fill time with their own creative ideas, because they’re so overly programmed,” Catharine Bond Hill, the former president of Vassar, told me. “We’re telling kids, ‘Don’t try anything you might fail at.’ So they’re afraid to fail. That’s going to create students who are risk-averse — or incredibly fragile when they do fail.”
Aren't Vassar and like institutions guilty of creating this monster? If an applicant attempted a few courses outside of her comfort zone and got Cs,Ds or Fs, would they have a realistic shot of admission? Or, more likely, is the college going to punish the applicant for taking those risks by denying admission? I think we know the answer.
And another observation...Mr Bruni, aren't you feeding the hysteria over elite college by choosing to offer your seminar at Princeton? You could send a powerful message by offering it at a less selective institution.
3
Sure it's about status. The adulation given to the 'educated' and the derision of the 'uneducated'.
More significantly, political and cultural elites have double down on law breaking/bending as acceptable; even laudable under the banner of 'making a better life'.
If you have a virtuous, politically 'correct' yarn to spin, the ends justify the means. That's what this country has become.
Well said Frank. Now write a response to the commenters who still don’t get it. It’s important.
1
My daughter (like most high school juniors) gets flooded with brochures - including from all of the Ivies and other "elite" schools. She's a good student (and a good kid), but they don't need more applications from kids like her - despite her good grades in APs, test scores, and working 2 jobs, I'm sure they have more than they can handle with even more impressive grades/scores - it would be a long shot for her, I'm sure. And she doesn't add to their diversity. So why is Harvard sending her brochures encouraging her to apply? Oh, that's right - so they can reject her, and maybe their selectivity stat will catch up to Stanford's. What a ridiculous system.
1
A great and important article, but you propose no solution. Or do you expect he schools and parents to self-regulate? That's wishful thinking.
What we need is for a geneation of kids to band together and boycott this failed and broken system.
My son, who never took an SAT prep course, who went to a public school that offered few AP courses, and who, when asked on a college application what his most prized possession was, said it was the plastic car he and his father used to roll back and forth between them, graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and earned a PhD from Stanford. Not all kids who attend top-notch schools are legacies, have pushy parents, or want to succeed at any cost.
I recently heard a pundit remind people that, yes, starting at a community college can lead to great things, but we shouldn't forget that maybe the reason so many want to get into elite schools is because the opportunities offered to those students are so great. I mean, how many community colleges offer courses taught by Toni Morrison or Frank Bruni?
More and more we are seeing that the well-educated are being characterized as elitists who think they're better than everyone else and need to be brought down. Suggesting that so many of those who go to schools with competitive admissions are mere status seekers only serves to strengthen that characterization.
This shameful scandal simply reflects our shameless society. It was driven not by a love of knowledge but by the expectation of future wealth. We elected our current president in part because we've been led to believe that if you're rich, you must be smart. What these parents have made clear is that if you're rich, chances are you're not smart -- just ruthless.
3
But the kids are right to ask, "We did all this for nothing?" The whole time, they should have been seeking a balance between education and enjoyment, between taking an AP course in a subject they were genuinely passionate about and kicking a can down the road/smelling the roses, etc.
Yes, kids, it was indeed all for nothing. You lost your childhood in pursuit of something that wasn't worth very much to begin with. (And, you have your Ivy-League-deranged parents to thank for that.)
I say this not to be cruel but to point out that kids need to quit the rat race already and learn to be children in nature. Devoting your childhood to piling on as many AP classes and extracurriculars as you can just to pad your resume to get into some over-priced, ridiculously self-conscious university is a sad waste. There's only ever one time to be a child, and yours passed you by. Don't let it happen to your children too.
2
Everything Bruni writes is true, but it drives me absolutely nuts.
He and others are experiencing an epiphany (although his has been growing for a few years) because of this scandal and the light it has shone of the phony meritocracy of college admissions.
I and others have written and spoken about this for many years, to no effect at all. The New York Times has gone along with the myth of selective schools and seldom if ever prints a genuinely progressive piece on education and learning. Our entire society is saturated with this crazy chase for elite admission, believing that there is something magical about attending an Ivy League college.
This is not news. The entire system became an empty chase for pretense many decades ago. The College Board and college rankings have driven much of it. I know many faculty members at highly selective colleges. They recognize the results of the system that the colleges themselves have wrought. And it won't stop. None among them have the courage to buck the system that feeds their endowments and egos. It would be an institutional catastrophe to drop a few places in the idiotic ranking system. And so they will continue mouthing platitudes about compassion, empathy, and deep learning as they perpetuate a system that erodes all of those things.
1
Exclusive schools bemoan the sordidness that they demand of students.
1
There is a simple solution to many of these admissions problems:
Require minimum standards for acceptance and then choose by lottery.
Eliminate any sports-based bonus and build your teams with the student bodies you have.
Affirmative Action programs could then be implemented using weighted odds.
Just wanted to add that it doesn't hurt to have a parent or 2 who are on faculty at these selective colleges. Almost never fails!
Mr. Bruni's perspective is too limited. He focuses on the moral rot obsessive parents seed in their kids, which is well and good, but he doesn't ask why these parents behave this way.
While at least some of the exceedingly wealthy parents indicted in this latest scandal might have been more interested in their own status than their kids', most parents today worry about the statistical reality that certain universities can open doors others can't. College graduates are only secondarily evaluated on their specific skills and personalities: what gets them interviews is which university is on their resumé.
Making matters worse, there aren't enough doors for all the graduates. Worst of all is the, again, statistical reality that your lifetime income and quality of life depend heavily on whether you can pass through one of those too-scarce doors.
The moral rot is worth mentioning but for most people the real problem is the rotten economic system that has evolved. If we want to fix future generations' moral compasses to true north, we'd better fix the system that makes so many so desperate to game it.
1
Some observations as a parent seeing this madness firsthand:
The colleges are to blame. This behavior is rewarded over and over come admissions season. A brilliant classmate (computer whiz, National Merit Scholar-without prep!) of my son was turned down by every "elite" school to which he applied. Why? Because he nor his parents knew how to "play the game." That is, they let him take classes that he was interested in and enjoyed, they didn't insist that required but non-weighted classes were put as pass/fail on his transcript (thereby "watering-down" and lowering his GPA with a mere 4.0 grade,) he didn't march into the guidance office to get be switched into an easier teacher's section of a class to guarantee an A, he didn't fake a "test-anxiety" issue in middle school to get extra time on the SAT (he didn't need it but yes, this is going on at our school), he didn't overload his schedule with 14 AP classes.
Last March some of his classmates who engaged in some or all of the above behaviors got into the elite Computer Science and Engineering schools but he did not.
Yes, he will do wonderful things wherever he goes because he is brilliant, loves computers, and above all, is kind. But what a loss to the top schools.
His case is just one of many. If you are not willing to play the game, you will be shut out. The test prep and expensive admissions advisers are guiding parents and students to these extreme lengths because that is what the colleges reward.
5
the kid you describe does not need to waste four or more years securing a credibilty certificate. he sounds like he is ready to get out and do something... with a four year jump on his cohort.getting hired by someone else to a wage job is a chimera, and certainly in the computer segment where licensing is not an issue.
I've taught at an elite college for over thirty years. So I find it no surprise when Frank Bruni observes that students see schooling entirely as a means to economic success rather than as learning acquired for its own sake and for the deepening of knowledge and character it affords.
How could they not? We've done almost everything we can to turn education into a commodity. We charge exorbitant tuitions and saddle our students with ruinous debt and then justify it by pointing to the increase in earning power a college degree confers. USNRW ranks colleges the way Consumer Reports ranks refrigerators as we turn our students into consumers who "get" an education, rather than as raw materials in a process that will turn them into educated men and women.
In this commodified world we in the academy seem compelled to defend our existence in terms of the skills we will teach our students or the ways we will prepare them to seek social justice. But we hardly ever talk about the value of studying mathematics in terms of the truth and beauty of the universe it will reveal. We hardly ever talk about studying anthropology as a means of seeing and appreciating the vast range of human experience and the alternative possibilities of social life. We rarely talk about exploring the relationship between Mind and Brain simply because its desperately important to understanding who and what we are. Instead we and our students concern ourselves with credentials that can appear on a resume.
5
I work at a large public university where most of the student body is neither rich or famous. The students struggle with the math and science courses, struggle to find grants and financing for their education. It's a hard life for them, and not all succeed.
However, the ones that graduate have met these challenges head on. They find good jobs. Being no strangers to hard work, they seldom disappoint their employers.
Most of the children who's parents paid to get them into 'elite' colleges will never know these hardships, and the joys of overcoming them themselves. It makes me wonder who's getting the real education.
3
My brother was a college professor for over 30 years at a major and well respected public university. He would often ask his students how many, if they could, would just pay money for a grade as opposed to doing the work the learn the material. The vast majority just wanted the grade. One student who was failing came and mentioned she hadn't missed a class. Yes, commendable. But doesn't that count? You apparently didn't learn anything - not the point, I was here, give me something. "Dr. X, I don't know the answers to any of these exam questions. Can I just write what I do know on the back and get credit for that??". Of course he had good students who worked hard and wanted to learn. Unfortunately he also experienced a great deal of entitlement attitude - I'm the "paying customer" I "deserve a good grade". He often mentioned how the sense of entitlement increased over his teaching career. As a taxpayer supplementing kids who really aren't interested in getting an education because they probably think the connections and money that got them into the school in the first place would assure them a comfortable living, I am pretty displeased.
1
Fifty-three years ago, almost to this day, I received a very thin envelope from the admissions office at my first choice for college. A highly selective, nationally recognized liberal arts college, everything about it seemed right. But very thin letters, I'd learned, delivered bad news.
My family, comfortable but hardly well off, was not college-going; I'd be the first to earn a diploma. My semi-rural high school was solid, but not flashy. Students went mostly to "safe" instate schools, but a few teachers and my parents were encouraging. My father promised financial support for four years, somehow, but I had to do my part by working. There was no time or money for SAT prep classes, tutors, application letter editors, or curated vacations and activities. My applications were "just me," unpolished as that was.
The current admissions scandal is infuriating because it devalues young people in situations like mine. The one thing every person is owed is a fair chance, already rare enough in our society. What this scandal reveals is not just cheating, but how skewed college admissions are, and not just at elite schools. Being devalued is not a lesson any school should teach.
The first words of that long-ago very thin letter were "Congratulations on being accepted...." My future alma mater gave me a fair chance, all I'd asked for. It was a defining moment in my life. All young people deserve the same fair chance for such a moment. Shame indeed on those who deprive them of it.
7
Great article. As a recently retired elementary school teacher, I can report that this all starts way earlier than high school. Kids want stickers for completing their work (in my classroom they were told classwork was their job, and no, you don't get a sticker for doing it), many parents complain and argue over grades despite being told the grade given was accurate and that all grades are purged after 6th grade, and that their child child was too busy to read for twenty minutes each evening because they had to go to ballet, baseball practice, etc. It's incredibly sad.
4
The “admissions madness” has its adult counterpart in the academic profession: ever-increasing competition for the shrinking number of faculty positions, the constant ratcheting up of research and publishing expectations for tenure-track faculty, and the growing contrast between the shrinking number of tenured professors and an ever-larger number of low-status, poorly-compensated contingent faculty (lecturers, adjuncts, visitors).
The “plotting of every major and minor step in terms of how it will look on an application” is not unlike what aspiring academics must do to build a curriculum vitae; “assessments made by outsiders” are probative in tenure and promotion decisions. And for junior faculty, “don’t try anything you might fail at” translates to “wait to try a new area of research until after you get tenure.”
3
Yep. Big time.
I am a high school teacher, and the biggest change I have seen in my students in the past 26 years is their (and their parents’) attitude towards education. Exploring different subjects, testing one’s abilities, developing a sense of wonder and purpose.....much of that has been replaced by building a resume and branding oneself. My chemistry class is merely a box to check off for these kids. The worst time of the year for me is course selection week for the following year: Most students only take the classes that will build their resumes, not that will build their curiosity and broaden their horizons. When I recommended a sculpting class to an aspiring surgeon, he said, “I want to major in pre med. I don’t have time for art.” It is so depressing. What have we, and our society, done to our kids?
6
Every year I review a number of admissions essays. I was very impressed by what I read until I realized that certain themes and styles were coming up again and again. The next year the themes and anecdotes would shift, like changing fashions. Applicants even tend to dress alike so you can easily pick them out on campus. There is no corruption that is obvious to me, but clearly the wishful applicants are being coached heavily.
4
Whether or not the system is rigged depends in no small measure on what you choose for your own personal goals and aspirations. If your goal is to be accepted at an elite college or university that is one thing, but if your goal is a good education, that is quite another. After graduate school I spent my career in drug discovery research for a major pharmaceutical company. If your goal was higher pay and promotion there were ways to game the system. But if your goal was to discover a new drug the playing field was perfectly flat. The gods of science and chemistry simply don't care who you are or where you got your degree. When it comes to success in finding a new drug, as Yoda put it, you either "do or do not".
2
So much is twisted in all of this. We want the best for our kids yet don't understand what the 'best' actually is. An Ivy League school could actually be a terrible fit either because how you and your student try to game the process or it really isn't the right choice for your growth, exploration and learning. Sitting in a room with a bunch of students just focused on ticking the next box on the list of what someone said is success; trying to game the system at the next level? Or in a room where you are actually engaged and inspired by the subject matter, having real conversations. Maybe the best is a GAP year and a local college with familiarity. Community college while saving money so you don't end up with student loans. A school who has a great financial package and courses that inspire you. Ultimately it will be what your student makes of the opportunity they choose to pursue. There are so many choices out there with great learning environments which struggle to attract students bent on Ivy-or-bust mentalities. Pause, think about what is really best. You might end up miserable in an Ivy, not really being your best.
3
What do Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, James Cameron, Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Lady Gaga and Tiger Woods have in common?
According to Time Magazine, none of them finished college.
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. After a failed stint at a tech start-up (not his own), he trudged through a couple of investment banks and a hedge fund.
Then he opened an online bookstore. Go figure.
5
moral: it is always better to be born talented, especially at math, and/or with the genes to become tall and good-looking. these markers instill the confidence to be a success. ps, most of the men you mention are too young to have worried about the one-fime alternative to college acceptance: a wartime draft.
1
My rejection from Georgetown at age 17, while a seemingly soul-crushing experience at the time, was the best thing to ever happen to me. I went to a different university instead in one of America’s greatest cities, New Orleans, and living there helped to shape the person that I am today.
Kids need to fail and find their own way in the world. Failure builds character and resilience, and most importantly it teaches you to appreciate every opportunity that comes your way in life.
Parents please stop trying to protect your kids from failure. You do them and society a great disservice in trying to protect them from life’s disappointments.
7
My high school classmates (originally 145 of us) who are still alive keep in close touch and often comment on how lucky we were to go to a small public high school on Long Island that was one of the best around. Everyone was expected to continue on to some sort of higher education and most did. There have been some outstanding financial successes even with those who were not number one or two in the class and went to average colleges. One classmate who flunked out his freshman year of college says that it was having then to go in the army that straightened him out. He eventually became the CEO of a major financial institution after returning to college at a state university.
And, at the same time, I know too many people who went from Ivy League to drug addiction, alcoholism and/or failure.
For myself went to a Seven Sisters college, graduated with honors, and then went on to become what I always referred to as a "professional student," earning three more degrees from my local university where I lived at the time while raising my kids. I was in my 50s before I started my career and never earned more than $36,000 per year but I loved what I was doing and in retirement have been able to continue with a very creative life. Earning millions and living in mansions is not what a good life requires.
And please don't get me started on the existence of teenage "influencers!"
6
As the parent of a hs senior, I've been following the college cheating stories closely, and I, too am horrified, but not entirely surprised at the lengths some will go to for college acceptances. But that said, your article lays the problem entirely at the feet of parents, and this seems unfair. There are plenty of us who teach character, and try to let our kids make their own way. But, it should be acknowledged that it is hard. The stakes are so high for college admission, small mistakes matter when admission percentages get smaller every year at competitive schools. Instead of just blaming parents, how about looking at the whole system? For example:
-How about considering those admissions offices that market to students in order to entice them to apply to increase total applications, just so that they can reject them and "improve" their competitive acceptance percentages each year?
-How about questioning the USN&WR rankings that force colleges to compete with each other?
-What about uncovering the extent to which college administrators practice willful ignorance (or tacit acceptance) of the lack of academic credentials for recruited athletes, effectively giving them huge advantages over other more qualified students?
-How about looking at college policies regarding legacy?
-How about high school administrators offering college level courses to 14 year olds?
Parents are not exclusively responsible for this mess.
5
If there wasn't so much economic anxiety out there, this would probably be less of an issue. Sure some parents want 'bragging rights,' but most of us just want a secure future for our kids.
5
During my high school years I worked in the mailroom at a top ten Wall St law firm. During college admissions season we mailed scores of applications to elite universities sent by firm partners on behalf of their children.. Although I had credentials equal to and probably superior to many of these scions my parents could barely afford to pay tuition at a state college. This was in 1968 and nothing has changed. The wealthy will always enjoy privileges inaccessible to others. But in the situation I described the cherry atop the sundae was that these law partners were spending time getting their children accepted at elite schools while charging billable hours to their clients.
4
All we have to do is watch the GOP in action, along with other public figures like our newest so-called Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, to see where the failure to inculcate moral values will lead. As Mr. Bruni writes, life becomes only transactional and focused on personal status and gain. It's okay to lie, cheat and choke someone, as long as you present the right image in public.
4
I teach high-school students bound for college. Their parents' worry, like intuitive seismic monitors that anticipate earthquakes, pictures a point of no return: social exile if the child is not "in" a tier of schools where top financial firms interview. The rest are outsiders.
This scenario reflects a long-brewing sense, mirrored in elimination-based game shows and then reality TV, that many are called, but few are chosen. When severe economic inequality looms, it's not enough to be well read, thoughtful, and surrounded by similar, caring people. Blend the two (exclusive economics and images of exclusion), and you find people intoxicated by its strange brew indeed. It's not their fault, but it's our responsibility to address at least one of the ingredients.
8
Universities have embraced the branded cheating for years (legacies, legal bribes, more kids from the 1% than black kids etc) - the rot/ lack of morality starts there. Kids see it.
FWIW - I did all the fun high school stuff I wanted, had a 4.0 and still didn't get into my dream of NYU film school. So I went to my state school - UT Austin. Moved to Los Angeles in 2000 with no debt to be a writer/ director.
Hustled. Wrote. Got rejected. Repeat. Until I started making a living in 2006. Depending on the year, I make between 700k and 1.5m --- dreaming, telling stories. Do ing better than 99% of NYU film school grads. It's a rich fun life. I feel lucky! And sure there are Harvard people here too (mostly comedy, through the Lampoon - a lot are fun and genuinely talented, but just many are entitled and miserably competitive). So glad I dodged that.
The work is the work. It doesn't care where you went to college.
8
I would hate to be a teacher at any of these schools - knowing that my so-called "best and brightest" students are anything but; that they got in on their parents barely legal bribery - or worse; that in spite of my best teaching, I am producing an entire generation of elitist and entitled adults; and that in spite of my best efforts, all that I try to teach and instill in these students is likely for naught.
Just think Brett Kavanaugh. Need I say anymore?
5
Back some twenty years ago, we hosted friend's 17 year-old daughter and her friend, a young lady on exchange to the daughter's school in the Boston area.
We all had a wonderful time. Lots of exercise, lots of laughs, lots of lounging around just enjoying the summer, the beautiful sunsets, and each others' company. I even taught the exchange student how to cook chicken on a grill, something she was sorely afraid of doing. (She laughed the hardest when she found how ridiculously simple it really was.)
As we were sitting of on the evening before their return watching the sun retreating behind the dunes for its evening nap, our friend's daughter said the saddest thing that I have ever heard:
"This is my summer."
We were pleased that we had been able to offer her and her friend the joys of a carefree "summer" over the week that they were there. That was quite a rewards.
But we were drawn to tears for the fact that her parents had her life so planned that summer had to be crammed into seven, sunny, rudderless days.
We remain friends with Elizabeth to this day...Her parents? Well, they're off trying to prove that they remain important.
3
What you describe is arriving at adulthood. That’s the way life is supposed to be. We can’t remain carefree children forever. The only difference is that for some it takes place around one’s eighteen birthday while for others, like my dad who had to drop out in the ninth grade, takes place a few years earlier.
America will be great ‘again’ when colleges are neither ‘elite’ or not but effective in promoting their students’ intellectual growth and their social engagement...
The beauty of this standard is that it cannot be quantified, to be compared and used to brand and separate for marketing purposes.
Each student will have a lifetime to reflect this experience. How refreshing that could be!
1
I taught at a summer program for talented youth for many years. We would discuss topics like this and they would often protest that they weren't taking AP classes to get into college, but because they liked "challenging themselves." (Or, if they were more dramatic, "being awakened... to the wonders of the natural world.")
Be honest, I would ask: which courses at your school would present the greatest challenge for you (or the greatest "awakening")-- machine shop? or calculus?
I have a hard time with an article that points fingers at "these kids" -- as if a NYTimes columnist (and most of his readers) are not interested in getting the "right audience" to clap. Of course they are. We all are.
2
Machine shop would, actually. And I have a pretty good doctorate.
Quite a few yrs. back, my step son brought his significant other down with him to visit with us. He was attending on full scholarship a highly respected university in NY, and she a very prestigious Ivy in MA. Her parents were both professors.
All I can remember of her was that she was extremely self absorbed, clueless in a common sense sort of way, had very poor manners and expected to be treated like royalty. I couldn't wait for them to leave.
If this person was indicative of what an ivy league education buys, it's not what it's cracked up to be.
2
Generally perceived liberal universities not so liberal and open-minded in their admissions procedures after all.
The most interesting aspect of this 'scandal' is not the criminal part of it, its hamfisted-ness, but how it's done legally and comparatively elegantly and has been for decades: endowed chairs, new buildings, legacy admissions that come with seven figure donations, etc., etc.
I am so happy the admissions is 5 1/2 years in the past. Our kid got into a really good school where he did very well and became a serious student without any of the bells and whistles; prep courses, etc. Of course he batted 0.00 with the Ivy schools but that was a blessing in the end.
I actually had a couple of emails to Bruni at that time and got some good, empathetic answers back from him. It was out of control then and has only gotten worse since. Bruni's focus on this has been important.
3
It's a shame that so many parents and students become obsessed with a handful of exclusive, elite schools when there are so many truly wonderful colleges where students will be known, loved, and challenged. Loren Pope's "Colleges That Change Lives" is a book that has changed lives, because it has inspired many to think beyond the Ivies to regional colleges that offer extraordinary and transformational experiences.
1
I am a violin teacher and have often encountered parents whose children are studying music for the sole reason of how it will look on their college application. These students can go in many different directions, but the most interesting one is when they develop a true love of music and become fascinated with the process and craft of learning the violin. The parents will often discourage their subsequently very skilled players from pursuing music as a career, since the original point of the lessons was not about learning the art, but simply a means to another end. This latest scandal is an over-the-top manifestation of a cultural trend that I deal with daily, that starts with 6-year olds.
7
This column and much of the conversation around it seem to elide the bigger picture of a country that has gone from being broadly middle-class to being a dumbbell-shaped spectrum of haves and have-nots. Of course children and their parents think learning and activities are for the sole purpose of admission to elite institutions! They see more and more people working harder and harder for less and less while a few well-connected people clustered in the major cities of the coasts reap greater benefits. Learning for learning’s sake is wonderful, but only if you know your financial needs will be met. How many young people today can feel confident that they will find a useful and remunerative job that lets them feel secure and happy? They would be fools to feel assured of one.
The issue not being addressed is not what people are doing to get into school, but why. The core of the issue is the lack of transparency around the admissions process. Spell out what is required with a set aside for economically disadvantaged (all races, gender, etc). Those who qualify go into a pool where they are randomly selected to match class size. No more preferences for legacy, gifts, etc.
The admissions process is theatre for the student and the parent. We push our children too hard to be the best and brightest. We buy into the status of elite universities. We love prestige and status. Do the donors of these colleges get first pick for their children? It goes without saying. Trump graduated from the Wharton School.
What does this tell you?
1
Although the focus of the scandal and a lot of recent coverage is on the elite schools, I’m not sure if most people have a grasp on the scope of the problem with college admissions. There is an increasing number of excellent students who are rejected from every school they apply to, and they are not applying to elite schools. I don’t blame them for feeling misled and jaded. Excellent students are rejected routinely from colleges with 50%+ admit rates. It’s a high pressure game of musical chairs where there are very few seats across all the colleges compared to the number of students applying. I’ve seen no one take the common data set of all top 500+ colleges and tally the actual number of freshman seats available against the aggregate number of applicants to all. These articles focus on disappointment about rejection from places like Yale, but there are so many kids being rejected from public and private colleges that are far down in the rankings. The problem is much bigger than elite schools.
The scandal exposed some wealthy Americans cheating the system, but there are many wealthy familes from around the world buying seats at our colleges and establishing their own legacies of admits.
4
Miranda H:
“Many” excellent students are “routinely” rejected from all the schools to which they apply? This is simply untrue. To fill seats, many colleges are resorting to foreign admissions.
The problem is that many people, particularly the rich and near rich, believe that they are entitled to whatever they want. They want to send their children to the elite schools because being from an elite school is more important that actually getting a good education. In my time as a aerospace engineer, I interviewed a lot of college grads. Far too many times the ones from the elites schools had good grades and good recommendations from their professors, but were not qualified to do the entry level jobs we were hiring for.
5
Vance Packard wrote The Status Seekers in the 50s. But the elite Boomer meritocrats have taken it to a whole new obsessive level, since their own lives have been one, long slog for status. And since their status is overwhelmingly based on their own educational credentials, they are insanely frantic to keep their own kids in the charmed circle of privilege, no matter what it takes. Christopher Lasch warned America in 1979 that the Boomers were going to transform the country into a "culture of narcissism." Having literally run everything in America for a quarter century, the Boomers succeeded beyond Lasch's wildest nightmares in making everything "all about me"--and too many Boomer kids are just extensions of "me," aren't they?
1
This is one of the saddest columns I've ever read. To have the love of learning and curiosity stolen from our children for the sake of being able to check the right boxes on a rigid recipe for "success" is truly tragic.
I've led a non-profit organization for 30 years and one of the biggest obstacles I see for younger people who want to advance into leadership roles is their intolerance of ambiguity. They want everything to be black or white, right or wrong, to follow a set of rules that has already been established for any situation that might arise. The world doesn't work that way.
7
This reads like our current president’s childhood, education, married life, military time (or lack thereof) and pilgrims progress all rolled up in one.
3
True academci status, to be authentic, must be earned, no matter where you earn it. It cannot be assured with a high GPA, meaningless ACT score, or a high coxswain rating. Nor bribes.
Looking for someone to blame? Look no further than academia itself. They have priced themselves out of the market, but government-supported loans indenture hundreds of thousands of students, some for the rest of their lives. Tuition rates rise because academia can and no one is able to stop them.
Talking about "morals in admissisions," Frank, means we also need a national discourse on the tuition pricing madness. That's a far greater academic barrier to our youth.
7
Whenever there is competition for something of value, some inevitably will try to cheat. But that does not mean that competition,itself, is bad.
Every year at this time, Mr. Bruni laments the competitive nature of college admissions, whining about the ways in which people marshall their resources to maximize their children's college admissions aspirations. This year has been "special" because the progressive egalitarian types can point to organized cheating by a whole 50 wealthy individuals.
Economic competition, in its broadest sense, is the engine of human progress. And, in order for there to be winners, there have to be losers. Hearing this new drum beat that competition is bad because it creates unequal outcomes and because losers feel bad about themselves is simply testimony to have weak we have become as a country. Do we actually want to put admission to our best universities on a par with the local for-profit trade school? Do we want elite education to become a new zone for "participation trophies" and lessened expectations.
I want to live in a country where people are not only free to compete, but where success is admired and respected. Unfortunately, we are headed in the direction in which success is questioned, disdained and penalized. What ever happened to "the land of the free and the home of the brave? "
I suggest that the college admissions mania is, at least in part, a product of the increasingly "winner take all" nature of our society and economy. Given that society is awarding more wealth and status to fewer people at the top of certain fields, it's understandable for parents to act in the way Frank describes. I didn't say right; I said understandable.
3
My reaction to Frank's discovery that the students he chose never submitted as good work once they were in his class: perhaps the essays they submitted were written by someone else.
7
My husband and I were dismayed when our 2 children (now adults) went through high school that we HAD to enroll them in expensive SAT prep courses. Because EVERY other student in our community took them, and our kids would have been at a disadvantage without these prep courses. For the two of them, these courses cost us $1500.
It was a prime example of doing something as a parent that you don’t believe in. When I was in high school in the 70’s, I bought “Barron’s Guide to the SAT’s” (for $7.95) and sat in the library and studied on my own. (I did the same low cost test prep for the MCAT’s when I was in college.)
Although in the late 60’s, my father-in-law was ahead of his time, and sent my husband to the original Stanley Kaplan test center on Quentin Road in Brooklyn for SAT prep. My friends and I used to walk by there and laugh, asking each other: “Who would pay money for that when you can study from a book in the library?”
I often joke that this is a sign that it’s good I didn’t go into business. Back then, I never would have guessed that test prep would have grown into a major industry.
But cheating on tests and faking credentials? That’s a whole new league of insanity.
125
@Adrienne There are many examples of parents doing things for their children that they don't believe in, outside of test prep. Here is one: paying high prices for kids to play in "travel" sports. As parents, we were opposed and the older child did not play in those leagues until he was a teenager. The younger child did participate mainly because it was just permitted to happen - he did not try out but "got drafted" when a new team needed players. Punch line: the older kid, equal with athleticism and natural talent, struggled to make the high school team while the younger child made the team with ease. In our town, it is nearly impossible to even have the opportunity to participate in high school sports without having spent years in expensive preparation, partially for skill development and partially just to "signal" higher skill. How's that for meritocracy and equal access? And don't forget that participation in varsity sports is a factor considered in college admissions.
I offer this point that may appear off-topic because it highlights the scope of the problem.
25
@Adrienne...
Oh, my goodness...
Taking a prep course to learn how to take a test?
What a waste of your kids time and your money.
Had you spent the time making sure that your kids knew the information of the subject that the test covered, they would have done at least as well, and you'd have $1500 to spend having some fun with them.
It was drummed into me early on, that if you know the subject matter, the tests are easy.
The toughest test I ever took had 45 essay questions of which one had to answer 30 of them in the 3-hour test period.
You either knew the subject or you didn't. There was no place to hide.
5
@The Owl I used to think that and did well on SATS and such. But on doing a bar review course, pretty mandatory for law grads because the tests are state specific which is not how the "best" nationally ranked schools teach, they incidentally taught us tactics, "tricks" really, about how to answer standardized test questions.
This was quite different that subject matter competence and delved into how test questions are constructed (e.g., there is one "right" answer, one "almost but not quite right" answer and two decoy answers you can quickly eliminate) and issues of time management (skipping questions you can't confidently answer.
I'm pretty sure that my SAT and LSAT scores would have been 50 - 100 points higher had I studied this test taking "gaming" approach. (I'm dating myself here, ETS tests taken before Kaplan became a thing).
7
Neither of my parents were able to go to college, thanks to the Great Depression. Like millions of other Americans, they needed to help support their families and then came WWII. The GI bill would have benefitted my Dad but he was married with a family and getting his degree remained out of reach. He never complained.
My parents instilled in us a love of knowledge, a quest for education, an understanding that hard work opened doors, and a great appreciation for excellence in teaching. Importantly, they let us fail. The time in tenth grade I decided to blow off studying for math? You don’t need to be a math wiz to know a 53 isn’t going to cut it. My mother did not call the teacher. I had to crawl in there on my own and sort it out, working on extra credit problem sets for months. Lesson learned.
These parents are trying to live through their kids or something. I don’t see a love of education, learning, being passionate about a subject for these parents. It’s about status, a name brand. Truly heartbreaking when I think about the kids who could actually soar if given this opportunity.
89
I am a teacher in a public high school in a well-heeled community. The students are funny, goofy, sweet... and damaged (some severely) by the pressure to get into “a good school.” I’ve grown to be disgusted by luxury cars with Ivy League college stickers in the back window, because I now know an awful lot about the people inside the car. This college admission scandal is really just the darkest end of the path many of our students are on, with their phalanx of tutors, extra lessons, and private college-admission counselors.
The best moments in the classroom are full of laughter and learning. The students have good hearts, and are under so much pressure; it’s hard to see them sent into emotional spirals when the don’t get into an Ivy—even though so many of them will fit better at other schools.
31
My kids are now in college, at State Universities. They have gotten over the sting of not being in an elite, unaffordable school, and are hard at work planning their futures. I just want to say that it's not just parents and their children that are causing this problem. The schools themselves propagate this idea of being more exclusive in order to create demand. The second tiers and state universities are following the lead of the ivy leagues. Rather than promoting inclusiveness and community, they position themselves as also exclusive and special. It's another example of capitalism gone amok. More young people, not fewer, need good educations to meet future demand. Let's figure out ways to let more kids in and provide them a good eduction.
5
Why do employers value degrees from the elite colleges more than others? Some employers (mine included) will only recruit from elite schools (and I speak to this unfairness and myopia whenever possible). I earned my undergraduate degree from a state university, my first graduate degree from an elite school and a second advanced degree from a second tier school. At each school, I encountered fantastic professors and terrible ones, extremely bright and motivated students and those less so. The education at an elite school is truly no better than at a lesser ranked school. In fact, there are many ways in which lesser ranked schools surpass their elite peers, not least of which is educating the whole individual. There is no rational reason for elite college degrees to be favored over degrees from other colleges. The status of having a degree from an elite school and the connections are the name of the game. All that would change if employers would open their doors to those without connections and with degrees from non-elite institutions. When that happens, the madness will end.
197
@Jenny To a certain degree, I agree with what you've said here. But how then to explain the children of Lori Loughlin, who would certainly never have been using the degree to pursue jobs. I think there is more at work here. I don't have the answer, but I'm still trying to figure it out.
6
@Jenny Not every employer values people from elite schools. In fact, as an alumnae of a very selective college, I can assure you that it sometimes works AGAINST you. There are people out there that are determined to prove you can not do a job because you are too much of a prince/princess.
This latest news is only going to exacerbate the differences in this country. We need to come together, not split apart more.
3
@Jenny
You are absolutely right. I studied at a state school, a foreign one, and an ivy (professional degree). Only my at the Ivies did I hear of friends/acquaintances being solicited for high paying jobs in consulting and IB. I had never heard of such fields, literally, until I was at the Ivy. This is the main reason people insist on their kids getting access to these schools. But how likely is it that the big IB and consulting firms will recruit the top students from elsewhere? Not very. And to me it seems this divide lies at the very heart of the perceived difference between 'elites' with priviledge and everyone else.
13
The model is rotten. Universities should manage their finances (like any other business) such that the cost of tuition covers their expenses. That would be a nice lesson to teach students. Instead, there is a perilous wooing between potential donors with marginally qualified kids on one side, and administrators competing with each other for better and better dorms, physic labs, etc. on the other side.
The moment you make it a practice to solicit donors with an ulterior motive to fund your enterprise, you will never be able to objectively say your school picks only the best and brightest.
There is a solution: full disclosure. Universities should be required to reveal what percentage of their annual fundraising was attributed to parents (or relatives) with children admitted to the school in the past 20 years. And furthermore, they should disclose what percentage of students in a given year are admitted where there has been any financial contribution by a family member in the past 20 years.
The IRS could intervene here and help make this possible. After all, aren’t there rules against making tax exempt contributions and receiving a benefit in return?
59
@AVT, that's fine but the result would be tuitions so high that only the truly wealthy can attend anyway. donations can be problematic, but the finances of higher ed are much more complicated than that.
4
@AVT - there is a hidden financial incentive that colleges have to admit children of the wealthy classes over children equally qualified (or even better qualified) from less fortunate economic classes. The schools know that they can expect greater alumni donations from the parents & from the wealthier students as they inherit the family money. The family need know nothing of this metric - it is entirely a cost/benefit calculation by the schools. Pay-to-play has ALWAYS been an issue (I went to college in the 1960s and it was prevalent then). This "scandal" is a tempest in a teapot, singling out a few examples of the thousands that occur every year. Athletic admission (& scholarships are the worst, because they are based on whether you can make the 3-point shot or catch the long pass, not on any academic skill, thus depriving academic standouts of seats. Legacy admissions, based on expected high alumni donations over the decades do likewise. Direct payments are just as bad. All have the extra incentive of having the school bend over backwards to make sure the student gets good grades & graduates so the alumni tap will run freely. There is NO equality in admissions practices, particularly of large state, private, or elite universities. Affirmative action is at least a misguided attempt to compensate for poorer preparation in poorer neighborhood k-12 school systems, but tackles the problem from the wrong end. Good public schooling for ALL (not vouchers or charters) is the answer.
6
I live very close to a private elementary school and sometimes I drive by when school is letting in or out. The vast majority of children are driven to school in their parents vehicles. The noteworthy thing to me is the vehicles - literally almost aexclusively S.U.V.'s, all expensive top of the line models like Land Rovers, Lexuses, and Acuras - the street becomes a long line of brand new very expensive vehicles. I often think how this is really theatre, the posing for their peers, conforming to every detail of the clique of wealthy upper class respectability.
I don't think that many of them even realize their own privilege. A doctor friend mentioned to me the problem of "rich people's problems" he hears at dinner parties all the time - honest emotional pain having to do with status and appearances. I think this is exactly what the whole ivy league school for the children is about.
It's silly. Poor kids. I hope a few of them can break the pattern and become truly free. I suppose that is their biggest challenge.
104
It's all such a tough call. How much is too much? My wife and I, formally public school teachers, decided to go 'international schools' both for educational benefits for our kids but decent pay as well. We were lucky enough to teach for 17 years at a top international school. That enabled our kids to have a top notch education. They both returned to the U.S. not to Ivy League schools but state schools and did very well. And, because we as teachers were paid a decent wage, incurred no student loans. Don't think we would have cheated and hired paid test takers and I know we couldn't contribute over $200 to some building fund but we did what we could and so many don't have a chance to do that.
27
A few points of clarification:
The Common Application, used by virtually all institutions, is greatly responsible for the increased number of students who apply to highly selective colleges. The ease of the process has created a situation in which students apply to dozens of colleges, thus creating the impression that colleges do not bother to deny, that the competition is much stronger than it actually is.
Many students apply to schools that are beyond their grades and test scores. Their unrealistic expectations, despite the information easily available on their Naviance accounts, are that they are the exceptions to the demands of the institution.
These unrealistic expectations are created and fostered by parents who see their children as extensions of their identity and markers of their success. If they have achieved much in their lives, it is an obvious (to them), corollary, that their children must also excel. They will cheat, bully and bribe to be able to display a decal flaunting their child’s attendance at a prestigious college. How often these students come home for Thanksgiving in their first semester and never return to campus is a statistic rarely discussed or publicized.
87
However, many selective colleges send invitations to apply to students who will never make the cut, inflating their expectations, ensuring rejections, and increasing selectively rankings. Colleges play the admissions game as well or better than anxious parents.
21
@UESLit Your first paragraph is an important point, and seems to be getting lost in the broader discussion.
4
It’s difficult to argue with this piece and it makes me glad I went to college in the 70s and never had kids. However, I find Prof. Schwartz’s words to be laughable: “The last thing we do is to teach them to care about community, collaboration, love of truth. All the values that are supposed to be at the core of a liberal arts education go by the wayside.” I attended a public research university for undergrad and grad studies, and such values were never palpable among my professors. It’s one thing to apply a critical eye to the current admissions mess and the erosion of education in this country, but it’s also vital to be honest about the many flaws in academia once one partakes of higher education.
2
When preparing for college (1972) I applied to 3 schools (not 15-20). One safe, one hopeful, one "it would be a miracle". I wrote an essay for each school. I listed my activities, provided transcripts and had SAT scores forwarded. It cost about $40 per school. My parents paid. I didn't visit any of them except by thumbing through their brochures. Whatever they had to offer in terms of activities or housing was fine--a cherry on the sundae. The point was education.
My parents never attended university and wouldn't have presumed to help me write an essay or application letter. Most importantly, they would have regarded paying for coaches as unfair. They would have called it "cheating". My parents thought I should get into the college my grades and activities warranted. They were enormously proud when I was accepted into NYU and even more so when I graduated.
They never correlated education with financial success; people didn't go to college to make money per se--it afforded opportunity.They went to learn. They never wished me to be important or an "influencer". They wished all of their children to be happy, curious and to have an easier time of it than they had. All five of their kids pretty much did, whether they went to college or not.
I am enormously proud of my parents' values; grateful for their sacrifices. Most important, for trusting I would find my own way. Kids today need that lesson most and parents need to trust they will. It's what parentings all about.
232
Superb comment. it was different in "those days." I'm older than you, graduated from college in 1968, but in my family, studying hard and earning good grades was a given, not something to be rewarded with money. Both my parents were college graduates, and the point of attending was education itself, not "earnings potential" as it is for most.
57
@Laurence Bachmann
Bravo!
I happen to have a child, a high school senior who shares the same belief as your family that hiring a consultant to do application is unfair practice and refuses to even consider. I am hopeful for our future.
17
@Laurence Bachmann
"They never wished me to be important or an "influencer". They wished all of their children to be happy, curious and to have an easier time of it than they had."
This was our parents' approach nearly 30 years later as well: It's better to be useful, than important, but it's best to be satisfied with the work you've done and the life you've lived.
15
One way to win the college game:
-While in HS engage in real learning of subject. Grades are important but education is priceless. Absorb the life lessons along the way: that soul crushing or inept teacher may be like a boss in your future. Cultivate your strengths & interests. Don’t worry too much. Childhood is fleeting.
-Do not attend a college beyond what you can afford. Student debt can debilitate your future or your parent’s. Try to graduate without it.
-Don’t stress if you don’t know at 17/18 what career path/college major you must follow. You might figure that out while taking courses at any school (2 year or 4) with great Rate My Professor scores. These teachers may ignite your interest and passion.
-Do not rule out community college to achieve the above. In CA all have Honors Programs for HS high achievers and with a high
GPA from the CC you can get guaranteed transfer to most UC Campuses.
-Learn from all the subject matter AND mistakes you make along the way. It will make you stronger & more confident.
-Graduate without debt and with growth: development of knowledge, friendships, self-confidence, empathy & compassion.
-Go Forth and Prosper.
87
@Karyn
Also look outside the US - many EU and Canadian schools can be a great option for college at reduced cost.
10
"Getting an A in biology — and being awakened, in the process, to the wonders of the natural world — doesn’t matter if a committee of strangers at Stanford isn’t sufficiently impressed?"
Oh, how I WISH that getting an A in some high school biology class meant you were awakened to the wonders of the natural world. I am afraid that for most high school classes it means you have a prodigious memory for details out of the textbook and a good ability to take notes off the board and remember those, too. And maybe you that caj figure out how to write-up a decent description of some lab you did, that may have been a demonstration rather than a true, inquiry-based experiment. But the wonder of the natural world, or even the scientific process? Not sure that high school biology classroom are where those lessons are learned. I'll be the non-college bound kids in vocational programs like agriculture and environmental studies get more of it.
Though I don't always agree with Frank Bruni, I think he is exactly right here. I would just like to say that this drive to get into the right school exists only on the east and west coasts, and among a certain segment of elite parents elsewhere. Where I raised my kids, in a small city in the west, a very small percent of students were even aware of this race to get into an elite school. I saw many kids aspire for the state college that their parents went to, colleges in Montana, or Idaho, or Nevada.
Now the media on the east and west coasts are making this a national topic, when the underfunding of state college systems that most students attend should get attention
It's not just elite colleges. It's an education "reform" scheme that created standards which force 4-5 year olds into academics and bubble testing rather than play-based learning. Where art and music are considered enrichment subjects that require extra payment by parents. Where teachers must instruct using scripted lessons and are then paid based on student test performance. It's the new accountability system brought to you by David Coleman of the College Board, Jeb Bush, Michael Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, and many others including hedge-fund managers that realized there was money to be made on the backs of our children.
Until we understand that the goal of education should be to develop the potential of the child and create good citizens, and not to be "college and career ready," we will see people try to cheat their way through the system.
2
One of the greatest joys in life is to have something you are deeply interested in.
The obsessions with the "right" classes and activities, grades, and the "right" activities are likely to get in the way of a kid finding out what they really love, what can motivate them through even a difficult life, what makes a person leap out of bed in the morning.
Having pursued something like that myself, against my parents' pressures, I wish for that above all for my kid.
You can't buy joy, or the engagement of your whole self.
2
Glad this is a rude awakening to parents who believe the college application process begins early senior year of high school. Savvy parents start this in high school, savvier parents start this in junior high, and now the savviest parents start before their child is even born by deciding which foreign language speaking nanny they should hire and targeting which day care will put their kids on for a track to an Ivy. I'm worried we'll have a generation of depressed children that are manufactured and "productized" by their parent's dreams.
I went to a state university for undergrad and picked up a few graduate degrees at Harvard. One of the things I'm most thankful for from my Harvard education is learning how deeply unjust and unfair the world is by just who got into that school, very few of my classmates grew up with real economic challenges. Admissions is anything but meritocratic and most students are put on a track to reach that Ivy pinnacle from the day they were born. These schools offer a nexus of power, influence, and networks that are unmatched by their state university counterparts.
I'd love to see the schools target lower class students and more forcefully handicap the upper 10%. It will also be salient to watch on as most of those families applying learn they aren't actually middle class as they claim. Maybe then they'll end the badge-earning arms race and let their kids do what interests them........or hire a second foreign language speaking nanny.
45
@Kurt
Nice one.
I took an American History course at a community college in an Ivy league town from a prof who was pretty intense. He handed out the syllabus and warned the class that the course was writing-intensive. By week three the class had noticeably thinned out.
A couple of weeks after that a student said something about the community college vs. the local Ivy school. Paraphrasing, the prof said "If it's an Ivy League education you want, well, I've taught there, too, so I guess you're getting one." He made clear that he was at the CC on purpose.
Here's a couple more 10 year old true life quotes from the back seat of an Ivy town cab driver:
"I won't be going to the city for interviews. My dad's a VP at (big ground-breaking IT firm)."
"Oh, I already know who I'm going to marry. I'm just here so I can pledge at my mom's sorority."
None of this stuff is new. It's just going public.
3
When I began homeschooling my son, my friends with older children were very focused on the college application process. This caused me to think about my true goals for my child’s education and to write them down. I decided I would be satisfied if my son achieved the following:
1. Knowing that his education was his own life-long pleasure and responsibility.
2. Learning and choosing among the different possible modes (e.g. reading, coursework, tutor, internship, walks in the woods, job, etc.) for learning what he wanted to know.
3. Development of self-discipline.
4. Being a good family member, friend, and world citizen.
I guided the effort until he was about 13. After that he was largely on his own with some expectation for family responsibilities, earning money, and community service. Whenever I doubted what we were doing (or not doing), I pulled out the above four goals as a check. When he was 17, he took SATs, and applied to four colleges with application materials of his own devising rather than a school transcript. His packet included a one-page narrative written by me describing our educational philosophy, including the four goals. He was accepted by all four colleges, graduated from one (2002), and went on to find interesting work, to earn a very comfortable income, and to be a good family member, friend, and citizen.
2
Blame:
colleges that accept students based on parent's donations or legacy,
a system that accepts students based on athletics on "Signing Day" while the dean's list kids are still filling out their applications,
an educational infrastructure that segregates kids based on income whether private or public,
the defunding of state universities,
It is so depressing to realize that as a nation we are now far down the road to decadence. 40 years ago, as a young adult I looked at our future with optimism and truly believed that, in spite of the disappointing realities of that time, that our inherent collective good qualities would win out and take us toward the ideal that we all shared albeit vaguely. We are watching a train wreck in slow motion. Mr. Bruni is thoughtful and correct in his observations. I wish that it mattered that the train wreck is being described accurately, but I fear it does not.
6
I think that this essay is a bit over the top in its implicit assumption that admissions committees at the most difficult colleges in which to be accepted aren't sufficiently able to determine the difference between the curious and the grinds.
These schools could double and more fill their classes with valedictorians, 1500 SATs, and with great paper extra curricular activities.
1
I'm a Canadian retired Cpl/hausfrau with Grade 12, because there was nothing in university I wanted to learn about. I've had a wonderful, rich, productive life but I KNOW, that with so many people I did not "look" like it. I raised 4 daughters 29 -35 & I was dismayed at the stresses put on children in their schools to get the marks, do the sports, etc so they could go to university but wrote it off to my educational status. Thank you Frank for this article. I now know that my "feelings" were & are correct that education today has become not about enrichment of the mind but only about enriching your wallet & your status.
5
I just don't want my children thinking that everything in life is transactional.
2
“They want a recipe,” Barry Schwartz says. Perhaps this isn't so much about admissions as it reflects a certain mania that has permeated K-12 and has made some inroads into higher education: the mania for rubrics.
In 1971, when Schwartz began his career at Swarthmore, a college syllabus was typically a single typewritten sheet of paper outlining the main topics of the course and the requirements. More often today it is a multi-page document that attempts, exhaustively, to cover every issue (attendance, plagiarism) that could conceivably arise and to spell out the result.
I think this stems in part from the mistaken belief on the part of educators at the K-12 level that all expectations need to be explicit, to a degree that has become ridiculous. They have to give the kids a road map (rubric) for everything. But this does them a disservice. In real life, the ability to use one's common sense to figure things out from implicit cues is important. Giving them recipes for everything is a way of telling them that we don't think they're very smart (and that we're not too smart either).
3
Actually the modern syllabus reflects a combination of accreditation requirements, compliance with federal and state requirements, and fear of lawsuit.
1
I certainly agree with Mr. Bruni that our crazed obsession with name brand schools is misplaced, & their value is overrated. Good educations are to be had in many of our fine universities & colleges, & certainly bright & talented students are found everywhere. That parents are willing to place themselves in moral jeopardy to gain admission to a top college says a lot about our society, that ain't very good.
I do, however, think people need to leave aside how they feel about the current patchwork quilt of admissions policies at our various schools. They only play a peripheral role in this scandal. What these parents were doing was trying to get their kids in school with fraudulent credentials. Never mind the moral lessons. Would you want the services of a doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, engineer, dentist, architect, etc. who hadn't actually trained to do any of those things? I think these 'top' schools not only need to examine their admissions practices, but they also need to think about what expertise & skills they're actually imparting to their privileged young charges. Are they actually producing people who can do anything worthwhile?
I highly recommend the book, "The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a waste of time and money," by Bryan Caplan---Mr. Caplan puts forth the thesis that the only role college/university serve is the "signaling" function for future employers and of course relatives and neighbors, that your child has been properly branded---As to all the educational values and goals schools say they teach---for Caplan that is all nonsense--schools are designed to brand, not to educate. Throughout the book, he makes a compelling argument against college for all ---concluding that time and money spent on the branding process could be better spent on the job or in vocational training, where the payoff, both monetarily and educationally would be far greater than the result of chasing a paper certificate.
2
"In fact, about two-thirds of Americans over 24 never started or completed a four-year college."
In my children's urban high school of 2,500 kids, 80% of the graduates go on to 4-year college. In my opinion, at least 20% of those students don't belong in 4-year colleges and would do better to pursue apprenticeships.
In my opinion, the constant chant that everyone should go to college does a huge disservice to these students, who invariably drop out of college owing tens of thousands of dollars they will struggle to repay for a very long time. This issue does not get enough attention.
12
Always the contrarian, let me make two points. First, Mr. Bruni places way too much emphasis on the counselor's report of students, upon rejection from their # 1 choice school, saying that it was all a waste. I simply don't believe that most high school students are studying hard or undertaking these extracurricular activities solely to strengthen college applications. Young people may SAY that, in the moment of hurt and disappointment, but it is not true and even they will report, soon afterwards, that it was not correct.
Second, I take personal offense at the notion that so many of those students rejected by the elite schools end up at schools that do not care about their success. Student success, measured in multiple ways, is the core mission at my regional university. Frankly, the "lower" one goes on the college rankings, the MORE the schools focus on student success.
As a final point - so much of this over-reaction to the recent scandal fails to recognize that the vast majority of teenagers live their lives without ever considering elite college applications; and indeed, most do not think much about ANY college application until fall of the senior year of high school.
14
Things may have changed in degree, but when I attended an elite private school in the late 80's things weren't so different. We weren't there to learn, we were there to get into an Ivy League school so we could get a good degree so we could become a doctor or a lawyer.
2
I wish they would stop pushing college as if it's the only way to prosperity. It isn't. I'd love to see more young ones go into skilled trades where they can earn more than most college grads and with no student debt. Besides, if everyone went to college as they insist, who will be your plumber? You want one when you need one, don't you? I sure do.
8
I am 82 years old and because of my age i have been around the block several Times. I read Frank with admiration. His stories on college have great meaning to me. I graduation from what one might say is the elite art school in the country. Early on I took my slides to a gallery owner who at 6'4" looked over my 5'11". Telling him where I graduated he said "so what." As a working artist and a college teacher I've been guest lectures and held a full time position at a middle range institution in Pennsylvania. My students were all over the place--good, bad, and indifferent. After I retired I was an adjunct at an elite school in New York. The students there were brilliant, average and dumb. Most were from wealthy families. I met a young woman from an Ivy who said she had a degree in film--it was twenty-minutes long. I have seen others from art institutions that were feature film long. Does that make her less so, I dunno. I do know that who you are is far more important than where you studied.
7
How are you going to convince any parent or student that going to an elite school doesn’t matter when in fact it does? Take a look at the Supreme Court. There are 206 law schools in the US yet every member of the Supreme Court is a graduate of just two of them. Are you an incredibly wise, learned, and reasonable jurist who is a graduate of, say, the University of Michigan Law School? Good for you, but you have no chance of ever being named to the highest court. And if you are Protestant, Buddhist, Atheist, or Unitarian, don’t even think about it because that effectively rules you out as well. Don’t expect individuals to behave differently than the examples the observe in our institutions.
11
@Phil Brewer The Supreme Court is very much the exception to the rule. (And your child's chances of being a Supreme Court justice are infinitesimally small even if they do go to Harvard or Yale Law School.) There are a very small number of areas where an undergraduate Ivy League degree will help get your foot in the door. Wall Street may be another. But most employers recognize there are many great schools beyond the Ivy League and also give more weight to performance. When it comes time to apply to grad or professional school, the Ivies admit lots of students who got their undergraduate degrees from top ranked public universities and smaller private colleges. Five years after graduation, few if any employers are concerned about the undergraduate college on a job applicant's resume.
1
My parents ran a little candy store and needless to say none of my teachers ever suffered from a lack of very good chocolate around the holidays. A couple of times when I got into spots of trouble in school this also ended up with bottles of Scotch.
Thanks Mom and Pop for coming to my rescue whenever I needed it -- and I needed it plenty -- and always doing everything you could to help me.
2
Bruni identifies real problems. Solutions, though, should go beyond attacking the elite college mania. Consider removing the tax deduction for K-12 private schools unless they truly are charitable--serve a learning disabled population, or meet the criteria for Title I, serving an underserved group of needy kids-- as opposed purported "donations" to private schools in elite areas with $40,000+ tuition, at which mandatory annual "donations" from family foundations of over $10,000 are just add-ons to tuition. Create more college availability. How about some discussion of better funding for public colleges that would allow them to admit more students? Better funding and standards for K-12 public schools, so that more kids have solid reading, math, and writing skills and are learning with kids from a greater variety of backgrounds? Thomas Jefferson near DC and Bronx Science and Math have educated many of our finest scientists without the elite money tuition. About 10% high schoolers attend private school, but privates supply 50% of the students to elite colleges.
And let's applaud helpful steps to being made to breakdown the elite networking accessible only to the privileged. Despite alumni pressure, Ivies are beginning to discourage single-sex and other restrictive secret societies. Universities are cracking down on selective sororities and fraternities, and instead promoting open access themed residences, like Art related dorms.
4
Stop pretending that college is for everyone. It isn't. They should be pushing kids into skilled trades where they can earn excellent money now without student debt. If everyone goes to college, who will be your plumber?
The holistic admission process is so fraught with preferences that it’s no wonder that students and the parents of students no eligible for them look for a”side doors” into the halls of academia. In our most populous states—California and Texas—non-Hispanic white students are an increasingly small minority. Non-Hispanics white students make up about 23.3 percent of California K-12 students and 28.1 percent of Texas K-12 students. In these states, non-Hispanic white students know about 70 percent of their classmates are eligible for racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions. And who could blame Asian American students for disguising their ancestry when they apply to campuses where Asian Americans students are “over-represented.”
Universities should set minimum acceptance standards based on a combination of GPAs and SAT and ACT scores and conduct a lottery to determine which students who meet or exceed the standards are accepted.
4
We, as a society, have managed to turn off the love of learning, the natural curiosity of children at a very early age. I imagine that is part of why we are where we are, with many susceptible to the lies and propaganda of unbalanced, self interested leaders.
If we focused on learning for the joy of learning, rather than the pursuit of all the money, we might not be in the situation we are in.
6
I straddle the line between being a Millennial and part of Gen Z. Nothing in this article is surprising for people who went through the admissions process in the last decade. Social and economic stratification has rendered our world nearly binary: you either succeed wildly, or you live and die as part of the ever-increasing have-nots. If you weren’t already born into the top 5%, an “elite” education is seemingly one’s only chance to cross the divide.
As an undergraduate, I transferred from a public college to a quasi-elite private university (a process with often even more daunting odds than regular admission). I pushed myself, physically and mentally, so hard I developed anemia, stomach ulcers, and panic attacks, by 22.
It’s absolutely a cynical and miserable lens through which to see the world. But tell me it isn’t valid.
6
@Robert I hope you got out of there and are healthier now!
This op-ed lays out the issues perfectly -- an entire childhood and adolescence conducted as a stage performance complete with directors, producers, investors, scripts, auditions, rehearsals, stage managers, set designers, voice coaches, choreographers, and critics, finishing with opening night triumphs or flops.
Who takes the bow at the end, the parents or the child?
I am grateful that my own experience 40 years ago was the polar opposite of this one. I don't think my parents cared where I went so long as I was a dedicated student who loved learning, managed my own life, and expected to eke out a some sort of living when I graduated. They were able to pay tuition; the rest was up ro me. No regrets. I loved it.
11
"Just what is all this scheming and obsession with status teaching children?"
It's confirming what they already know, that the system is rigged. Success begets success, and that increases stratification. If left unchecked, that leads to something resembling the transition of Rome from a republic to having an emperor in charge.
Maybe we can use this to un-rig it a bit, but the problem is endemic. We need to get serious about leveling the playing field from top to bottom, and that includes real, painful consequences for successful people caught cheating.
Newsflash: If you have enough money, a fine is just a cost of doing business. On the other hand, having your children unceremoniously booted out of college is something that money can't fix. The possibility of a stint behind bars is also a great deterrent; perhaps we should apply it to wealthy miscreants as vigorously as we apply it to the poor. People will still cheat, but they'll think twice first.
3
Those who suggest that college admissions should be stripped down to just comparison of test scores and GPAs don't seem to understand the problem. Thousands of colleges and universities in the U.S. already make decisions largely on that basis. (The third consideration at those schools is financial since few have large endowments that allow them to admit students without regard to financial aid needs.) Overall, the acceptance rate at US colleges and universities is over 50%. The problem involves the few dozen highly selective colleges that can only accept 5-10% of those who apply. The other 85-90% of the applicants to those schools are for the most part also highly qualified, so the application process at those schools cannot strictly be based on SATs/GPAs. And it shouldn't be; there isn't any reason those schools shouldn't also consider special talents; geographical, racial and economic diversity; demonstrated leadership ability, etc. Does anyone believe a rejected Harvard applicant would be any less disappointed if the decision resulted from a lottery among students with identical SAT/GPAs? What would it mean to just reward the ability to prep for tests and perform in high school courses? The problem is parents (and children) who are overly invested in the notion that not going to Harvard will cripple their prospects for life. It won't. There are a lot of very good 2d tier public and private colleges that produce leaders in business, industry, government and the arts.
1
"That’s going to create students who are risk-averse — or incredibly fragile when they do fail."
I'm oddly reminded of the neo-Assyrian empire. When you have an empire and religion entirely intertwined with territorial expansion, things tend to go bad rather quickly when you can no longer expand territory. Fragile in failure as it were.
I knew I didn't want to go to an Ivy League school when I learned Cornell graded on a bell curve. By definition, only two percent of the class is getting an A. In a class of 30 students that means maybe 1 student. You're thrown into a room full of academic overachievers and you want to Thunderdome over your GPA? No thank you.
My approach to academia was always much more organic. I would work hard for good teachers who I respected. Subjects I enjoyed weren't really work at all. You might struggle with some aspect of the material but mostly things just flowed. You'd really kill yourself over projects you cared about. My sleepless nights were almost entirely self-inflicted. If you don't care, good enough was good enough.
I actually intentionally scheduled bumper classes into each semester. Something I could safely ignore outside of showing up and taking the occasional test. It makes upper level course work that much easier. You can focus on 4 hard classes while basically coasting the 5th. That's how I finished two majors in 8 semesters.
2
Chefs were once cooks who followed recipes. And can you blame them for wanting a recipe - their entire lives have been structured. The only structure a Baby Boomer had were the neighborhood bells calling them to lunch and dinner. Kids don’t have that today. They’re institutionalized from as early as six weeks. Yes, there are many loving and caring teachers and providers, but the setting doesn’t allow for the individualized development Boomers enjoyed.
3
This paragraph in Bruni's piece is evocative of another: "The principles instilled in these children? That nothing in your life is too sacred to be used for gain. That you do what it takes and spend what you must to get what you want. That packaging matters more than substance. That assessments made by outsiders trump any inner voice."
Noting the commodification of all life, Marx wrote, "uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."
And our innocent children learn the rules of the game under Capital.
5
What this boils down to is just another example of our society being too impressed by the wrong things. Whether it's the label on your clothes, the car you drive, or the university you attended, indications of wealth and elitism have come to confer a degree of superiority that has little to do with character or achievements of real merit.
We now suffer under a head of state who is the embodiment of our most superficial values, as well as the treachery it often requires to attain great wealth. If this difficult experience is to teach us anything, it must be to show our children how to discern between flash and substance. But first we need to learn it ourselves.
9
The basic problem is the very concept of Ivy League. Why it has become almost mandatory to have a piece of paper from one those schools venerated by the media and the public? The importance of getting into Harvard or Yale is a public acknowledgement that you belong to a rarefied group of people most of whom are at the pinnacles of power. Education is secondary.
I will venture to say that we as a nation don’t care for education or learning. That’s true for people in all walks of life. Schools have all sorts of help to take the parental roles. But do we really exhort students to learn?
University presidents and their subordinates care for buildings. I know president spending millions of dollars in athletic program while freezing expenditure on academics. Because athletics attarct donors and alumni support and increase the applicant pool.
We should stop overemphasizing the importance of degree from one these venerated schools. We should consider that there are many other lesser known schools that provide excellent undergraduate education. Germany has many universities of comparable qualities. So it doesn’t make much difference if you are from University of Berlin or Bonn.
4
@Mr C Hear, hear. I've been saying this for years: if we as a society stopped placing so much value on a degree from these perceived prestigious schools, the fierce battles to gain admittance to them would subside. This means that every employer who considers a college graduate for a job has to stop being so impressed by degrees from these institutions and instead consider the individual.
3
@Joe in Ann Arbor
I was dean of new B School at a state University. When I approached some corporations for placement of our grads, the routine response was “ we hire BSchool grads from x or y”. That means my students would never have a chance!
Thus the whole system is corrupt to the core. We also hear some responsibility as we are part of the game. We pay so much attention to the rankings, that can the fudged legally.
2
The college admissions scandal has produced many worthwhile responses. I respectfully submit that the root cause of this, and other contemporary problems, is the lack of integrity - and the understanding of its importance - that is rampant in our society. From the president on down, our "leaders" do not care about our most vital core value: we must say what we mean and mean what we say. And too many of our fellow citizens exhibit the same character traits.
High schools, colleges and universities should use this scandal as a teachable moment. Begin to develop curricula NOW that will be the rebuilding blocks of the rebirth of our nation's rectitude.
5
Sadly I recognized a little bit of myself in this essay. My youngest daughter is a high school senior. When she was planning her schedule for this year I discouraged her from taking the advanced Calculus class because I feared she wouldn't get a good grade. It would hurt her GPA and thus her college opportunities. She insisted and she's getting by with a B. Her point was that she wanted to be challenged. And, no surprise, she has a couple of strong college acceptances under her belt already. So there you are, our children teach us.
Thank you Frank for another thoughtful essay on the warped nature of college admissions.
6
Mr. Bruni,
Great article. i had read a few years back an article about "branding" oneself starting from middle school.. What is the image to put out there on instagram and facebook? How do you want your peers to perceive you? At college application time the same branding applies, thus the resume building pressure to "stand out" and "sell" your brand - the same goes for resume building after college - it doesn't matter if you can do the work and get along with peers; it's all about your brand. This constant pressure surrounds our children, exasperated by social media.
3
With such a system, being admitted is letting THE OTHERS on the sideline, and get rid of the guilt that comes with that.
I know it's been said, but maybe it truly is time to strip down college applications to grades in school, and scores on tests. Extracurriculars,sports and summer jobs (or volunteer tourism), should not be part of the equation. For middle and high schools serving communities with an average family income below a certain level, provide federal funding that would enable subject and test tutors to close the gap between these underfunded schools and their overfunded counterparts. Encourage (maybe insist upon?) a gap year where all students must work or volunteer, and provide proof of such, before starting four more years of school. All of the above would not only work toward leveling the playing field, but maybe create a freshman class heading toward their bachelor's degree with intention and purpose, and not just because it is the next step on a pre-ordained path. This plan would take parents out of the equation and reduce stress on students. Many students have more on their resumes by 16 than many people have in a lifetime. And those are the students who have an "advantage". Something has to change.
4
@Rachel
Thank you for mentioning test-coaching assistance fo r students who can't afford it. I taught test prep classes for Stanley Kaplan for many years. Coaching makes a huge difference, especially for any self-motivated student.
Being a good reader helps with vocabulary, but the test is maibly a learned skill like anything else -- technique and practice.
From personal experience -- the tests are a parlor trick, not a talent. (And I still use the handy speed-math tricks I taught in those classes!)
3
I read somewhere yesterday about a girl saying that she wanted to get into U.S.C. because it had a reputation for giving great parties.
This got me to thinking about how many parties I attended when I went to college back in the fifties.
As best as I can recall, the answer is zero.
Who knew I was ever that deprived?
7
When I went to college (1979), I went to study something I was interested in, as did most of the people I knew. The University had a small business school, but most fields of study were not vocationally/practically based. At the time I thought the idea of going to school and giving up your chance to actually explore human knowledge seemed nihilistic, especially as such studies did not guarantee a better career - you could be giving up what you loved for nothing at all!
My son went to a well-ranked school. Most of the people he knew were studying what were essentialy vocational courses, like the video-game design his roommate was studying. We've turned out Universities into vocational schools. I don't even think most people recognize that we've lost anything.
5
@Steven Benjamin
Yes, money runs everything, yet capitalism is good because it is good.
Bruni has it mostly right in this column, but there is a bright side to the college admissions frenzy: extraordinary levels of achievement among ambitious young people. Competition breeds excellence. While the median student in America learns next to nothing in K-12, those who seriously compete for admission to elite colleges learn a vast amount along the way.
1
@Troglotia DuBoeuf
How do you define achievement? Who gets to compete? Who gets weeded out too early? How much talent are we losing along the way?
Society as a whole does better when there are huge numbers of people wirh good educations, and many wirh excellent ones. A poorly educated population punctuated by a tiny cadre of very high achievers is a recipe for social disaster.
3
Will the pendulum swing back?
As a college grad who came of age at the end of the turbulent 60’s, many of my peers were influenced by that era and sought a path in life that made room for the pursuit of carers and lifestyles that we hoped would be meaningful, not just financially lucrative.
It seems the pendulum has now swung fully to the other end of the arc, but I get the sense from speaking with many 20-somethings that it’s beginning to make it’s way back. Many of them see the emptiness of flimsy faux achievements and crass materialism and express a desire to pursue a more balanced approach to truly full life.
4
The mindset you describe is also very distressing for the instructor.
I taught a course in contemporary civilization at Queens College in the sixties. I recall working very hard to present in a cogent manner the causes of World War I, a complicated topic. At the conclusion of an hour's presentation, which I thought went very well, I asked if there were any questions. The very first question was "Mr Kohl, do we have to know all this detail for the mid-term"?
Can there be anything more deflating and discouraging for an instructor?
13
As the college admission scandal continues to simmer I'd like to offer an alternative model. When I attended the University of Brussels medical school in 1971 the admission threshold was minimal. We had 1300 students in the first year but only 350 of us started the second year, and about 320-350 graduated with an MD after 7 years. There was no tuition, only an $800 student activity fee. We were graded on a merciless bell curve with no counseling or support from the university.
Does this system turn out physicians comparable to ours? Now there's a study worth pursuing.
4
As a former teacher in an International Baccalaureate magnet program, I have witnessed hard working students of single parents and modest means get accepted to the Ivy Leagues and demonstrate academic success. The rewarding part for me, however, was that they pursued their stated goals to be of service to community rather than accrue wealth upon graduation. Mentors who wanted to have some stake in bragging often encouraged them to seek academia's lofty institutions but these were the same teachers who generated "form" recommendations for which they simply inserted names and helped less worthy students create unfulfilled "fake" service projects.. It was always my impression that worthy, dynamic, idealistic young people would thrive in any institution of higher learning. My inclination, because of these experiences, is that these "storied" schools could readily invoke a form of the Selective Service System... yes, a lottery... of qualified students. Choosing names out of a hat would surely be more equitable than the fraud inflicted upon brilliant hardworking students on a daily basis currently.
1
In the Fine and Performing Arts, while students may set a goal for acceptance into a university with a great reputation, they know that developing their individual creativity comprises the first measure of success. A theatre program, for one example, likes to point out the achievement of a famous alum, but it also teaches that achieving artistry is the goal and that achieving celebrity has nothing to do with that. Circumstance initiated celebrity and may or may not be dependent on talent. Every student knows that studying art for the sole purpose of finding a short cut to a Tony Award or a Pulitzer follows a fool's path. An acting student admires the work of Octavia Spencer or Tom Hanks, but not because they won awards or earned a lot of money. Acting students wants to develop themselves, not to become Rami Malek; doing so would make them laughable and turn them into imitators. Imitators manufacture cliche, not art. Art champions no pedagogical model designed to result in mere competence or in perfect examples of what we think others are looking for. art does not seek the establishment, the establishment must seek art. There are classes across every college taught by teachers who know that exceptionalism does not and can not adhere to extreme conformity, but this concept is foundational to the Arts. Any Arts program with a reputation for producing a recognizable type of artist has a terminal disease.
2
I just left an Ivy in the middle of my final semester before graduation because, as an older, undergraduate, nontraditional student from a very poor rural background, I realized I had become driven by the same shallow motivators that drove my younger peers, and my lack of economic resources left me unable to maintain my competitive edge. My passion for going against the grain had been extinguished, and that without money and time to fuel my competitive edge I had been privy to a fraction of the supposed benefits that my peers were. My buy-in to the badge of success that is an Ivy League degree, repeatedly reinforced by academic advisors, prevented me from making the choice to transfer home, lest I fall back into the pit of poverty I was nearly free from. So I rode my failing parachute of promised success until the bitter end, where upon contact with the earth I had the stunning realization that I was valued less by society than I was before, and that my socioeconomic position had deteriorated proportionally to the entitlement I felt being accepted by a prestigious university. I had not volunteered in years due to the academic pressure, and a less than perfect GPA that apparently left me unfit to even donate my time to a cause. Now I am left with no money, no sense of self-worth, and the guilt I feel from having burned my own future is permeating and palpable. I'll have my Ivy degree by summer's end, but I'd give it back in an instant to have back what I sacrificed to earn it.
1
@Mike
I am so sorry it did not work out for you.
But to reframe, what about all that you learned in your Ivy studies? In the end, that's all that ever really belongs to us.
For all that I never had high-powered career success from my "lesser Ivy" education, I would not trade back one iota of what it put into my mind and heart, moments of understanding that still nourish me today, wherever I am and whatever I do, even if it's cleaning toilets.
"The Moral Wages", "nothing is too sacred to be used for gain", "its a performance", "you do what it takes to get what you want". "all the values go by the wayside", "scheming".Unfortunately,these are the playbook for our political leaders.
Does character count?
If it doesn't count for our political leaders, why should it count for students and parents?
When Elizabeth Warren successfully fuels her professional and political careers with false claims of being Native American and is still a candidate for President, why should a student or parent be concerned with character and honesty?
2
It is true hubris for the left which champions secularism and moral relativism to take offense at wealth purchasing perceived value in education. The emotional good feeling derived from their children attending elite schools justifies any means for admission. It is futile to believe the wealthy will not find a way to purchase whatever they want.
@JDL
It is hubris to assume that this is an issue only of "the left." Institutional corruption affects everyone; it should be everyone's concern. Do you want the people who will build your planes or run your banks to have bought their admission, grades and advancement, having left their moral compasses at the door?
Your kind of fatalism is typical of kleptocracies, and leads to failed socieries and governments, to social and economic collapses.
The divide is wide, and creativity is not valued. The system is broken, starting in middle school. Teach to the test, start memorizing for the SAT early. Build the resume and be perfect. Kids don't have childhoods any longer. Hyper focused vigilance while being told "be a kid!" is a damaging cognitive dissonance. Perception of scarcity of resources is a real thing and people will do just about anything to game the system to be in the main stream (top 50 college/uni). And those kids who buy into the grabbing of the brass ring? It's a jaded 19 year old, and a hard mindset to heal. Trust no one, don't let your guard down, they're going to take your spot.
3
Here’s possible solution (which might already be happening),
Allow wealthy helicopter parents to buy their child’s admission into an elite university for $5 million. Then use the money to subsidize the tuition for qualified, but poor kids who would otherwise not have the money to go to college. This would cut out the middleman. If the wealthy kid can't maintain a 3.0 grade average, the required donation would be an additional $5 million per year, allowing the university to hire staff to hold the hands of the wealthy kid, and provide additional financial assistance to deserving poor students.
15
@Cliff
Just discussed this very idea with a friend who is a former educator. We both felt that this could be part of the answer.
1
@Cliff How do you think institutions fund financial aid? By charging full fare to those who can afford it, and discounting to the rest. The "wealthy" have been subsidizing less well-off families for years.
The worst part is that these kids end up fast-tracked into leadership positions, where they take what they've learned about this competitive process and assume it works for everything. I work for an airline where, until recently, almost all our senior executives where people who started on the ramp, or as gate agents, reservations agents, flight attendants, etc. Entry level jobs from which they worked their way up. Some had degrees when they started, and others earned degrees along the way. Now there seems to be a lot more hiring from outside directly into upper and middle management. While it's good to have some different perspectives when trying to solve problems, I find we're often tasked with solving problems that don't exist. Or trying to squeeze out a couple of extra points on some metric that doesn't really matter. And the constant shuffling means we are frequently having to explain how our operation works to some new general manager or director who has no idea about our operation, and hasn't seen how wild the seasonal fluctuations can be. Why are your survey scores down in August? Well, gee, maybe because planes are full, baggage handlers are on strike in Paris, and you've cut our staffing to bare minimums for a NORMAL month?
20
What gets measured is what gets done. As long as colleges select and admit those students with resumes that describe endless perfection of "the image" of the perfect student and do not select those students with a real love for learning and a commitment to make the world a better place this train will continue to move down the same track. As long as elite colleges continue to admit large numbers of legacy and development students the game will be even more rigged against those students who would benefit our society most with admission to the most competitive colleges. It is much harder for college admissions professionals to select the next Oprah, Einstein or Hamilton than those who fit the mold for college acceptance. So they rely on the same tired metrics that wealthy parents can easily out fox and that force regular students into a pointless chase on to a demoralizing tread mill. In the process our society loses a huge potential for greatness.
5
Out here on the prairie, life is a little less complicated. Often the question asked about college is Grand Forks (Univ of ND) or Fargo (NDSU) or perhaps one of the smaller, private college that dot the region. Not to say kids are not ambitious but when you grow up in a rural, agricultural area your definition of success is different. Having spent time in the hothouse of NY private schools and out here on the prairie, I would say kids out here are less stressed but by no means less challenged. We have a top notch band program that competes on a national level, terrific sports, literary magazines, student council and all the extras found elsewhere. The difference is that most kids are not padding CVs, the genuinely enjoy their activities, making participating rewarding for all.
12
It’s all a reflection of the wide wealth gap in the US. Rather than taking a risk, students end up in wealth directed careers: finance , consulting, medicine, and law. Teaching? Forget it. Furthermore, admission to a selective school facilitates selective mating with other like minded, high achieving robots with whom they will produce yet another generation of excellent sheep.
13
I am not sure who this "we" is. (I say this as a college professor of 30 years and as a father of a high school senior.) I am assuming that Mr. Bruni means privileged people--mostly white--who are afflicted by the very real sense that their children might not do as well as they did. This anxiety is nothing to be sniffed at and it reflects our new reality: downward mobility is just an illness or a bubble away. The pie isn't smaller. There are just fewer pieces.
But it's true: all knowledge and all achievements are now instrumental--rungs on an eternal ladder. But there are fewer sure ways of achieving success these days: the traditional professions don't bring the money or the status that they once did, etc, etc. So the anxiety speaks to a hard truth which modern upper-tier parenting would like to deny. While socking away capital of various sorts for their progeny, they are whistling past the graveyard. Inequality means that their kids, for all the parents' gaming the system, stand a better chance of doing poorly than their parents did.
8
Given there is no safety net or social contract in the USA, it has become survival of the fittest. Supply and demand stuff of jobs with status and income. As a nation we have been told higher education is important to advance, so people listen. As a nation we have so much talent from cities and rural towns of people from all backgrounds who are hungry to work and are curious. We need to develop those talents and find a way to prove opportunities for all. Until then, we are in survival mode.
10
Thank you for bringing up the lack of a safety net and the ravaging of any concept of a social contract since the Regan era. Without a safety net, social contract, affordable health care etc the risks to all of our families and to our children is real and terrifying.
now it starts at birth- full- time day care for an infant in Massachusetts costs as much as a year of public college.
I feel incredibly lucky my children are launched into careers they love and can support themselves with a community college and public university educations.
I do lament that they didn’t have the liberal arts education I had in the 1970s, but my husband both focused on spending time with them as kids- doing simple things together as a family. My kids are their own life long learners.
I also hope that their compassion and kindness will help move our country back to a social contract that all deserve.
1
@Yolanda Perez Unemployment insurance; Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, church-based charities, free public education, Section 8 housing. "No safety net in the USA"? Huh?
Just another negative outcome of our vast economic inequality. Many experts have warned that economic inequality is a harbinger of decline in our society. This educational disparity, white nationalism and the our abysmal healthcare statistics can be traced back to economic inequity. As a society we must learn that "you get what you pay for". We need to put our efforts into leveling the playing field, on all fronts.
5
It won't change unless employers devalue the prestige factor of diplomas. Until them, the transnational nature of the quest will largely persist because people respond to incentives not ideas.
11
@Anonie
People seek easy and quick answers to complex questions. So picking the person who went to a selective school does the screening for you. Thinking fast versus the work of thinking slowly.
The advice I give kids who want scholarships is to learn oboe or bassoon, but only if they like it. There's really nothing new here, it's been going on for decades.
While I was teaching first and second year undergrads at the public university where I got my Masters, my brother-in-law was teaching at what was, at the time, the most expensive private college in the US.
The kids I taught worked hard. They did their homework. They studied for their tests. They asked for help when needed. And they showed respect for my knowledge. And, if I had to, I could fail them.
My brother-in-law had many students who did little to none of this (and respect? HA!). If he gave one a B, parents would be on the phone. If he gave one a C he had to defend that before a board. Failing was not an option.
I'd argue the kids I taught got a finer education.
26
Mr. Bruni misses the essential point.
Going to a prestige college gets you two things
1. Social Connections
2. An education
In many profession, such as law, finance, history the social connections you make at college are more important for you future than what you learned. Take law. Every Supreme Court judge attended either Yale or Harvard - that out of 200+ law schools is so statically improbable that the only conclusion possible is that connections count more than talent
You can get a good education almost everywhere. And certainly you can get better teachers at lesser known Universities (the prestige Universities pick profs on research ability not teaching ability)
But the only professions where the social connections get you nothing are the hard sciences : Physics, Math, Engineering.
For most subjects, the social connection far outweigh education.
That, not obsession with " status teaching" is why parents scramble to get their children into prestige schools
18
@John
But in a courtroom before a jury many times a law student from a minor law school has beaten a selective law school grad, due to preparation, good facts and ability to communicate with the jury.
3
It is true about connections. While I did not go to any sort of “elite” university. I did attend a good school. I was not a legacy, on scholarship or a recruit of any sort. My SATs were well above the school’s medians. Finished college with a strong GPA but nobody ever asked. Within 30 days of graduation I had a shoe-in job because I had been a lacrosse player- team captain. As luck had it, a teammate’s father who was a bank executive had heard about me at a NYC cocktail party. The invitation was waiting, career engaged.
6
@John
You make many excellent points. And where did this idea come from that the only two decent law schools in the country are Yale and Harvard? A future president could help the conversation a lot by nominating someone for the Supreme Court from a public university law school.
5
As someone who went to an ivy and has been a professor in a community college for 20 years, I can attest to the fact that one can get a first-rate education pretty much anywhere.
It boils down to finding a few great teachers/human beings to learn from and surrounding yourself with other students who share curiosity and determination to learn.
Enough already about golden tickets - they don't exist, and pursuing them robs our society of its humanism.
17
@Goes both ways
My favorite President Abe Lincoln did not go to a law school at all. He did pretty well even before becoming POTUS.
3
You can get a good education with a library and a mentor.
Well, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
But even more, this all being driven--in college admissions and in a lot of other realms--by socioeconomic insecurity. Even among the top 1%. Perhaps, especially, among that group, who feel that if their progeny don't get into a "top" school, they won't be able to continue their privileged lifestyle twenty years down the road, because the world is more competitive than forty-fifty years ago when almost any college degree was a ticket to the middle class, and personal economics appears to be a zero-sum game.
People are also aware that claims to meritocracy are to a great extent bogus; the reason for attendance at a top school is not the quality of the education, which may be just as good elsewhere, but the rich and powerful connections you make there that likely give you an economic leg up, along with the reputational factor.
Without perceived scarcity, this whole system would fade, because it wouldn't matter as much where one got one's degree and expertise from, or who one met in the process.
Of course, the people actually experiencing real socioeconomic insecurity can take some grim satisfaction that the 1% are suffering anxiety just like they always have. But I bet their hearts just bleed for the nervous affluent.
2
I have nieces and nephews who did not so much as blow their noses without the consequences of doing so being vetted by their parents for how the actions would look on school applications and future resumes.
These children have become as vacuous as their parents.
These children question nothing. They simply do as they have been programmed and manipulated to do. They know nothing else and they don't really want to know anything else.
Oh, they will really shake things up by going on a school sponsored Christmas break trip to, let's say, Guatemala. Wow! But really, those trips are used to bolster their applications to grad school. "Yep, lookie here fellow admissions people, he/she did the requisite Central America school break trip(s). Check that criterion off on our acceptance list."
The parents and kids are considered successful by many. I look on in horror.
God help us all.
17
My kid did her applications in Fall 2016. It was not too difficult with the Common Application which is a web-based template. Then , the applicant occasionally must tweak a submission with a particular essay or data point a specific school requests. But, all in all, quite efficienct. My minor beef is two fold: 1. My kid insisted in applying to double the number of schools necessary. 2. Considering the gross volume of acceptances going into the universities and the effective acceptance rates I suppose the whole game of applications with fees is actually a profit center as they reject with thresholds and screens a good money instantly.
7
A profit center? Are you kidding? Who do you think processes all those kids applications? The application fees go to pay the worker bees in the admissions office who have to sort through thousands of applications every year and do it in an impossible time crunch.
The often morally questionable scramble, process of Americans to attain status, to gain admission to Elite Universities?
Elite Universities, the very concept of such, their ongoing existence and development, are ground zero refutation of not only political concepts of the left or right or center (any current politics) to describe the human future, they refute even notions of progress as conceived by thinkers such as S. Pinker.
The very fact of civilizations rising and falling historically, and the gradual buildup of what best remained from these civilizations, their moments of genius as knowledge and wisdom, and the continued attempt to build up such knowledge and transmit it down through the ages, favors politically and economically increasing emphasis on the minority group of the gifted and talented, their protection, their status above all society, and of course this sits badly with either socialistic or fascistic or libertarian or what have you politics because such don't match this necessary historical process by which humans can truly develop further to master themselves and the world.
And everybody seems to at least unconsciously know this regardless of politics. Regardless of political leaning everybody seems to feel the need to go through Elite Universities, like in sports to make the team anyway they can, because making the team not only guarantees success no matter which way society politically and economically twists and turns, it puts one above "now" society.
Want to know why hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of teenagers turn down summer jobs and aren't available to do the work that many businesses need? Work doesn't count toward college admissions.
One of the best, expansive and important experiences one can have approaching adulthood is now almost forbidden because of the laser like focus on getting in.
Don't put all the blame, please, on status seeking parents. The colleges have made this mess because it is to their advantage. The anxiety inducing process puts all the power in their hands; the more kids who apply, the greater their opportunity to select only those likely to finish and pay for four years and besides the student body creates the learning atmosphere more than professors.
All of this can be seen as modeled on the idea of sitting at the feet of Aristotle, which Plato found to be quite useful. The big name colleges have their Aristotles and if you get to sit there, wow, you've got it made. This is a myth, of course, but we live in a society the myth is more important than fact.
This is not a fact based process. It is oriented toward the fiction that going to a "top school" means that you are on the top for the rest of your life. You can always drop Dartmouth, Princeton or Brown into any conversation and have a moment of respectful silence follow. Actually using the brain, thinking and putting your talent (which is innate, not taught) to work, all are secondary to the name on the school.
6
@Doug Terry
Our three son's all engineer's and now successful went to state U's and all worked at manual labor/skilled labor each summer. They are the son's of educator's and they needed the money, FWIW...
The insularity of "top school grads" being (preference) hired by "top school grads" annoys me greatly.
2
@Mike I can't tell you how many of our wealthier friends kids have NEVER worked. they are 21. My son has gotten far by having the ability to get and hold a job. Seems simple, doesn't it?
1
The system pretty much guarantees that creative artistic kids will not attend a top 20 university.
Creative people are not inclined to conform. Future attorneys and Wall Street people are.
36
Let's not focus exclusively on this small group of privileged young people.
Instead, let's talk equally -- no, ten times as much -- about the majority of kids, those who attend far less "elite" schools, like CUNY or the small private local college I teach at.
These less privileged young people are not pampered -- they work hard because their parents work hard, they support each other, and they have clear-eyed goals. Of course, not all students are this focused and these colleges are not without major faults of their own.
But it is important to keep our eye on the majority of our young people and what they need: far better academic preparation K-12, far less debt, and colleges that are properly funded and functional.
The attention this "scandal" and its characters has attracted is appalling because it demonstrates how little the USA really cares about the real scandal: our desperately unequal education system that hampers -- and sometimes blocks -- the potential of many.
28
Rather than characterize the students who attend prestigious colleges as mere status seekers and reinforce the ever-growing belief that they are elitists who need to be brought down, why not point out that this scandal is not limited to the college admissions process; it reflects what has happened to our society as a whole.
These days it seems that being successful means being rich. Money is everything. We elected a president in part because we've been led to believe that if you're rich, you must be smart.The parents involved in this scandal have made it clear that if you're rich it may not be because you're smarter than the other guy -- just more ruthless.
It's becoming harder to find people anywhere who are more motivated by the pursuit of knowledge than by amassing wealth. And while the latter may certainly be found at the best universities, more of the former may be found there as well. If you want to be able to work in the best-equipped labs, to be taught by the likes of Toni Morrison, Paul Krugman, and Frank Bruni, if you want peers that are as excited about learning as you are, you apply to prestigious schools. I know lots of young adults who did, got in on their own merits, will never be as rich as any of the Kardashian, but are contributing greatly to society.
13
One reason many operate this way is- USA is one of few developed, industrialized nations where it is truly a burden and shameful to be poor. The infrastructure requires a car. Jobs are relegated to cutting corners in terms of vacation, health care and even being full-time/ salaried. Half the politicians stigmatize social services and basic nutritional benefits.
8
@Elizabeth Fuller
We had a television commercial here a few years ago, where a kid pulled up to a new school in the advertised vehicle (they were big and at the time they were expensive) and the commercial insinuated the kid would be accepted because of the vehicle. So much for the kid in the old Ford!
2
My boss has just spent the past year dropping his responsibilities at work - showing up but without any engagement or commitment- to shepherd his daughter through the college admission process. Basically, HE got into several great schools while she coasted her way through being the “it” girl, beautiful, flirtatious and blond, as a high school senior. He wrote the admission papers and essays and was angry when the expensive editing service he hired didn’t appreciate his prose. For years, he pushed the daughter to be an athlete in a highly competitive sport for which she had talent but would never be an Olympian hoping she would qualify for a scholarship. When she didn’t, she dropped the sport ASAP as a waste of her time, completely disregarding the physical and emotional benefits she should have gotten from a shared experience with her peers. Meanwhile, Dad was bitter at the unfairness of it all as the daughter didn’t qualify for any aid to the Ivy League and “better” universities she wanted notwithstanding his $300k salary... now, HE pouts at the unfairness of it all; the tragedies that befall the privileged and entitled! I’m sure if he had had the means and knowledge about the current scam, he would happily have jumped into the game because the daughter deserves the best and he deserves to be able to give it to her. The very ideas of higher education have become so perverted and so driven by money that merit and ability have simply vanished from the scene.
18
Colleges foremost are places to receive an education. Currently they also provide a venue for those with great athletic ability to display their talents. Many students get there because of sports scholarships.
But what if the colleges adopted a pure merit based system designed to select students for academic ability while also eliminating legacy students unless they measure up academically.
I mean one goes to college to get a degree in business, engineering, science, etc. They don't offer degrees for football or basketball. If one wants a physical education degree you don't need to be a sports star.
There are enough students from around the world that curently apply that have earned top marks to replace nearly all the students currently admitted that earn their way in from sports.
Would the public favor a system void of college sports stars in favor of only admitting students based on academic achievement.
With a strictly merit based approach colleges could choose to eliminate affirmative action based admissions.
There are many questions and unknown answers to how society and the colleges would be affected if merit based on academics was the main criteria.
@A P
I understand that football and basketball at many colleges bring in the donations that pay for all the sports, and encourage alumni to donate to the school. Blame people for being so superficial.
1
@Michael
Alumni at big D1 schools are a big part of the problem. Try getting hired as a President of a major university after telling the hiring committee that you think sports is overshadowing the academic mission of the school and should be de-emphasized.
1
There has been a degradation of our secondary school experience in America for many years – long before the recently uncovered scandals.
We have shoved to the background the joy of discovering the larger world, the history of the people who inhabit the world, the development of their cultures, the fascinating secrets of science and mathematics, the rich literature over centuries and the trove of so much other accumulated knowledge.
More importantly, children have been discouraged from learning how to learn. That means that our young people have been deprived of honing skills in what ought to be a lifetime process.
In place of true education, we have substituted a regimen of building resumes to impress the anonymous arbiters in college placement offices.
5
Instead of obsessing on which 1% of students get into a handful of elite schools,how about working on making a perfectly good college affordable for the other 49%. There are hundreds of state schools where one can get a very good education, let's make that widely available, without massive debt. While were at it let's work on an affordable option for the other 50% who don't go to college but need some sort of post High School training. Why do the problems of the 1% always get more attention the the other 99%.
13
@Bob
As a former skilled tradesman and a career counselor-this is the best overall comment I have readon the subject at hand! I applaud your logic, too much already about the golden parachutes and media driven "eliteness news".
we didn't do any of this. in fact, I was totally against this. We did not have a "superstar" son but even if we did, I wouldn't have wanted to him to go through this. Where is he now? He is in a liberal arts college that caters to B students. He has a variety of interests that he is pursuing. He is doing fine in school. He has friends, he is happy. He has been interviewing and getting jobs over kids from much much more competitive schools. He knows how to show up on time and how to work. So who is going to do better in life? That is my question. Will he be the wealthiest? No, but will he have a better life? I would bet my retirement on it.
7
@Janet by the way, I would also like to point out that 5 of the kids in my kids middle school private school (he went to public high school) who went on to private high school have flamed out of college altogether where our kid just chugs along.
1
The GI Bill helped plenty of returning WW2 soldiers obtain an education. However, it did not go far enough. There were not enough college seats and some worthy GI's were ineligible. There were racial barriers. GI's soon learned the difference between and Ivy and a public college: connections and opportunity. These GI's then taught their children, the Boomers, the importance of the right college, starting entirely new industries, like test prep. The problem is now on steroids. Public Universities have to spend millions to build fountains and other non educational symbols in order to "attract students" and "make parents happy". Student Unions are like resorts. A mediocre student can be tutored into an Ivy, and that same mediocre student will have a much better chance of going to medical school. Better doctors, or worse? Undergraduate grades are expected, not earned. Fortune 500 companies may endow an Ivy, and when they do, will they prefer a new hire from an Ivy, or a public college? "Internships" are another source of stratification, awarded based on connections, and possible for students who have enough money to work for free. The system is broken. The public wants change. How will University Presidents respond? With more slick branding?
1
Wealth and fame. The roots of this scandal are also what ails our society. I suppose we should feel progress in that we are no longer competing for food, shelter, life and death. Today's students will eventually wake up to the truth that five years into a career, it matters not one whit where you went to college. You are either making it on the basis of your smarts and how you apply that education, or you have already flamed out. Universities should, as some already have, abandon the SAT and ACT, as well as AP courses - all of which are meaningless metrics for discriminating between applicants in a rigged system. All of this money would be better spent on insuring rigor in high school curricula, and equity in education. And, all things being equal, if a student is not an academic success in high school under that system, they do not belong at an elite university, and by elite, I would include most state's flagship land-grant colleges. It should never be who you know and how much you have that prevails over who you are. Adults in this room, please step up.
1
In the absence of college admissions based on merit achievement and/or test scores and grades, what other system would Frank Bruni suggest?
The only three I can think of are 1.) lottery, 2.) racial discrimination or 3.) a socialist approach where we just let everybody go to any university of choice as a matter of right with the government paying for it (likely to produce exceptional chaos).
1
Being a social worker, I have always been drawn to community service for its intrinsic value. Thus I was shocked to hear a mother of a high school senior frame her daughter's community volunteering as something that would look good on her college applications. The message that she is giving her daughter is very sad. Do whatever it takes to get to the college of choice; don't take time to actually process the experiences and learn from them. How many other students are taught that same lesson and what kind of a future will they create when it is their turn?
5
@Janet
Some substance abusers ordered to rehab discover the skills and ideas to stop the addiction cycle, and some do not. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons can still sometimes lead to a better result.
How much of the fault lies with the elite colleges themselves who reject 95% of qualified applicants and have created this process? Why haven't these schools expanded to meet demand as our population has grown and the percentage of America going to college as jumped as the same time? The answer is because they cherish their super elite status and are indifferent to the collateral damage it causes.
7
My first daughter is about to graduate from a fine school in Boston that is neither Harvard nor MIT. It was the highest ranked school she got into and I think she got in mostly because she had excellent (but not perfect) SAT scores (she had a tutor) and great but not perfect grades.
She also had the full list checked off: sports, music, student government and volunteer work.
She was motivated to do the volunteer work and student government for her college resume. Her student government participation was a joke. But the volunteer work, first in a retirement home (she would come home and tell us stories) and then creating and running a fund raiser event, was real. In fact, the event she created is very close to the career path she's about to embark upon. So, even though the initial motivation for creating the event was for college entrance (and as it turned out, we don't think the school cared about it all), it ended up being one of the best things she did for herself in high school and will remain a highlight on her resume for years after graduating college.
My daughter knows she's privileged because she has supportive parents and (amazingly) no college debt. But she also knows that she got into school on her own merits and that her career will be her own as well. She's stands confident and proud on her own two feet. You can't bribe your kid into feeling that.
5
My wife worked for many years in a Scottsdale middle school and she would sometimes hear this note of oblivious entitlement from some students. "You don't understand. I don't need to study. My family is rich."
4
I agree with this but didn't affirmative action teach us the lesson that admissions need not be by merit? Whether it is for political reasons or for money, an unfair system is an unfair system.
2
@Ludwig. How little you understand affirmative action and the selective admissions process!
I am not sure that the feeding frenzy that is the application process to our elite schools is all that routine for most of our talented academic students. It isn't even on the chart for most of our student population. That's reality when 19 out of 20 people face rejection.
For a very few, the need to get into an elite school drives every decision; but for most, it is the need to get into a good school at a cost the family can bear. They work hard to get scholarships and grants to the schools they have liked best. If they are like my kids, they've been told to fall in love with a state school too, because that might be all we could afford.
And for the rest of the student body - the ones who are not academically oriented, who need the credentials more than the actual education, who have fewer and fewer good employment opportunities without advanced education? They just want to get the next 4 years over with. Or they look forward to four years of party time before they have to grow up.
For all the angst, the elite schools are not even on the radar for most of our future doctors and nurses and small business owners and educators and researchers and engineers or architects or small law practices or financial planners and CPAs. Getting to the next step on the ladder is.
5
I was born in Canada and went to University of Toronto. All three of our kids went back to Canada to University (they were born there) after attending public schools in PA. There was a single common admissions application (as there was in the 70's when I applied) that went to the 3 schools of their choice. There were essays, required, but my two sons had no athletic achievements (sports were not a factor in admission except as evidence of "rounded" experience). One son only applied to the top school, the other kids to 3 top schools and they all got into the school of their choice. We paid Canadian resident fees so this was not about the U making more on our kids. The level of stress that the kids went through seemed high to me in any case, but it was more because their friends were freaking out about what school they got into, and Canada announces placements much later than US schools. I knew all of the kids would get into a good school. The fear that was transmitted by their friends in this period was shocking to me. I have heard that the admission industry is growing in Canada. I hope it doesn't destroy a good, and fair system.
1
Having served on a selective Ivy + board of trustees for more than a decade, I have found that higher ed suffers from a combination of supreme arrogance, elitism, and a level of presumptive self-righteousness not found in other parts of society. The same group of faculty will lecture the board on a demand for diversity in students while fighting reforms to tenure which inherently limits diversity, they complain about the need for access and affordability while failing to recognize that it is their very salaries and refusal to restructure the operations of a university/college (labor is 60% of the cost structure) that drives unaffordability. Perhaps the most galling is the demand that students need to chill and be happy with where they are accepted. Unlike most of society, the number of slots in top tier of schools IS a zero sum game. Privates in particular refuse to disclose who is allowed to get into the club which actually creates the very thing that Bruni is complaining about. Schools (e.g. Duke) are increasingly destroying their admissions records in anticipation of litigation. If you want to change the behavior of parents/students, force universities to disclose the EXACT criteria for acceptance - grades, gender, race, legacy, price, sports, etc. We can then both know how to prepare AND debate the merits of how they run their private clubs
14
Chris, thank you for this comment and sharing your opinion based on your vantage as a member of a board of trustees. You are exactly right!
5
@Chris
Very good point. I think "holistic" really means "we don't want to be pinned down - we're going to keep you guessing and just do whatever we want, and don't want to have to explain what we do. But please, apply, so we can reject you - that helps our stats
7
@Chris Wait, you assert that faculty salaries at Ivy League schools are driving the high cost of tuition? Really? That is a little hard to believe. To my knowledge, they are not paid, on average, a premium of sufficient magnitude over faculty salaries at state institutions for this to be true.
Second, it simply is not possible to disclose the EXACT criteria for acceptance as there are no exact criteria. That is the source of the frustration for many people.
Finally, what is the alternative to encouraging students to be happy with where they accepted? Should they spend lifetimes resenting their rejection, convinced their entire life paths have been destroyed? Whether the system is fully fair or entirely corrupt (or somewhere in between), the lesson for young adults HAS to be to accept the result and move on. There is such randomness that it does not help to take these rejections personally, although surely it feels personal in the immediate aftermath.
1
Let's not exaggerate to make a point. And let's not isolate college entrance from the rest of society's gates.
Getting through the gates is a major factor in our society. So change that or train your kids to get through. Don 't pick out colleges' gates as being the exception.
And parents trying to provide their kids with as much as they can has its good side. Forcing them to do community service, introducing them to music and art, encouraging them to play sports, etc. is good so long as it is done right -- and each child's parents need to figure out what is best for their kinds, while not doing that at the expense of others'. It ain't easy. Parents need guides for this -- and our society does not provide many good ones.
That college students now primarily think about following recipes for "success" is a product of the media, conservative think tanks that promote vocational (not investigation of history, literature, art, etc.) training and demean liberal arts education. Colleges are pressured to show their graduates' employment and earning records, not their contribution to society or their character.
So let's separate blanket criticism of child-rearing in today's America and let's instead analyze and try to adjust our society's great flaws -- maybe some universal child-care and health care, fair taxes, higher minimum wage, and full-fledged democracy would be a starting point.
5
It's not just schools it's employers and lenders to entrepreneurs. Just look at our own central bank and justice dept who now has a "too big to fail" "too big to jail" tag on virtually anyone working and anything being traded on Wall St. Nothing is allowed to fail if a $dollar$ bill is attached to the equation.
5
An apprenticeship program at one of America’s largest banks selects 200 upperclass college students for a two-year training program, winnowing the herd to only 25 after that trial period in which they experience different aspects of banking, finally offering them permanent jobs.
My son was one of those finalists who launched his successful finance career with that bank. He competed against other students from Harvard, Yale, Brown and numerous elite colleges though his degree was only from a public, state-run university.
Most of the candidates from the Ivy’s were not ultimately selected from the program to go on the permanent payroll. “How could that be?”, I asked my son.
“They felt that they didn’t need to work hard”, my son replied, “since they had attended these elite schools.” He recounted numerous stories of their laziness and entitled attitudes, off-putting many of their student colleagues from “lesser” universities as well as the professional bankers overseeing the apprenticeship program. It was a profound lesson for my son who saw firsthand the entitled arrogance that often surrounds matriculation to these big-name schools.
17
It might benefit those who have been rejected from the "top schools" to realize that many of those who have been accepted are not better students, just richer ones. Buying acceptance and maybe even buying grades puts people of questionable character in high places. Does anyone believe that our president got into Wharton on his merit?
9
Thank you for eloquently saying exactly what I think. As a professional that works in a public high school and in the college admissions process, and a parent of adolescent children that are applying to college, my goals for my children are not about tangible things. I told them that in high school I wanted them to learn to work hard, solve problems, build relationships and have fun. That was it. I did not want them stressed about college admissions.
The problem with my recipe for succes is that it is not a formula to get into an elite school. For kids that live on the Acela corridor, there is not much room for error in their high school career (and that is a problem right there, that we have started calling the years of secondary education a career) Any mistakes can knock you off the narrow path one must walk to be admitted to a school with a sub 10% admit rate.
I see kids selling their adolescent souls trying to gain admission to ultra-selective colleges and I hate it. And if they don’t get in, they have paid a hefty price.
6
@LHL
It's really unfortunate that students and their parents fail to appreciate that there are many excellent colleges and universities that they've probably never heard of, many of which happen to be located in the Midwest and South. It's a reminder to me that, for these students and their parents, social status and access to potentially lucrative networks is what they really value. Education is secondary.
Neither of my parents were college graduates. I attended public schools and my high school did not even have a college advisor. I chose the three colleges to which I applied by reading catalogs in the school library. All three were in New York State because I had qualified for a partial state scholarship of a few hundred dollars. I was fortunate enough to be accepted by an “elite” college (Columbia), which also awarded me a partial scholarship (which I have “repaid” several times over with donations since graduating). I still had to take out student loans and work during the school year and summers to pay for tuition and board, which I would not have had to do had I attended a state or city school, which were free at the time. It meant that I had less time to study and no time for extra curricular activities.
Was it worth it? I may have received a comparable education from another college, but the degree from Columbia opened doors to me professionally that a degree from a state university simply would not have—and that is still the case for graduates today.
All of our Supreme Court justices are graduates of just four Ivy League schools. Many law firms and businesses recruit only from the top schools. Medical schools and other graduate schools take into consideration the quality and standing of the undergraduate college in their acceptance process.
Unfortunately, that is the reality that drives the college admissions rat race.
5
It is possible to be happy and fulfilled without a high-profile job obtained through “connections.”
I have been dealing with students for years who seeking that "recipe for success" in each class they take. They want to know what it will take to get an A. My standard answer is "excellence," which many think is some kind of joke. They've been taught, or so I assume, that if they check all the right boxes an A will result. Life is a college admission application, I guess.
8
I agree completely with Mr. Bruni about the damage done to young people by the lifelong college admissions gantlet. I'm even more concerned about the point that he expends the least effort to develop: "many of them will — by dint of their backgrounds, ambitions and, yes, talents — be tomorrow’s leaders." The ease with which the credential of an Ivy League education opens doors is itself a problem, for all of us. When that door shuts in the face of people with more talent but degrees from less prestigious institutions, we all lose.
4
Yes, for sure. Thank you for saying this so well.
My own failure to get into the elite college of my dreams taught me that the world is filled with many more smart, dedicated students than I’d thought. I did well at the state school I attended (well enough to attend an elite graduate program), but I was by no means the best student in my classes. Today I am a tenured faulty member at an elite college. My college experience taught me not judge others based on their pedigree, and I believe this has made me better at my job. Sadly this is a lesson that some who gain admission to elite colleges miss out on.
7
I wonder how many of those who are incensed, or who participated, in this admissions scandal were also those who took dubious steps to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War.
3
@Alec FRASER yes because trying to avoid killing or being killed is morally akin to leveraging obscene amounts of power and wealth - often unearned and almost always undeserved - to get your kids admitted into a particular college or university.
A better analogy is between the entitled parents and kids who participated in Operation Varsity Blues and the entitled politicians and their media cheerleaders who, due to political expediency or greed, blithely send other people's children to kill or be killed.
The best thing parents can do for their kids is to utterly ignore the elite schools -- there are more than enough excellent state universities and non-label schools out there which I would argue would provide as good, if not better, education. By doing so, their kids may really follow their own passions, rather than prescribed ones that may lead to the golden ticket, and, in the end will likely do better and be happier for it.
13
@R1NA
UC Berkeley is ranked by many as having the best faculty in many areas from English to Engineering. It is relatively affordable for in state tuition, and very competitive. It does not give a lot of stress on legacy admissions.
@Michael
Sounds good but I’d put it among the elite category aka gotta do supernatural stuff to get admitted. That’s not to say that ignoring the elite schools means your kids won’t get in or shouldn’t go if they do, I’m saying getting in shouldn’t be the all consuming goal.
1
The mania is really about certain high paying employers hiring from certain schools. And the middling students from those schools getting better jobs than the best students from others.
9
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see President Trump’s college transcripts, or his application essay to Wharton?
A few things everyone is missing. The system has problems, but fifty clearly fraudulent applications is statistically nothing, outright fraud is not a major problem. Also, the SAT is a great leveler, it's the one thing where poor kids are on a relatively level playing field (look, I got a 770 on the GMAT by buying a test prep book for twenty bucks and studying for three weeks, we could make a big difference just by giving every eleventh grader a test prep book). But the real problem: the discrepancies in elementary education. Poor kids in poor school districts end up getting a lousy education, not only harming their college prospects but their intellectual development from the get-go. Oh, and just my experience, Ivy professors and students scorn genuinely poor people, I was shocked at the class snobbism at Dartmouth and Georgetown.
28
@Mark Nuckols
It isn’t just fifty applications. Singer admitted in court he worked with 750 families. It stands to reason there are others offering a “side door” into elite institutions. I hope DOJ pursues them so the full extent of the fraud is revealed.
19
@Lynn in DC
OK, so let's multiply 750 by four, so 3000 corrupted applications over a period of several years. That's still a minuscule number overall. Outright fraud is not the big problem, as I explained.
I wish I could recommend this comment 50 times. In spite of there being more than a few examples of this fraud, it is still statistically insignificant. But it is culturally very significant, since it symbolizes the unfairness and distorted values of much of this country, and it hits hard. Yes, non-elite state and private colleges ones do excellent service . And those of us who graduate from them and succeed know that we have come by thsi honestly.
2
And that’s the wrong thing to be wanting. Recipes create cooks. They don’t produce chefs.”
The world needs a lot more cooks than they need chefs.
5
@abo
I thought this was the best quote of Mr. Bruni's opinion piece. It gives credence to the idea that the individual has the right to explore their own thoughts and ideas, not just a checklist of pre-determined must-do-to-get-ahead activities. Parental control at the level indicated by this scandal strips the right of the child to discover his or her self and to develop a personal path that leads to true original thought and (as much as I hate the word) creativity. This is what separates the wheat from the chaff. It also prepares one for what life in the real world actually is: difficult, competitive, but full of possibilities for those who are agile and prepared enough to pursue them. I'm not at all knocking the cooks in the world, but I wouldn't want to take away anyone's dream to be a chef.
8
Mr Bruni
This is a casebook case of corruption calling corruption.
What to expect from 'desperate' college applicants ready to compromise all of their values in order to be accepted by one of the most mendacious and morally bankrupt institutions in American society : the American university.
Could anyone imagine the outcry were other sources of fixed expenses -- health care, local government, as two examples-- led to impose annual extortionate price/fiscal hikes on the same level as US universities ? It beggars belief to see how supposedly sophisticated and affluent Americans cannot see through the veil of deception and admit this perpetual swindle being played upon hapless youth from every horizon.
Definitely deserving of a congressional investigation, in a parallel universe where conscientious lawmakers may 'exist'...
16
Would not an easy first step be to make graduation more difficult and important than admission? Is the academic level of all the students who are graduating conformed to the standards the college claims to have? If these standards were severely enforced by teachers, and if mediocre students were weeded out and denied graduation, may be there will be less enthusiasm for parents to have their kids accepted, and the reputation of the schools themselves would be enhanced. I have read somewhere in these columns that there was more academic diversity within an elite school than between the best students of elite and "second-rate" schools. Being more severe on graduation would make that obvious
8
@Daniel Roussel I agree. With the US system I always had the impression, that once you were admitted at a prestigious university, you were essentially set for life. In Germany (just as an example) admission just gave you a seat in the classroom, nothing more. And there were some courses (math comes to mind) which had exam fail rates of 90% and higher, just to weed out as many people as possible to avoid overcrowding of the advanced courses.
An unpleasant experience in the first 2 years, but in the end probably fairer than the US system.
12
@Hans Normal
This thread needs statistics, not anecdotes, though I'll toss in one more of the latter. I've lived in Japan for over 30 years and teach at a private university. Back when I first arrived, the common meme was that Japanese universities were difficult to enter, but easy to graduate once accepted. As a result, college students didn't study much for classes since they had already spent so many years in admission test cram schools just to make it this far. In contrast, the same meme said the opposite about America, namely, college (in general, not the elite ivies) was easy to enter, but difficult to graduate, i.e., you had to study more once you got "that seat in the classroom." In fact, this meme is still commonly believed. A poster in my school library describes a gulf between the high amount of weekly reading required by U.S. college classes compared to the low level here in Japan.
Part of the difference in the situation as you observe it may be in the academic level of the universities—or majors—being compared. There are plenty of four-year U.S. schools with 90-100% admission rates.
1
@Daniel Roussel -- the private universities all tend to have their legacy shames: Yale is stuck with GWB and Kavanaugh. Harvard took Teddy Kennedy back for law school after he'd been thrown out as an undergrad ...and an enormous donation from the Kennedy family. Wharton is stuck with Trump, even though he only went there as an undergrad.
There's a snarky comment attributed to Mark Twain that likely predates him: "Blessed is the Harvard man who says "when I went to college.'"
The fact of the matter is that in most fields were talent is directly evident and measurable the best people come from all over, and nobody cares where you went to school.
It's only in the clubby worlds of wealth, status and to some degree politics and law that where you got your degree matters.
4
The skewed goals described here are certainly a danger, but are they the norm? Our experience with our eldest child, who went to Cambridge, was completely the opposite. They had a strategy and goals, but of their own making. In spite of the grade stress, they loved what they learned in high school. We had no connections, modest resources, and did not program them in any way. Let's not forget that there are many students like that.
9
You quote from the Harvard draft report, "Many young people become cynical both about a system that seems unfair and divorced from their interests, and about the adults who created it."
That sounds like the beginning of disillusionment, which is often the necessary first step toward change. Younger generations excel at recognizing the folly of older generations, sooner or later.
5
The population is increasing, the need for a college degree has increased, and there are more college-bound atudents than ever.
So why do we still have the same old list of elite schools that we had before? Even without the legacies and cheating, those schools can't possibly admit *everyone* who belongs there. So it becomes a contest of micropoints between nearly equally superlative candidates.
There lies madness. One thing we need is to expand the idea of an elite school beyond those that were established back in the days when only "gentlemen" attended universities.
19
@Patricia
For selective schools if you took the top ten percent of the students rejected and accepted them, they would do as well or better than the students the school accepted. The process is deeply subjective and flawed and those in it realize that is true.
It's not the "same old" at all. The featured role it played in "The Exorcist" boosted Georgetown into the sacred sanctum.
The admissions scandal actually sheds light to a larger societal problem which is that unless one is part of the top 10%, preferably the top 1%, one’s life is likely going to be tough at every point. Given this stark contrast between the haves and have nots, it is not a surprise that many try to exploit any advantage, legal or not, ethical or not, for their children’s education so that they have every chance to make it to the haves. Only a few want their children to get educated so that they are wholesome contributing members of society. The economic risk of doing so is increasingly high. Thus we cannot discuss education and it’s role unless we are willing to look at the polarized societal context.
6
But please remember, at the same time, that the fundamental message we give to kids and each other is that college is how you get the credentials for a better job and thus a better life. We don't often present it as an opportunity to be awakened to the wonders of the world, except in commencement addresses.
It's hard to hear that message, along with the competitive reality of college and the work world, and not have young people look at it as just that.
6
"... education isn’t an opportunity to wring more meaning from life and make a more constructive impact on the world. It’s transactional."
As this Faustian bargain becomes the norm for parents and students, so it also does for educational administrators.
Meanwhile, teachers have become the designated yet disrespected maestros of the whole mess--little wonder most leave the profession after half a dozen years for better playing transactions.
3
I graduated from high school in 1970. Dumont High School in Bergen County, NJ. Went to Montclair State College, now University. Best my parents could afford. I got a swell education. Then got my MBA from Rutgers. I still managed to live on the UES and work with a lot of Ivy Leaguers. I never felt the least bit inferior in my education and my knowledge.
19
@Edward Likely Some of those Ivy leaguers report to me. And believe me Montclair would have been a set up for me. Academic showmanship is no indicator of delivery in the workplace.
9
Everything you say is true, especially the corruption of life in high school. It should be a time for risk taking and growth and learning, the transition into adulthood. But, let's not blame it on the kids. They are responding to the incentives of the world they live in including a perception that it is a world that amplifies winners and losers, an uneven playing field in which the scales are tipped to those who already have the very most. Harvard speaks far more loudly with its legacy and development admits and athletic programs dominated by wealthy white children than it does with any commissioned report on caring.
3
We grew up with the learning that if we went to good schools we could be successful in our lives; the recent saga at Yale, et al, teaches us very wrongly that if you are successful you could send your kids to good schools, not a very good denouement as far as principles go.
More than that, the definition of success is itself skewed in this process.
Success cannot be defined by the measure of passing through a narrow door by any means.
Success cannot be that unless you win you have failed, then by that count you are teaching your kid that better not venture into an initiative where chances of failure is high.
Statistically success is a chance event with a low probability whereas failure could be as close to certainty if you are a small percentage of the population.
Think of college admissions itself, what percentage is your chance of success, surely low if you go by the statistical probability of the unknown mass of applicants with unknown credentials. But your child would be undeterred by statistics and would put the best into the essay as if her life depended on it. So the effort that goes in even for a highly improbable result is far higher. This is where outcomes deviate from statistical expectations.
But suppose you teach your child that what only counts is winning, you are imbibing values that would take her away from peers, community, the stakeholders who must work in concert to make her achieve results in life. Nothing in life is achieved by working alone.
3
This goes hand-in-hand with universities being ran as businesses. Administrators proliferate, huge amounts of money is poured into athletics, while full-time faculty are reduced in numbers, paid less, and forced to do the work that used to be done by several of them. Of course, they scramble mightily to acquire grants and publish as many papers as possible, often at the expense of originality. They don't want to end up as their less fortunate brethren who live as adjuncts, on poverty wages and without security, prospects for advancement, or respect.
As a grad student, I briefly worked in a center the purpose of which was to help athletes pass their courses. The work was far from just tutoring. We had to help them figure out their schedule and write it down in great detail (like, when do I work on this homework, and when do I prepare for that exam). It turned out I was very wrong to try to help thesem learn how to make their own schedule, and gradually get on their own feet. They were never meant to be bothered to do these basic things for themselves. They were babied as if they were middle school students. But they won considerable prestige to the university, a large, flagship state institution.
In the face of all these ways in which purely academic pursuits are devalued, how can we expect the students and their parents to remain unaffected? Nearly everything in America is a business nowadays. People even elected a president who promised to run the country as a business.
13
@Jane ALL non-profits, higher ed, churches etc, should be treated as businesses. Donations, whatever they are called, should not be tax deductible, and be treated as ‘taxable income’ to the institution.
5
@Jane,
"The business of America is business". A quote by Calvin Coolidge.
But America is also very creative in so many ways which is what impresses and inspires me the most.
If you lose that creativity it would be your greatest loss.
2
This hand wringing is getting tiresome. Some of the most authentic kids I've ever met, my daughter included, were accepted to Ivies. They attended public high schools. They were not marketed, packaged, mini corporations. They were and are bright students with curious minds, ready to engage with the world. For the most part, this is what gains you entrance to the elite schools. To think otherwise insults a large population of students who worked hard, and on their own.
7
@Bill Prange,
Honestly - good for her if she truly is, but don't these charges hope to prove that is not the case for a probably significant number of students?
If you are together enough and bright enough at that age, and let's face it, rich enough too (not a minor point) then it definitely is a great opportunity to go to such a school. It would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to have teachers of the caliber that the ivies can afford, especially in the professional schools.
I've worked in the architectural field in a number of large and small cities and I do not however see the specific university people attended as having any noticeable impact on success or talent. In fact world-wide many of the most influential architects have no university education at all.
6
@Matthew It seems, so far, these charges are leveled against a small population: the very wealthy. I'm not part of it. My daughter chose Yale because their financial aid package was the best. She would have been just as happy at Cal. Or at a state school. And as one who has tutored high school kids for years, I bang the drum for the community college route. I agree wholeheartedly, and said as much in another post, that the drive and intelligence you bring to the school, not the school itself, is what counts. A close friend is a successful doctor who teaches at Stanford, and who attended our local junior college at the start of his journey. I could name many other successes who graduated from state universities. As for architecture, I've always found it interesting that Frank Lloyd Wright lied about going to Harvard. Clearly, he didn't need Harvard to be brilliant, but he believed he needed their name for a fair chance. Possibly. In those days. And that's what has to stop. The Ivies are terrific schools. They should confer no extra educational cachet.
1
Once again, Mr Bruni succinctly presents the heart of the matter. Thank you for saying what needs to be said.
2
Are we really surprised?
Students who can not throw a ball, or run fast. Do not get special treatment.
Students who don't have wealthy parents, mostly of white heritage don't get special treatment.
Higher ed is just society in magnification.
The rich and the jocks always prevail
And to our detriment.
Values matter,.
But again, no college or university has a major in values and principles.
7
I would like to say sometimes it is not the fault of the student's parents that they are desperate to get into an Ivy equivalent school. My daughter was very disappointed that she didn't get into Penn, Yale etc. even though I told her several times that nobody will recall where she went to school two years after she graduates. But there was so much peer pressure from her high school classmates and the school, by heralding how many they got into prestigious schools, that she didn't listen. I personally think she is very talented and will succeed no matter where she goes but try telling a teenage that.
7
I realize this isn’t the crux of this piece but...there are many places and ways to be awakened to the wonders of the natural world and unfortunately the typical HS biology class is not it.
That’s part of the problem-the educational system beginning in elementary school. It often deadens a love of learning. It’s often a series of tests that may or may not accurate assess the students. It’s a series of hoops the students have to pass through so it’s not surprise the kids view it as “nothing” if it fails to get them to their next perceived stepping stone.
9
I’m surprised to read so few comments on the negative impact of the Common App. Students used to apply to 2-3 schools. In 2007, I applied to 7 and that was largely regarded as overkill. Now, it’s normal for students to apply to more than a dozen schools if they can afford the fees because the Common App is so easy to fill out. Status isn’t just about where you go — it’s about where you get in. The quickest way to make admissions more competitive is to simplify the application process. Bring back individual applications per school and you’ll see the application rates drop. Why? Because filling out 16 different applications would be a drag and take time out of the “average” teenager’s day of being president of 3 clubs, 2 sports teams, volunteering at the hospital pathology lab, and working on their budding technology startups in addition to completing AP homework.
16
There's a lot of baby in the bathwater. Lots of kids are learning amazing numbers of things, and doing amazing things. They may be learning and doing for the wrong reasons, but that's pretty usual in education. It's why we give grades. What they learn will make a difference to a lot of them later.
As for the elite schools -- the truth is you learn most from your classmates, and the concentration of brilliance into a critical mass is a good thing. Those schools should not be watering down that intensity by taking frauds of any sort (legacies included). But I would much rather have my kid go to Yale than to an excellent community college because at Yale she'll be exposed to an intellectual intensity hard to replicate anywhere else in life.
The attack on elite institutions that you -- and the entire NY Times (which doesn't seem to regard itself as just one of a whole lot of excellent newspapers, some with a lot better journalists, right?) -- are pressing is anti-intellectual.
10
With all respect, I gently suggest that there are bright, motivated, creative students at schools other than the “name” schools. The SUNY schools are a good example—there are hard-working young adults there whose parents are not wealthy, perhaps not even college grads, and just can’t afford the tuition of the more elite colleges and universities.
1
Elite education really is or has become transactional. But why be coy about it? These institutions should start offering majors in Instagram influencing.
6
Should we be surprised in a dog-eat-dog admission process when corporations and government encourage this in their hiring process.?
And should we be surprised in the results by the behaviors we see in CEO and government officials who are products of these admissions process?
17
The essays the students were required to submit for admission:
.
"Midway through the semester, I realized that many of them hadn’t turned in an assignment with as much polish and energy as that essay."
.
Frank Bruni: Did you wonder whether those admisson essays were actually written by the students applying - or by someone who "helped".
11
@HH My thoughts exactly.
The current awful picture in college admissions isn't mainly the fault of bad parents or bad schools. When I was applying to college in 1965, there were about 180,000,000 Americans. Now there are about 300,000,000. But MIT and Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley aren't twice the size; we'd need twice the classrooms, twice the dorm beds, and twice the faculty to admit every student we would have admitted 50 years ago. Ultimately, that would mean twice the money.
Yes, students can go to a less famous college and get a great education, maybe even a better one. But the non-famous colleges don't have twice the budget and twice the real estate they had back then either. In particular, funding for public colleges and universities is less, not more, than it was in the Sputnik days when everyone understood the importance of education to society.
Harvard could double in size if they chose. Their endowment is obscenely large. But for the rest of us, even the other Ivies, that's just not an option. To be honest, even if we could, I don't think any of the best-known universities would want to double the size of their faculty overnight. There aren't that many great researchers getting their Ph.D.s in a single year. We would prefer slow growth.
But with state funding at current levels, either we raise tuition, which would again keep out excellent but needy students, or we don't grow at all. (And yes, too much of the money is wasted on administration and pro sports teams. Still.)
20
@Brian Harvey
Had the same thought the other day and did a little math.
Stanford's undergraduate admission rate is now under 5%. Its undergraduate population has increased about 25% since the 1960's while, as you say, the nation's population has grown by more than 80% in the same period.
Sent that thought to one of my privileged sons, who promptly pointed out to his old man that in that same interval women and minority applicants to elite universities have also increased out of proportion to the general population growth.
In short, the elite school keyhole all these young people are trying to squeeze through is proportionally much smaller than when you and I attended college.
Two implications occur immediately.
Admission to elite schools has always partaken of playing the lottery, but today regardless of a student's record, the numbers say his or her chances of admission to one of these schools diminishes year by year.
Maybe one reason anyway to be grateful for my age. Today, I'd have no chance of winning that lottery even if the president's manor had my family's name on it.
7
@Brian Harvey. Have you ever been to Cambridge MA? Just where would you have Harvard expand? The clouds? Yale did build two new residential colleges that opened just this year. Cornell has been in a battle for years with Ithaca, trying to build more dorms,
Many of these schools are land-locked - there is simply no place to expand. Even if they could, the atmosphere would change. If people love the idea of a huge university experience, they go to one of the huge state universities that have tens of thousands of students.
1
P.S. I do not speak for the university, just for myself. (Forgot to say that.)
Admission committees at the very selective colleges are the primary driving force behind this race to pad the college application with activities many of which are meaningless. High school students have this need to fill their spare time with activities just to impress colleges. The whole college rankings system has gotten out of control.
6
What happened to the joy of learning? Today everything seems to be a status driven selfish pursuit.
It is truly life changing when that wonderful day arrives and your mind lights up and a natural curiosity about all things becomes a lifelong companion.
Not where you went to school, how you fared in competition with others in your class, but the pure outright delight of seeing and understanding our world and devoting a life sustaining hunger for ever more knowledge.
In the 60s, for me, in American literature Roth, Updike, and Mailer shone a spotlight on the times and the culture we lived in. When a new book from these three landed on the spinning turnstiles of bookstores it was eagerly plucked from its wire cage to be devoured in the private sanctum of your room.
Todays value system for success can be is a sterile place where passion and joy cannot exist.
13
@Babel The word "success" has come to provoke a feeling of revulsion in me, as does "progress". I can speculate on why, but at this stage it's muddled.
So what criteria would you use for "merit" in these highly competitive schools? A long time ago the SAT and similar tests were introduced as way to create a more merit based objective system for admissions, and they partly served to do this. But not SATs and other testing are very much out of style and intensely criticized. Schools don't just want academic "nerds", they want "well-rounded" types, opening up a very subjective admissions process and allowing for all kinds of influences.
8
I applaud Bruni. He is right about much of the madness of confusing the admissions chase with the goal of what an education should be. But consider his conclusion: "They [fellow faculty at Princeton] explained that what many students glean from the admissions madness is that the supreme achievement — for which you tap your fiercest energy and summon your best self — is breaching an exclusive sanctum, getting through a narrow door. What you do inside the room pales in importance." It may pale but may I respectfully speculate that these same students walk away with top marks in their classes and, probably, letters of recommendation that at least glow, if not burst with accolades. If a study could be made of every student who cheated (with or without her or his knowledge) to get into a prestige school, how many would we find when they graduated (I assume most graduate) with transcripts dappled with "Cs"? So what lesson does this teach our young non-scholars?
I am an old parent raised in the 70s and had no clue of the cut throat insane competiton for colleges. My eldest son is a brilliant young man and that is not just my opinion but those of many others. I raised him to focus in his strengths and not his weaknesses. I encouraged him to try things to spend time of friendships and relationships to use the time as a teenager to be a teenager. He never cheated did all his own work. Had respect of his teachers his classmates and members of the community. I often think i blew it.
3
Wonderful column. In this and other comment sections about this, I’ve noticed that many people are very comfortable talking about their gifted but poor kid who worked hard and ended up in an Ivy or thereabouts, not so many anecdotes about their mid-stream kid, who ended up fine too after attending a middling state school.
14
Let’s hear it for the happy ordinary people!
Exactly why when my daughter told me one summer she wanted to study for high SAT scores and 3 AP classes, I said no more. You are not going to an elite college. I will not have you living as you will have to for 3 yrs to attain that. My job as parent was to turn out a healthy, balanced, functioning adult. She went on to find St. Johns - the great books school. What a fabulous education and experience. Best thing that ever happened for her.
15
The most important question implied but not answered in this column is: how did we get to this point? What's driving this madness. People care about getting into "a good school" because hiring managers, clients, voters, & others conflate the prestige of the school with the quality of those who attended. Part of this scam is driven by privileging athletes over scholars. Another part by demanding that all of our universities reflect the diversity of our population when this isn't always practical or relevant. But the main driver of this insanity is the admission policies of our top colleges. You'll frequently hear admissions folks talk about how their process is "holistic," but what exactly does this mean for an applicant? Who knows? Turns out it's pretty arbitrary. Good grades & a perfect SAT score are no longer a guarantee. Under a holistic admissions policy, a student with a 3.9 GPA gets turned down while an award-winning tuba player with a 3.2 GPA gets accepted. The student who was the Chess Club President might get preference over the student who had higher ACT scores. No wonder our kids are stressed out. Holistic admissions adds irrational subjectivity to admissions decisions. The practice makes it impossible to explain who gets in, who doesn't, and why. Holistic admissions become a guise for allowing cultural and even racial biases to dictate the admissions process. This nonsense has to stop. Admission to top schools should be based on grades and test scores. Period.
10
@Bill Brown
But this scandal shows that test scores can be faked. And don’t think students don’t cheat for grades or have parents forcing schools to ‘regrade’ their students! And grade inflation in schools is a very real problem. Scores and grades are not at all meaningless, but they hide some of the real story.
5
@Diane’s There is no perfect system and there will never be one. This is something that progressives in the education system can't grasp. But a good start would be to have all admissions based on grades & test scores. At least a majority of the best & brightest would be going to our top schools. Isn't that what we want? Lets minimize the admission of alumni children, children of donors, or students who are connected to the well connected who's grades don't merit admission. By the way this idea has already been tried with great success in California. For decades Asian Americans here had complained that they were being short changed in UC college admissions. In 1996 voters amended the state constitution by voting for Prop 209, to prohibit state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in public education. By law admission to UC colleges now had to be race neutral. Prop 209 restored & reconfirmed the historic intention of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The basic premise of Prop 209 is that every individual has a right, & that right is not to be discriminated against, or granted a preference, based on their race or gender. Since the number of available positions are limited, discriminating against or giving unearned preference to a person based solely, or even partially on race or gender deprives qualified applicants of all races an equal opportunity to succeed. It also pits one group against another & perpetuates social tension. This is an idea who's time has come.
5
Either I was naive or ignorant or the times were different, but I chose activities in high school because I wanted to do them, with no thought of building a resume. I took as much math and science as I could (not much in my rural high school). I took one speed-reading course and no SAT prep (took the PSAT for practice). I got good SAT scores because I read a lot (vocabulary!) and took enough math to score pretty well on that part, and had no test anxiety because I didn't worry about it. I got an appointment to a military academy. I have no regrets.
12
@Rupert Laumann
Sounds a lot like my HS experience in a small town in the 2960s. We did not even have AP classes! I went to my dream school Vornell. My friends’ children went through misery applying to colleges, and all did well. The pressure I saw came from my friends, the parents. The kids seemed to enter the process well prepared and excited. By the time applications were in, the kids were a mess. Not sure what the source of the pressure really is. HS grade inflation is a real problem, so kids do not have a very good idea of their true level of preparation. Look at all the remedial math and English classes schools have to offer today.
2
The insanity does not stop with the College admissions scheming for these elite students. It continues throughout their College career and beyond. Getting into the elite College is merely a stepping stone to the elite grad schools and the elite professions.
Meanwhile, College professors deal with these tightly-wound grade-grubbing, whining, insincere students in the class and in deparment relations. For many of them, despite all the resources devoted by family and society, they care nothing for improving the social order, for enriching the humanities, or for the fostering of the college culture. It's all about the status and the money.
Honestly, American society would probably be better off if schools and government put more resources into developing the marginalized minority, working class and first generation students.
24
@roger
I know quite a number of students who attend the schools in question in Cambridge and Boston. Not one of them is "grade-grubbing, whining, or insincere," although a few may be a little "tightly-wound." They are wonderful and inspiring and give me hope for the future. I certainly hope their professors do not have such a negative impression of the young people they are teaching.
1
So-called “elite” colleges have done a great job creating the myth of scarcity. “There are only so many great schools, and only so many seats at those schools, but so many kids who want them.” It is a giant marketing game to generate demand and keep their prices up. And they use the parents own insecurities and fears to keep it going.
69
The part about the Princeton students handing in assignments that they did not work on as hard as the essay to get chosen for the course says it all. As someone from lower middle class who went to Stuyvesant then highly selective universities for undergrad and grad school, I've always said that the hardest part was getting in. Once you're in, you realize you are among many who did not struggle as hard as you did to be accepted, and usually that has to do with their parents' wealth and/or social and professional status. My own admissions were very hard won and my achievements had to be far more extraordinary than those who could breeze right in because they were legacy or had other privileged connections. And once they were there, many took their spots for granted. At Stuyvesant, because of the pressure to get into a good college, I knew of many kids who, instead of using their smart brains to study, used it to cheat in the most ingenious ways.
16
Sadly, the kids and parents are right. Degrees from elite universities can pay off for years through the alumni association and the respect and opportunities they will get in the workplace by merely graduating.
16
Plenty of non-Ivy alumni work along with the “connected.”
Dear Daughter DD attended an elite private school in DC. Her math teacher decided she would teach no more than 12 students in a highly selective Math track so 3 students had to role over to a non Calculus track. All three booted were scholarship students including my daughter. When I argued that her interest was in engineering and she wanted to take Calc, I was told that she would 100% get into the school of her choice without it. I talked with the Head of School to inform them she attended the school for the best education and her love of learning, not for the "prize" at the end. The math teacher was shocked when she was forced to kick out a wealthy, "lifer" and believed I was unreasonable.
21
An excellent essay, but it seems to place too much of the blame on parents and students. Colleges and universities are equally complicit in creating a playing field for applicants based on what parents can pay.
37
I was told by the eight men interviewing me for the UW Medical School that I had the lowest GPA, 2.7 graduate and 3.19 undergraduate they could remember interviewing in many years. What did I have to say for myself? I told them “You have before you three letters from three of the top men in the world in their fields. I spent five hours per class hour in their courses and got grades and finals that they had not given ever or in more than two decades. My mechanism for an organic chemistry bonus problem had been given on the PhD exams for a decade. Out of 10 points I got 10 and they published it. The highest before was 1 point.
BUT I had lots of gentleman C grades. Lots. For I not only took the toughest, world class professors to get my A s, but took useful courses that I needed to be competent in but not excellent. 12 hr was the full time requirement. With permission you could take 15 max. I always skipped permissions do took 18-21. (The amount paid for tuition was the same, 12 or 21.
And I worked 40 hr a week as the lone graveyard man at the City of Santa Clara Electric and Water Ddpartment and then the same shift as the programmer and computer operator to work the graveyard shift,
It seems I was not alone. That was common among these doctors who had grown up during WW I And the Depression. And they concurred that you should expose yourself to much and master the most important and challenging.
Let us restore their attitudes to our admissions. (I suspect many are accepted
17
Unfortunately, obsession with status is teaching our children the truth about this society.
Our society worships wealth and status ONLY. Trumps and Kardashians dominate the news and social media. Being a millionaire is no longer enough, you have to be a billionaire to get any respect. Athletes are judged by how much they make, not how good they are at an obscure sport. I dare any of the readers to name 3 medical researchers but you can all name at least 3 Kardashians.
People who contribute the most to society, teachers, nurses and carers, receive some of the lowest wages while vulture hedge funds make obscene amounts and are rewarded with tax breaks. Bankers make as much in yearly bonuses as many people earn in a lifetime.
Want to talk to your elected representative? It depend how much you donated to their campaign.
Kids aren't stupid. They see our society cleaving into those who have more than they can ever use and those that don't have enough.
Graduate from Harvard and have your pick of Wall Street, a smarter kid from a State school may be smarter and harder working but their application joins the pile of thousands.
Actions speak louder that words and when one of the most corrupt individuals in the country becomes President, when cheating and truth no longer matter, then the kids, and their parents, are acting perfectly rationally.
303
@JMC
You're using the wrong people as benchmarks. Look to Alex Honnold for a man who lives a life of passion. Or my uncle Nate who passed away 20 years ago, for a man who lived a life of kindness. Nate worked as a counter man at a hardware store for his entire life. He had joy in his life and was deeply loved by his family and community. Kardashi-who and Donald-whatever will never have that. But even if they did, so what?
As Polonius said, "to thine own self be true."
8
@JMC
Very well said.
I also have mentioned that this whole scandal would never have happened if we did not have this absurd hierarchy of higher education institutions, fueled by US News and World Report rankings and the like, that makes people believe that if they do not have a degree from one of the "top" schools, they will not live the good life.
And, people do respond to the economic and status pressures that the system creates (sometimes illegally). They are aware that the education one gets at "top" schools may not be any better than that at many others, but it is the "reputation" and "connections" one can make at these places that is most valued--which, of course, immediately gives the lie to the whole idea of meritocracy.
16
@JMC You called it like it is. Glad we are finally talking about the real issues so that we can make a change. Explains the disconnect between society and reality. Bernie and Elizabeth are the best choices for true change. Hope the rest understand that.
6
I'd caution you to not mistake the 1%, elite-college-bound students for the general teenage population. A few ambitious wealthy kids may be being raised this way, but this just isn't true of a whole generation. Don't write them all off as scheming and obsessed - what a disservice to some of the curious, humble, and wonderful kids that will look at all sorts of colleges or other paths to adulthood. . . I worry about the NYT bubble sometimes.
97
Frank, you nailed it. Home run.
7
Oh my, this is the best article I've read on the topic thus far. Thank you.
6
This is nothing new in America. Despite our national mythology we are as class conscious as any other society that has castes, an aristocracy, or royalty. Because of this mythology we don't offer those in need the appropriate help. If we need any sort of assistance we're told that we're not tough enough, we're moochers, or that we're ripping off the government. Rich people and corporations rip off the government all the time and do it at our expense.
Sadly enough most of us have learned by the time we're in college or have graduated from high school that merit, honesty, and hard work count for nothing in America. What counts is who you know, how little they can pay you while working you to the point of burnout, and how compliant you are while being worked to death.
Integrity is dead in America. It has been for decades.
30
The drive to get into a prestige college and then grad school was a powerful motivator for me and required me to do well in courses I had no interest in and otherwise wouldn't have taken. But in retrospect I learned a lot in those courses and I'm glad I took them. Learning is hard work. To expect teenagers (or even adults) to learn for the intrinsic value is expecting way too much. Outside of a structured competitive environment, just about no one has ever gotten through a chemistry or calculus textbook.
7
A better question to ask might be, "what a disservice we've done to our country".
Imagine two countries. I country A, parents can get their kids into a prestigious engineering school by ticking off the items in the list above. Now let's say that in country B, students have to be good at solving engineering problems.
It stands to reason that country B will be better at solving engineering problems than country A. This will include problems that haven't been solved before. Over time, country B will pull ahead in engineering.
7
I have a lot more respect for a child that
failed a class or two, got a few D's, some C's
and B's and refused to take the AP's as they are
driven by the Exam, who can think for themselves
then someone who has been prepped to only
get the highest possible grades and has never met
a bump in the road of life that overturned their youthful
apple-cart.
8
This column sets me to wondering what advice I would give my children if they were college-bound in this day and age. My instinct is to think I would encourage them to attend college in another country, learn that language, and emigrate there. Many other countries have a better ethic than ours - an ethic of "we are all in it together", which is not the case here at all, unfortunately.
36
Ellen, this is exactly what my daughter did. She is studying Biochemistry in ( what you might call here in the US) an elite university in a small picturesque town called Karlsruhe. The cost? 1000 Euro plus 3600 for housing per year. Give a serious thought on this subject, you might like it.
3
@Namita Thuene!
Good for your daughter that she is attending a university abroad. She will become a citizen of the world, without blinders, and with lots of mobility -valuable assets in addition to biochemistry.
3
Competitiveness and elitism can be good, including in an educational setting. But competition should be strictly defined to one specific skill or activity, and its implications shouldn't be overgeneralized into vague and cruel notions like social standing or general worth.
The point of competition is to improve outcomes. Rewards are instrumental, and useful to encourage children to try their best, but assigning rewards is not the purpose of a competition. There's no actual need for anyone to get rewards. There is a need for well-trained people who can achieve great things.
If our educational system is making society worse, we should get a new one.
7
Recently, we signed up for a tour and information session at an elite school in CT. We left after the info session disgusted by what had transpired, but it shows how the universities a partially (if not mostly) responsible for the growing angst of teens.
The representative told the group "We don't want you joining 10 clubs, we expect you to be the President of five." Five? Really.
When I asked about taking APs just for classes you enjoy, the response was "Well, if the the top kids in your school take 12 APs, don't bother applying unless you take close that number. Of course, our standards are different if you are a legacy, athlete or enhance our diversity."
Well, he added a few more gems before my child and I decided to just skip the tour and grab lunch - a much better use of time.
69
Frank, your writing is almost always spot on, and this is no exception. I was particularly taken by the idea that students want a recipe, and that produces cooks rather than chefs. I too am a professor, and I constantly find that students want a recipe rather than to have to think. the thing that students don't understand is that it's very easy to teach a machine to follow a recipe (& a lot cheaper than hiring a human). If all you know are recipes, good luck competing with AI!
13
This must be at least the 25th opinion piece on the college acceptance scam I have read in the past three days in just three newspapers. The NY Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post. Lets get over it, life in general is unfair. Many of the graduates of these elite schools will work in Private Equity and add zero value to society but they will get rich. The people who make America run are high school graduates or people who went to a state college. I went to Central Connecticut State University. Now in my 50's, I can't remember the last time someone asked me where I went to college or if I went to college. Life is unfair get over it.
10
The discussion of the admissions scandal, this piece included, focuses too much on high-status private schools and too little on the public institutions that no longer can come close to rivaling them, thanks in large part to declining support from state governments. We need more first-rate public institutions; that goal is more important than further enhancing the reputations of Yale, Harvard, and Stanford by creating the myth that their "reformed" admissions processes will solve the problem of opportunity for the mass of American young people.
It will only be possible to improve public higher education if we also abandon the idea that students can get a perfectly good education just about anywhere. In most cases, greater financial resources and prestige translate into palpable differences in education: better libraries, better labs, better teachers, better graduate student teaching assistants, better teacher-pupil ratios, and a culture more focused on achievement. Of course, there are public-school students who can and do overcome these disparities; but those undergraduates are the exception.
28
My concern is that these students end up living a lie, looking good on paper and coming out to end up in leadership positions in our country. Given this background, they then are willing to apply such a lack of standards wherever they are. While this is a sweeping generalization, it certainly applies to someone like our current president and many others in Congress. Whatever moral and ethical fabric we have as a nation is thus severely weakened and compromised.
21
The greatest gift we can give our children is the love of learning.They take their cues from parents who are engaged in events and who read and value literature.We should not depend on prestigious schools to educate our children.We should look in the mirror and ask, am I doing my very best to encourage my child to explore and dream and persevere?
22
Generally what rich and privileged want is made legal by vested interests. so they don't have to engage in bribery or braking laws. But, they think money makes them entitled to everything they desire. So they get by hook or crook. On the other hand what poor need is made difficult or illegal for them. No wonder if a corporation or CEO breaks law and make millions they are barely punished, if at all, while poor stealing a loaf of bread can go to jail because of systemic injustice.
Robert Craft will hire pricey defense attorneys and get away, and Trump ended up in the White House by illegally bribing Stormy Daniel, but thousands end up in jail for similar crimes.
Land of opportunities for rich and powerful!
4
Even if all the cheaters, all the phonies, all the privileged applicants were set aside, at most of the prestigious colleges the number of well-qualified applicants would exceed the number of acceptances. The rejected students would still have to work out their disappointment and understand their motives for pursuing an education.
10
Is it so very hard to believe that a driven student who fails to get into his or her desired schools would be terribly disappointed and (temporarily) believe that all the hard work was for nothing?
Not at all.
That's not transactional. That's human nature.
9
The big problem is that the ‘peak’ of education is represented by ferociously expensive private colleges. If a high quality college system was funded through taxation some of these incentives might look different.
On a different but not completely unrelated note, I love the idea of banning both legacy and Kushner-style donations from influencing college admission in order to make it more meritocratic. It might have the accidental effect of equalizing college caché a little because the wealthy but stupid would no longer be able to get into famous schools.
7
Here's a link to an interesting take on the college admissions scandal:
https://quillette.com/2019/03/13/standardized-testing-and-meritocracy/?mod=article_inline
The author makes the case that the wealthy have many advantages in the college admissions game - good schools, the time and money to engage in extracurricular activities, the ability to travel and engage in other activities that enhance the application. The one area where they don't have an advantage is SAT scores. While the wealthiest have higher average SAT scores than their poorer counterparts, the difference isn't that much. Thus the desire to eliminate SAT scores in the admissions process. The SAT may be the last bastion of meritocracy in college admissions.
11
Frank should know the parents were , not, as he claims" arrested for paying bribes and engaging in fraud", but "arrested and accused of allegedly offering bribes and engaging in fraud." It's a small point, but a matter of law (innocent until proven otherwise) if not a disservice to good journalism. Then again, what do I know?
M. L. Shyres
Graduate, University of Missouri School of Journalism,
a bit a disservice itself.
9
Colleges recruit the privileged, and then employers hire the privileged. And over the past century (yes century) how many legal payoffs were made, and how do those numbers compare to the illegal payoffs disclosed by the federal investigation?
Sorry, but the college does matter - to many of the privileged oligarch classes, and in real life job opportunities.
12
So 2/3 of adults over 24 never completed a 4 year degree. If ever a number were too low, that is it. College isn't for everyone. The real number should be 6/7. Convincing kids that all belong in degree courses is a cruel con.
7
Great essay. I'm sure the people who need to listen to it, won't.
10
Welcome to America 2019, where the things that our society values are good looks and wealth. We make celebrities out of the Kardashians and Housewives of Beverly Hills, when we should be celebrating everyday heroes who are teachers, nurses, and firefighters. And much of the rap music embraced by today’s music also focuses on bling and the ability to flaunt it. Given this moral climate, how can it be surprising that youth are focused on status, on getting into the “right” school, and that helicopter parents can and will do everything possible to make this happen for their children?
26
The positive side of this scandal is the hope that employers who screen resumes - looking for ivies only - will see that they're missing high quality students, and more importantly, high quality people.
39
It surprises me that the focus of the reaction to this crass scandal has been on the parents. Why are so few people calling out the colleges and their admissions staff? Why are so many colleges getting away with calling their institutions the “victims “?
While I agree that we have a cultural problem, I think that colleges have done more than their fair share in amping up the hysteria about rankings, selectivity, and the degree to which students at certain schools are the “chosen ones”.
Colleges cheat too: more than a few have been caught faking statistics in pursuit of higher rankings. Some admissions officers have looked away at cases of obviously fraudulent applications. I am always shocked at the deliberate obfuscation in financial aid award letters. Plenty of selective schools talk endlessly about diversity but 3% of their student body is Black. How many colleges have gone test optional supposedly as a matter of principle, but their real goal is to increase the number of applications?
In short, these colleges are hardly victims. Many, if not most selective colleges need to more closely align their declared values with their actions.
88
@Cousy
And I should have mentioned the moral swamp that private high schools have become. If you look at which parents are engaging in these crass campaigns to get their kids into elite colleges, it ain’t the ones in public schools.
3
@Cousy
True. It's time to hold the colleges accountable.
Looks the housing bubble circa 2007. The over-hyped benefits, over-priced tuition and financial risk to the buyer all increase at a frenzied pace until pop! And then everyone wonders what happened. And it will be good because we will have fewer heavily indebted college students and more reasonably well off electricians and plumbers.
8
We want higher education to serve two mutually exclusive purposes. One is the pursuit of knowledge, the other, to grind out graduates well equipped to compete in the corporate world. There is an overlap, but there are unreconcilable differences.
What do parents want for their children, to be curious and become aware what a wonderful unique thing it is to be alive in their short time on this planet; or to make a lot of money and achieve status and respect that money brings?
10
College admissions has become like cycling...on steroids. So, let’s take the “steroids” out of the equation and allow our children to stand on their own two feet.
Hullo? Are we the grown-ups, here?
We need to remove the admissions tutors, advisors, and specialists, etc. from the process and allow our children to compete on a level playing field; the “level playing field” we aspire to create in our world. (Or do we?)
Our belief that getting an unqualified child into a college beyond their abilities makes us “good parents”…is an illusion; an illusion about our own ego, fears, hubris, and unresolved issues.
Not to mention that to put a child in such a high-pressure environment is detrimental to their self-trust, self-esteem, overall well-being…and opportunity for a positive, enjoyable, empowering college experience.
As a professional coach for almost 20 years, I can tell you the “not good enough” message we send to our kids when we get them in over their heads…follows them through adulthood; many middle-aged men and women have paid me good money to assist them to resolve those issues!
It’s time for parents to grow up and allow their children to follow their own path.
10
@Kelly Grace Smith I'm with you, but in our 'free market economy,' there is no way 'to remove the admissions tutors, advisors, and specialists, etc. from the process' as long as there is money to be made, and parents who live to engineer their kids' lives.
1
Mr. Bruni writes of a culture in which education is transactional; it doesn’t matter “unless the right people clap.” That may be true of education, but it also describes the entire context in which many young people are growing up: their performances are filmed, as are their impromptu dances; their games have been converted from play into competitive leagues where high school or college coaches stalk the sidelines skiing talent; they are photographed relentlessly and filtered and posted on on social media to garner a chorus of “likes.” The advertisements they see are relentless. The gaze of the Other is omnipresent in their lives, and they are encouraged to play to it. How, then, are they to carve out space to find their own selves and inhabit their souls?
104
@Deborah
Well said, Deborah! I couldn’t agree more. So sad how children’s activities became so regimented and hyper competitive - so early, too. If parents or their children don’t start extensive focus and training in early grade school they begin to be discouraged about ever being good enough. In high school, coaches focus on a small group who make the team and who can bring glory to the school (and them) and all other kids are relegated to poorly run and regarded intermural sports. Much of this happens in other high school activities too.
So sad to have this happen during what should be a time of recreation and experimentation.
1
The basic assumption, that “education” is a commodity, is flawed. “Education” is not equivalent to obtaining a degree (or several) from a university, elite or not. Education is a process—driven by curiosity, initiative, and engagement. Done right, education is a lifelong and enriching pursuit, discovering new questions as new information is learned.
The world is such an endlessly interesting place. What a shame that people miss that, in pursuit of “success.”
72
@Kris K Almost the first comment re this article that made any sense to me. Thanks.
Mr. Bruni finally wrote a sensible opinion piece. Junior College, State College, and a State law school prepared me better for the real world than any Ivy League school ever could.
Everyone knows that state schools are just as good as prestigious private colleges. People pay the money for the prestigious schools - not because the education is any better - but for the lifetime contact with rich and connected people.
37
Thank you, Frank. Once again, you have exhibited why I want to be president of your fan club. I am a college counselor at a public high school and have been advising students on the process of pursuing higher education for 38 years. I have worked with students representing every type of academic and economic background and what you've written here is spot on. To be successful on the journey to college - and once enrolled, truly, the student has to go to the institution that best fits their personal profile, not the so called "best name". Keep writing these editorials, parents (and students) need to hear it more and more often. Thank you!
39
For the love of God, please stop blaming parents. The overwhelming majority of us do not cheat, nor do we condone cheating. Do we pay for SAT prep classes? If we can find the money, absolutely.
But resume padding wouldn’t happen unless school admissions policies rewarded it. When every school thinks they cannot accept anything but the top students (which is mathematically impossible), then the average kid is left behind. Blame employers for filtering online job applications by school. Blame USNWR for rankings that reward the pretentious and ignore the quality of education; this is why employers choose the Ivy League candidate over the state school candidate. Blame the school itself for trying to rig its rankings by over-reliance on test scores (which tend to favor those who pay for prep classes).
Parents have the least ability to fix the system. Blame the top of the food chain, but not the bottom.
169
I disagree. If families don't buy in to the nonsense it will stop. Don't you remember being told something like just because Johnny gets to stay up til 10 doesn't mean you do or something like that? Each family can reevaluate priorities on their family. There are lots of colleges. The USNews charts were supposed to be informative not dictatorial. Let's take the time to develop our own moral compass and look at our children as individuals.
31
@Kathleen L.
You make a good point about college wanting only applicants who have achievements like solving the middle east crisis before their freshman year. But most of the blame rest with the parents. Their need is what is driving this whole mess.
16
@Kathleen L. The most important question implied but not answered in this column is: how did we get to this point? What's driving this madness. People care about getting into "a good school" because hiring managers, clients, voters, & others conflate the prestige of the school with the quality of those who attended. Part of this scam is driven by privileging athletes over scholars. Another part by demanding that all of our universities reflect the diversity of our population when this isn't always practical. But the main driver of this insanity is the admission policies of our top colleges. You'll frequently hear admissions folks talk about how their process is "holistic," but what exactly does this mean for an applicant? Who knows? Turns out it's pretty arbitrary. Good grades & a perfect SAT score are no longer a guarantee. Under a holistic admissions policy, a student with a 3.9 GPA gets turned down while an award-winning tuba player with a 3.2 GPA gets accepted. The student who was the Chess Club President might get preference over the student who had higher ACT scores. No wonder our kids are stressed out. Holistic admissions adds irrational subjectivity to admissions decisions. The practice makes it impossible to explain who gets in, who doesn't, & why. Holistic admissions become a guise for allowing cultural & even racial biases to dictate the admissions process. This lunacy has to stop. Admission to top schools should be based on grades & test scores. Period.
13
Bruni moans almost weekly (twice this week) about colleges being unfair. Harvard rejects 15 of 16 applicants including many who are legacies who are charitable to the school (altho probably not the 20 million dollar contributors. If 2 % of their acceptances are legacies who are quite otherwise qualified as well, it seems reasonable to me. My kids were legacies, my contributions over the years were moderate. Only one of my 4 kids was accepted and only one of six grandchildren They both had outstanding records. Perhaps an equal applicant was rejected. It's a tough world.
11
@LBH
That is the problem, isn't it? Almost every person who applies to one of the colleges is qualified. Any of them could/would do well at the college. So how does the college decide? No matter what they do, somebody cries 'unfair'!
9
The emphasis on elite colleges is because the value of just any college degree has been debased over the past 50 years. Too many students are graduating from colleges without the skills and knowledge required of a high school graduate in the 1950's.
We need to:
(1) Abolish the idea that a college degree is the path to wealth and happiness.
(2) Make college tougher and send fewer kids to college.
(3) Eliminate the stigma of not having a college degree.
(4) Promote alternative career paths. There are lots of skilled positions that pay more than the average college graduate earns. (Take a look at the hourly labor rate your auto mechanic charges.)
74
@J. Waddell
(5) Promote community colleges and post high school training as worthwhile and not inferior to 4 year schools. The world needs good auto mechanics.
27
@J. Waddell
My nephew, in his early twenties now, gave his parents gray hair very early as he refused to study or even to work at their small family business. He dropped out of school at fourteen and became sort of a skate boarding bum after getting his GED. But he suddenly discovered auto mechanics through the father of one of his friends and now is a very high paid BMW mechanic being hired to care for those high end souped up ones owned particularly by wealthy athletes. He himself drives a top end sedan that he received when someone didn't want to pay the cost of repairs and gave it to him. So he just repaired it himself for himself! For some kids not academically inclined, it is just a matter of discovering ones passion!
3
@J. Waddell Also, amp up high school courses so that every student learns how to write, how to do research, how to write a well-researched paper, has a firm grounding in the civics, history and the classics and obtains a well-rounded education.
1
Don't kid yourself, Frank, about student reactions.
They're upset about the effort put into the arduous application process, not their education.
Essays about arbitrary topics chosen by colleges that we now know may not be read and for which students may gain less of an edge than if their famous parents call an unscrupulous coach.
Doesn't that get you mad? it does rile me up.
How about when students spend time volunteering for things they may not care about because "it looks good on an application"?
While volunteering should be good in general, many students pass up jobs to fill their applications.
And for what?
It is long past time to see many colleges for what they are.
7
“Parents are trying to give their kids ‘everything’ but they’re not giving them what counts,”
This is the crux of the problem today. Here's the thought pattern. "I think much of this attitude comes from "working mother guilt". Okay - I don't like staying at home. I love my children but I don't really want to deal with young children all day. I don't like to cook, I don't like housework. But by my working, I can give them advantages I could not afford to do otherwise. So they'll actually be BETTER off with me working."
I hear this at all ends of the economic spectrum. Buy more things, more tutoring, more prep courses, more...well, just everything.
What they don't realize is that they need an engaged parent far more than Kumon tutoring or a $20,000 college consultant. Perhaps a parent could far better be engaged by sitting down with their child and helping them FIND the colleges that are the best fit for them. By then discussing with them the best way to achieve that goal?
Getting into an elite university does involve some "ticking" the boxes. Yes, they must challenge the curriculum successfully. Yes, they must show a continued interest in something - doesn't have to be sports, just something. And if a child doesn't want to do this, then encourage them to lower their sights on college and find one that is a better fit.
But a "busy" parent finds it far easier to just write a check.
10
A disservice indeed. College should come after a couple of years of some kind of real life service to the country and/or the community. Every kid. No exceptions. It could accommodate all disabilities yet still require a shared participation. Not that hard to envision or implement.
Kids feel empowered and valued when they contribute to the common good. Taking a standardized test or parents paying for the kids to do stuff to put things on the check list to get into Harvard is demoralizing. And classist. And unjust.
67
Why don’t the elite universities use their billion dollar endowments to open more spaces and build more dorms? Take the pressure off families and let more people in. Thanks to our modern efforts on equal opportunity, there are many more bright talented kids in the upcoming generation than spaces.
I would also point out that since universities are non-profits, the American taxpayers have the financial burden of supporting these institutions, and have the absolute right to ask for a better process.
26
@Sissy G. It doesn’t matter how large the endowment is if there is no land left to build anything. The most “elite” private schools are predominantly located in the most densely populated and expensive areas of the country. Why should the most “elite” private colleges burn money on more dorms when they could pay the majority of their students’ tuition in full instead (some already do this)? Many of these schools are small because they intend to maintain small sizes. The model you propose is more appropriate for large public schools and many of them are doing exactly that.
The obsession with admission to selective colleges only reflects the prevailing ethos of our society. It seems all most people care about is money, power, status...
18
Elite schools generally make their greatest contribution through research. And many professors begrudge the time they have to spend teaching. If the schools were research centers and undergraduate education were public, the scholarly world would suffer little. In a country that promotes excellence but rejects eltism, public colleges are what makes sense. College kids need great teachers, not Nobel Prize winners who prefer to be in the lab. Elite colleges are a bad fit for America. The sensible system would measure kids based on college performance and put off highly competitive admissions until grad school.
29
What I would like to know is why our tax dollars were spent on this sting? Why is the general public supposed to be worried that admissions to colleges that are unattainable is sometimes rigged?
1
I guess you missed the part where the parents were donating the money to a foundation and then using the donation as a tax deduction. The schools didn’t get the money.
5
The obsession with college goes deeper than just this scandal and the competition for gaining entrance to the elite schools. The emphasis on getting a college degree - at whatever cost - over the past few decades, with the implied promise that a degree will ensure a comfortable, if not dream, life, is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated.
It would be one thing if the promise were actually kept, but increasingly, getting a bachelors degree is almost worthless - except to the lending firms and banks that make huge profits off the loans used for it. But the truth is that most degrees don't provide that entry into a comfortable life, and often aren't even used in the field they were gained.
We need to re-examine the role and need for college, as opposed to say advanced trade schools. Equipping people with hands-on skills in fields that are needed and which pay well should be a viable alternative. And whichever form of advanced learning a student chooses, it should be underwritten to ensure that everyone who wants this learning can get it without becoming a virtual indentured servant.
Let's end the college rip off industry, and put our money and energy into educating our students properly.
33
@Kingfish52
You can't get a corporate job let alone an interview without a college degree on your resume. A high school degree doesn't cut it.
Such a complex issue. Living on the San Francisco Peninsula and having just launched our two children into college, I can tell you that there is a lot of stress and anxiety for parents around the constant conversations about "where is your kid going to school next year" instead of asking "what are your child's plans after high school". The second question leaves out the need to answer with a name, place, or institution and instead asks a broader question about goals and hopes. I think we can all think about how we contribute to this competitive system in the way that we interact with each other and have conversations about the post high school journey.
27
@Charmaine I felt no stress or anxiety about this. I didn't care what any of them thought either. It's a long life. The college your child gets into determines nothing about the future. Don't let those parents get to you!
What does it say about America's adults that we even need to have an op-ed column to ask these questions? Of course we're corrupting our kids with this 'status & success at all costs' ideology. I do find it ironic though virtually all of the people initially indicted people appear to be major Democrat supporters & contributors. I'll be curious to see if a widening net becomes more bipartisan...
6
I work in admissions at a local community college -- and I see the complete opposite. I meet with many first generation college students who come in with their parents. They are proud to be able to go to college at all, and it is never something they take for granted. Usually, by the time they leave my office they're reassured that they've made the right choice, that with financial aid grants the cost will be within reach, and that ultimately when they transfer in their junior year they'll still have a chance to live away at a college or university, because lets face it - that is an enormous part of the college experience. Right now in every high school in every city in this country -- the peer pressure is at its most intense for the seniors waiting for their college acceptances. Its a pressure they put on to themselves and it doesn't have to be that way - but sadly, that's something they usually never realize until much later.
83
@NancyKelley I think two years of community college is an excellent way to start college for anyone. I can't tell you how many times I've heard of kids who moved away to college and then dropped out because they couldn't handle the pressure of academia after suddenly losing the support systems (i.e. family and friends) they've lived with their entire lives.
7
@NancyKelley It should be noted that about 14% of the kids who enroll in community colleges get a bachelors degree within six years.
My son made it very clear that he was only going to do those things in middle school and high school that he wanted to do. He realized that he needed a lot of down time and did not like being over scheduled. He dropped down from honors for the subject that he did not like. He took the AP classes that he enjoyed rather than the ones that would look good. Importantly, he decided to focus on one extracurricular - something that gave him great joy - and to do it very well and in multiple contexts.
His decision paid off. Calm, cool, and collected, he got in early decision to his reach school- a semi-competitive university just off the rank of "elite".
I have to confess - it took me until his 9th grade year before I stopped bugging him about trying different things. I'm glad I finally realized that my son knew what was best for him.
335
@HN
Similar situation here. I stopped pressuring my two sons into doing homework in their ninth grades. I wanted "it" more than they did. They attended their respective high schools for four years but declined to complete the necessary coursework for graduation, opting instead for GEDs and scoring the highest, second highest within their school district. They were so proud of their accomplishments. Glad I stepped aside and parented them, rather than dictating to them based on "what others thought." We all learned from the experience—most of all me—the value of honoring our innermost self and the rewards gained in having taken the road less traveled.
31
@DHR Where are they now? I think the community college system is fantastic and am leaving my local community college in my will (not leaving my four-year university in my will).
28
@HN
I often think that the obsession with "success" (as meaning being "first") is a substitute for real interest or passion for something. It is essentially hollow, that is, without content.
I'm reminded of the Tiger Mother book, and how she pushed her daughters to practice an instrument for hours each day but never ever mentioned, say, going to a special concert or being lifted by a recording of a great musician.
9
I agree that the college admission process to these elite schools is a poor process with many bad consequences. But it is erroneous to blame the process for"corroding development of people's ethical character" and "compromising their integrity". That is like saying the tail wags the dog.
I think ethical character has been corroded and integrity compromised before beginning the admission process. All the admission process does is provide an opportunity to exercise already corroded characters and already compromised integrity.
33
Thank you, Frank Bruni, for being the point man on this. during this week and long before. I teach at a state university and have shared your columns about higher ed with colleagues, friends/parents, and students. My best students? Transfers from the local community college, where they get a better and more personalized education than their peers who start out in big schools, and where they have a chance to grow into their education. They are the Latinx, who are the first in their families to go to college; the immigrants from Russia, who came to the US at 16 without a word of English; the divorcees, making up for lost time; the ex-military, who discovered they have talents they never knew. No status concerns, no mickey mouse. They do their work, no complaints, because this is what they want to do, not because this is what they are expected to do. Isn't that what education should be all about?
316
J.G. in L.A. — I was a community college transfer to a four-year state university, and at both schools was always pleased to have professors who were experienced adults. From what I hear, at a lot of the fancier schools, undergraduates are often taught by graduate students who are neither as well-versed nor experienced as the teachers at my community college and state university.
29
@J.G. - I also teach at a state university (Masters One level), not at, e.g., Berkeley or Michigan. Two things.
First, each year, graduates of my department excel many graduates of Berkeley, Michigan, Harvard, and Yale to gain admission to very fine graduate programs. For those headed to grad or professional school, thus, where you begin is no guarantee of where you end up.
Second, and related, it is certainly a great opportunity to study with Nobel laureates at Berkeley or Michigan. Yet those classes are often held in large lecture halls with hundreds of students. My upper division classes, by contrast, often have as few as ten or twelve students, enabling me to interact with and evaluate them at a whole different level. Moreover, those Berkeley or Michigan professors are not whom undergrads will be visiting in office hours. It will be graduate teaching assistants. Now sometimes these TA's are talented and dedicated, yet they are still novices: none of them will have the thirty or forty years of teaching experience someone like me can offer.
Taking a B.A. at a big name university can have its advantages. Yet it is necessary neither to receiving a good education nor earning a good living.
28
@J.G. I went to community college, worked my way through to a Masters Degree which took 16 years. I have a great career and I did as well or better than the majority of kids I went to HS with which was in a wealthy and educated school district in NY
6
Glad Bruni - in excellent piece - mentioned donations. This is a bigger scandal than faking activities and test scores. Donations are considered AOK.
17
The only thought that came to mind concerning a student who attended all the "right" schools, played the "right " sports and spouted all the "right" ideas whether or not his true beliefs to get what he "deserved" - Brett Kavanaugh.
504
@Stephen B. Jurbala
The thought that came to my mind all the way through this essay is that "Individual 1" appears to be the personification of all the negative effects of this process for the privileged, not only related to college admissions, but throughout his entire life. Look at the trail of corruption and deceit in achieving his current position, and stay tuned for what is about to be revealed going forward. The damage he has left in his wake to those unfortunate enough to have encountered him through his business ventures, and now he's wreaking on America and the entire world is incalculable and devastating. Such moral corruption multiplied by the members of our "elite, privileged leadership class" is why Americans' trust in our institutions has eroded to its all time lowest point, and our Allies no longer trust us to act in accordance with our former collective best interests. This is where the college admissions cheating of the privileged class has taken us, and there is no precedent for finding our way back to a meritocracy with civilized social norms and solid moral values.
47
@Stephen B. Jurbala The problem comes from all quarters. First, parents buy into this idea that more is better, where "more" means quantity, not quality. Second, the colleges say they want this. The USNWR rankings, which are more or less bogus (the best schools are, simply, the ones with the best researchers, not the ones with the highest ding rate), skew everything. Third, grade inflation in HS and college is rampant, so the measure of academic excellence is useless. I went to an elite liberal arts college in the East in the mid-1970s where a 3.9 GPA was unheard of and where students with a 3.4 could make Phi Beta Kappa. Fourth, SAT/ACT tests measure one thing and one thing only, how well on takes that test. They can be coached, and should be abolished. Think of the GRE test; no one at all pays attention to it. How to fix it all at once? Who knows?
10
@Stephen B. Jurbala Taking into account the college slots taken by legacies, jocks, affirmative action admittees, and cheaters like those whose parents were arrested in the college admissions bribery scam, there aren't many slots left for qualified but middle-class, non-minority kids at the top schools.
There is no easy solution to the problem because legacies, jocks and affirmative action seem to be here to stay. And, yes, some cheaters.
2
The problem of "elite" college attendance has gotten much worse in the past 50 years. Then there were 7 times as many applicants for my U.S. college as students enrolled. There are now around 27 applicants for every place--while there are actually fewer places for men (having rightly brought in similar numbers of women).
The basic problem is that while there are many more students seeking "elite" colleges (both as population has increased, and the number seeking college educations has increased more), the number of places in "elite" colleges has not increased much. That is why the applicant/acceptance ratio has risen dramatically.
In other advanced countries, the number of college places has increased, while college attendance remains economically feasible. In the U.S., overall college places have increased, but there is a greater distinction between the "status" given to graduates of elite universities vs. other universities. At the same time, the cost of university education has risen more than in other countries.
There is no good reason for either the failure to expand the number of high quality university programs, nor to control the increases in the cost of university programs in the U.S. Both of these conditions are forcing prospective students into more competitive approaches. This hyper-competitive environment does not bring out the best in prospective students nor university programs.
Andrew Biemiller (retired U. of Toronto professor)
30
We have plenty of high quality college programs beyond the top ten schools more than enough to accommodate every quality applicant of every income group to the top 10 schools. In each of those schools, provided a student applies herself, the student will get the same education in classroom. As a taxpayer, I am not going to get worried because some anxious, status conscious parents cannot get their little darlings in a better brand name school when the others will do the job nicely.
12
No, they don't want a recipe.
They want an app. No detailed thinking, no period of experience and observation and reflection, no risk that they might be responsible for a bad choice.
They want an app to figure it all out for them and tell them what to do. And it better require a maximum of three clicks, and it better be slick to look at.
27
Our family enjoyed a lunch with an astronaut at KSC.
His advice to all the kids at lunch was to dtudy what you really like to study.
And It really helps to like physics, chemistry, and calculus.
Since then you get to work at what you like to work out and there are plenty of jobs that value the 3% of the USA adult population that are smart enough to master these subjects.
Seems like sound advice.
7
Tax the wealthiest colleges and universities. Including their multi million dollar endowments.
Take that money and fund state universities and colleges. Free admission.
46
I appreciate much of this sentiment and think Bruni makes several good points but maybe students are feeling that their classroom experiences were transactional not because they weren't rewarded with their preferred college acceptances in the end, but that perhaps their classroom experiences WERE in fact transactional at the classroom level -- maybe they didn't inspire an awakening about the natural world, for example. Maybe they were taught in a dull, transactional, homework heavy, volume-over-content kind of way and they were *doing* exactly what other experts tell them to do: delay their satisfaction.
16
I had to read the piece twice to confirm that a team from a Harvard Grad school actually worry about personal integrity, ethical character, and what we once called conscience. Imagine my (pleasant) surprise at so traditional a concern at an Ivy no less. There is hope and not just on a bumper sticker for Mr. Obama.
Don't we live in the age of post-modernism where we make up our very few ethical concerns and values on the fly and in a transactional context? What is the world coming to if we have to factor in such things as charity, selfless actions, empathy, kindness, and "how can I be of help" instead of "what's in it for me?"
This report should be required reading not just for high school and college students but helicopter parents everywhere.
6
Don't know what made me thought of this just now, but I'll throw it out there because it sums up this discussion of the moment very succinctly and neatly.
"Princeton needs a man like Joel".
7
@JayK: Risky Business, right? Great movie. Apt comment.
I think you may have inadvertently perpetuated the atmosphere of hyper competitiveness by requiring an essay to attend your seminar. Couldn't a random 16 out of the 45 be chosen to attend. All the applicants I assume were qualified or interested just by them applying and being Princeton students.. Preference could have been given to journalism majors and then a random pick of the rest. As I go through this college process with my son, we have grown to appreciate schools that emphasize collaboration and respect for each other. Having essay contests to attend certain elite classes undermines this.
208
@College Mother It's appropriate to give the limited spots to the students who most want to attend. The students who took the time to write an essay presumably are the ones who most want to attend.
The fact that some of these students proceeded to turn in mediocre work during the term speaks to Bruni's failure to separate those in pursuit of prestige v. those who are genuinely interested. Perhaps the essay prompt was sub-optimal.
5
@College Mother. And why pick super-elite Princeton in the first place?
1
@Miss ABC
No guarantee that they wrote the application essay themselves. Maybe that is why what they produced for the class wasn't of the same quality.
2
It has often been said about the Ivies that the hardest part is getting in. Why is it that they brag of their 90% or better college graduation rate, which tops that of all other US colleges? Because professors are encouraged to give passing grades to students even if they haven’t earned them. The scandal of the lopsided preponderance of A grades at Harvard was exposed some years ago and a new grading system installed. I’d like to read some studies of the current academic culture at the Ivies. Sounds like a good topic for Times investigative reporting.
21
@Barbara A preponderance of high grades in elite colleges isn't necessarily grade inflation. Sometimes a course has a well-defined level of rigor. For example, most Chemistry departments are affiliated with the American Chemical Society, and that largely determines the outcomes of chemistry courses. We should fully expect a distribution of higher grades in those courses at colleges that enroll more highly qualified students, and it would make no sense artificially to make the course tougher on that account.
4
Harvard Business School ruthlessly grades by curve, no exceptions and you can flunk out, “hit the screen.” So does the Naval Academy that I attended, as do the other service academies to my knowledge. Average cumulative is about 2.75. The real measure is class rank at all these schools. Making people feel good about their grades never seemed to arise as a topic or objective.
3
@Barbara Has it never occurred to you that the reason they receive such good grades is that they are bright and they work very hard? Do you actually KNOW a student at these schools? Have you talked to them about their work-load?
I have a grandson in an Ivy right now. He's in the School of Engineering. His workload is incredible. When he took his pre-lim's during his 1st semester, it said he was in the top 10% of one class. He then laughed and said that would change - virtually 50% of those enrolled in this class with withdraw right after they received their grades. Their grades were so low that their chances of actually passing the course were not great. Hardly "giving away grades, here!
These schools attract and admit highly intelligent and HIGHLY COMPETITIVE people. They are pretty much driven people. They will most likely be highly successful. I do worry if they will be as successful in their close relationships due to being so driven, but I guess where DGS1 is concerned, we'll just have to wait and see. He has tons of friends and a girlfriend, so he's not a grind in the library studying all night.
By the way, he's also an athlete. He was not a "recruited" one - didn't play well enough for that distinction. He was a "supported" one. Made the Deans List 1st semester and seems to think he's on track to do it again 2nd semester.
Yes, highly motivated and SELF-driven. NONE of this comes as a result of pressure from his parents.
6
The Princeton students are stop on.
Let’s admit the truth. We live in a society where there no value for knowledge or intellectual curiosity beyond the immediate.
I can personally attest to the fact many people in my industry are genuinely perplexed when I express continued interests/explorations in subjects I studied long ago - history, geometry, linguistics, biology, etc.
I can sense they are thinking how is the going to help you? Isn’t that a waste of your time?
61
@HistoryRhymes . You know when intrinsic motivation and love of learning really pay off? When you retire. I spend a minimum of 7 hours a day reading, studying, and learning, which gives my life meaning, purpose, satisfaction, and contentment. That's the payoff.
173
How fortunate that you have survived and are “free at last.”
When my very talented daughter was in fourth grade, she entered a Stephen King short story contest for kids her age. She wrote a complex, wonderful story and submitted it. I read it but didn't give suggestions or had any part in the writing because I would never have even thought to do so. In a few weeks, she got the story back with the comments that the parent or some other adult must have had a hand in this because she couldn't, at her age, have written it! I was furious and it was difficult to watch her pain. But that's what we do, isn't it? Experiencing a child's pain is worse than experiencing your own. And for that reason, I think a lot of people try to short circuit the pain.
I am reminded of a song, sung by Sweet Honey In The Rock about your children are not your children. They come through you but they are not you. (It's on Youtube and well worth the listen). It is one of the hardest things about parenting - to let go of the idea that they are 'yours'. They are their own souls and they must live their own lives. Hopefully, we are wise enough to give them a strong foundation and understanding of who, indeed, they are.
152
@sophia
That's a wonderful song. The lyrics are based on Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet".
4
Thank you for this comment. I have learned more about parenting from my children than they have learned about being themselves from me.
8
@Bonnie: Thank you for letting me know the origin of the song lyrics. I have known the song for a long time, but didn't know it was based on Gibran.
2
Totally agree with Mr. Bruni's lament, but this is the plutocratic society we have allowed to come into being and rule us. I had few parental pressures to excel, except that my father delighted in belittling my inadequacies to me in things like fixing cars, athletics, many things practical. I learned later that he bragged about my academic achievements to his drunken friends at the VFW and everyone else except me. When I left for college I spent four hours "thanking" my parents for showing me everything NOT to do or be if I ever became a parent.
I helped raise four incredible daughters, none biologically mine. Did they attend the best schools? For the most part, yes, though all attended public universities. We did not pressure them about grades or particular activities. We did not suggest that pursuing art or doing other things that were fun for them or filled a psychogical need were a waste of time? We did stress the importance of sharing, hard work, family, their community, and personal responsibility. They knew we were always there to help, but we did not press them toward any particular path growing up (they were all female, so we did tell them that if they had not found a dream to pursue in college, they were going to law school, and eventually all did; our reason for that was that as women, it would give them power and important tools in a sexist world).
We are now helping raise our grandson. He will get the same values. Being a plutocrat will not be one of them.
24
Mr. Bruni may rail about the decline of creativity, initiative or curiosity, and that admission to the Ivies isn't everything. Well, he should take a hard look at those of us not in the 1% just trying to do the best by our kids.
Many of us are middle class. We know that our children will struggle to have even the same standard of living we had, and more likely will fall behind.
Many poor and middle class families whose children worked hard and did extremely well, would do just about anything to get their kids into elite schools. And these families aren't in it for the bragging rights. Rather, they see these opportunities as a way up for their young family members. A way to actually live the American dream -- which is beyond reach for most young people now.
My family is one of those middle class families. We didn't have all the extras. What we did have was a kid who worked her backside off, got into the University of Chicago for undergrad, and is now finishing her PhD at Harvard. No sports, no legacy admissions. She has a tenure track position lined up at a top thirty liberal arts college, because she went to these schools. We are thrilled that she has a chance to stay in the middle class, not like so many of her young friends who are trying to survive on two or three part-time jobs with no benefits. So while I am grateful for my kid's success, this parent will not apologize for my kid's attendance at the "elite" universities.
117
No apologies necessary. I think that Frank is emphasizing the process and integrity.
If your child arrived at an elite university with these things intact and is surrounded by others of her ilk, God bless them and we will all be the better for it.
15
Nor should you. She did it by ability and hard work.
8
High school education in the US is seen only as a bridge to something else.
That is a shame.
It is the fault not only of high schools and universities and parents, but also of the students.
“I did all of this for nothing,” they’ll say, meaning the homework, the sports, the other extracurricular activities."
Then they got nothing out of their high school years, certainly nothing reflecting any type of values even faintly connected or related to an education.
17
Agreeing with everything Frank states, this also illustrates the point the Paul Krugman has made: that inequality in wealth/income has reached the point where those in the top 1% are seeing that avenues of reaching the top 1/10% are being shut off - and not being in that top 1/10% means stagnation.
50
Frank, there's another point which you come close to identifying when you say:
"We saw that madness in the recent arrests of dozens of wealthy parents, including corporate titans and famous actresses, for paying bribes and engaging in fraud to secure places for their pampered progeny at Yale, at Georgetown, at U.S.C. But their cheating was merely an extreme, illegal version of lesser scheming on a broader scale."
The first sentence is correct - actual felonies of bribery and fraud were committed - this is different from 'cheating'.
It's the same slippery slope as in '08, when bankers' contracts were sacrosanct, and Jane/Joe Sixpack had to pay bonuses to bankers - per contract - a scant 6 months after the very same bankers ran the planetary economy off a cliff:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html
Whereas hoi polloi workers at GM had contracts written on etch-a-sketches, and GM itself was held out as a candidate for bankruptcy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
The parents who were caught committing the felonies in this story made a classic mistake of the privileged: forgetting they weren't 2009-era bankers.
1
Did Donald Trump's career, election and subsequent two years as President signal Peak Impunity for the amoral part of the wealthy and powerful?
Overlapping sex abuse and child sex abuse, widespread money laundering, tax evasion and illegal scandals, schemes and insider dealings, political corruption and illegal foreign influence, even college admissions fraud all have been hiding in plain sight for decades. The possibility of being caught was remote, prosecuted even less.
Things seemed to have changed with all of these . It is a fair assumption that Mueller's probe is taking so long because new leads to new avenues of important investigations continue to emerge.
Every time the sentencing of Flynn comes up, the risk of revealing new investigations gets in the way. And every week new connections among the criminally wealthy emerge, like Robert Kraft, Trump, Mar-A-Lago fundraisers and Ms Yang, founder of the Orcids of Asia prositution ring and foreign influence bundler.
Bad behavior will never disappear. But it will come with a bigger cost going forward. Just ask Paul Manafort.
17
I wish I could believe that large-scale comeuppance was in the cards, but with the oligarchs in power and the congress and courts in their pockets this is striking me as an increasingly forlorn hope.
11
@Look Ahead: I bet Paul Manafort rues the day he offered to work for Trump - for free, no less. It's cost him a lot, that freebie job. But Putin told him to do it, so....
Everything Trump touches dies. It's a virus infecting us all. I fear we are on life support now and not sure if we can hang on much longer.
7
Of course it all starts with the parents that are going to teach said ideals of having empathy, inclusion and to guard against prejudice.
In the Scandinavian countries, there is a thing called: ''Janeteloven'' - which is essentially the idea that no one is to put themselves ahead of anyone else. Do not be too special or too bright.
I went through this firsthand with me own kids, and I can safely say that they all came out of it much better individuals. On the flip side of it though, is marginalization of everyone and everything. If your child is indeed ''special'', then they can have a tremendous amount of pressure brought upon to come back to the fold. (especially in the younger years)
However, higher education is subsidized by the state (at least 2 years) and all of the colleges and universities are top notch.
You don't have to write an essay pleading to get in.
17
While reading this column, Mr. Bruni, and absorbing the wrong that parents do to their children so they can "matriculate" at elite schools because it's "a narrow door" that becomes a recipe that practically guarantees success...all I could think of was what Fred Trump accomplished for one of his sons, Donald, who would eventually become the president of the United States. No. 45 learned that "the measure of success is the badge you get." He never learned "to care about community, collaboration and love of truth."
The military academy that the young Donald attended (or at least was enrolled at) and the Wharton School of Business and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania apparently taught the young man little or nothing. Both institutions were, in my estimation, guilty of accepting the bribe of a wealthy parent to ensure the student's "success." Would it be pointless to point out that a rejected student, especially at Penn, may have gone on to a distinguished career but, lacking the gilded bona fides of a wealthy parent (or patron), lost out in the race for a space to the young Trump?
We have discussed much about suicide lately. Perhaps what drives young people past the despairing point is that the pressures to succeed are so great that they literally explode from the youngster's head like a punctured balloon that has been stuffed with anything but the oxygen necessary to aid the student in finding peace with himself/herself. And some parents wonder why they die?
91
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18:
It's called the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, and it awarded a bachelor's degree to Trump in 1968. I know guys who matriculated and studied but did not get a degree, so I presume the professors determined that Trump earned his degree, absent any evidence to the contrary.
BTW, Penn has an all-female comedy troupe called "Bloomers." "Mask & Wig," the other group, is all male. The Bloomers did a skit a few years ago, to the tune of "Big Spender," in which the Marilyn Monroe character sings,
"Let me get right to the point - buildings don't get named for everyone I see.."
4
@ed connor
I might be inclined to believe that Trump actually earned his degree if he hadn't used Michael Cohen to threaten to sue any school that released his transcripts and test scores.
13