We’re sure by now you have heard about the whole college admissions scandal involving famous actors and actresses and WASP’S from the wealthy, privileged and well-connected. In effect, news broke out that:
In the recent college admissions scandal, Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and other executives are among 50 wealthy people charged in the largest college cheating scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Those indicted in the investigation, dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues,” allegedly paid bribes of up to $6.5 million to get their children into elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California.
These well to-do’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get their children into America’s elite institutions, from bribing athletics coaches to writing falsified letters of recommendation. In addition, some parents paid SAT exam proctors revise their multiple choice answers to boost their scores, while others paid someone else $10,000 just to take the SAT for their daughters.
In light of the recent scandals revolving around college admissions, always act with utmost integrity. Or pay the price later on.
This has happened many times in the past.
- A high school called T.M. Landry in Louisiana had to falsify transcripts to get their all black student body into the Ivy League – and they were successful doing it.
- The Dean of MIT falsified her educational credentials before getting fired by the institution.
- A student camps out at Stanford for weeks pretending to be one of the students and later gets banned from campus.
Everyone wants a piece of the Ivy League and top institutions. It provides you a head start to life and gives you opportunities that will benefit your career. We get it. But it’s obviously a ridiculous matter that shouldn’t happen in the first place. Earn your way in – work hard, put in the effort, and play the cards you’re dealt.
But perhaps a culprit to blame for the recent college admissions scandal is the manner in which the college admissions process is conducted in our country. Not just about the rich and privileged, but an inequality that spans across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic, and political backgrounds.
When it comes to college admissions, the root of the inequality lies in a system that favors the rich and wealthy, underrepresented minority groups, athletes, legacies of parents who attended the university (especially wealthy donors), and the children from backgrounds of higher authority, like children of US politicians. This inequity has been at the root of the Ivy League admissions system, and the recent college admissions scandal is no surprise.
In a utopian society, we believe that elite education should not be an entitlement, but a meritocratic opportunity honored fair and square. But our education system isn’t fair in the first place. As college consultants who have helped students admitted to the top universities, we know this scandal is more than just about privilege or race. It’s about the inherent flaws in our education system that need to be fixed.
Perhaps one way to avoid the college admissions scandal is to adapt the UK system where equality is more based on merit. For example, in the UK system, you are expected to perform well on a series of exams such as the A Levels, a high level exam known as the MAT, and finally an on campus in-person interview with the admissions committee where they challenge your academic and intellectual skillset. Very few soft factors such as race, ethnicity, unique personalities, or socioeconomic status are considered.
That seems like a much more fair process than what we have in the US system today, where students are judged by not only their academic profile but also softer factors like essays, ethnicity, income background, and an informal interview.
The student’s personality has to shine, or mimic a culture that shares common values we are trained to approve of through the influence of media while in the process neglecting other backgrounds that are necessary to increase diversity in the first place.
For example, universities prefer to accept a student who has studied Roman Classics, a largely Westernized subject, rather than a strong student in math and science who also happens to be Asian. Are we really improving diversity, as these schools tend to claim to achieve?
If you spawn an essay writing contest where the student has to act as “Western,” or “WASP,” or whatever culture that aims to stereotype the persona that admissions officers subconsciously want every student to mimic, aren’t we created a more segregated, rather than diverse, society by adhering to the values of Western culture that the media portrays?
We need to revamp our education system so that it plays a greater role toward the advancement of human knowledge and progress rather than a system that creates social, income, and ethnic class divide within our society. The divisive effects have stunted the growth in our country – the U.S. lags behind many other world countries including China, Japan, and Russia in the math, sciences, and engineering, for example.
In the college admissions scandal, the fact that these parents were willing to shore up millions of dollars to help their children get into these speaks volumes to the demand for these higher elite institutions, which have come to play an increasingly disruptive role within higher education, and fundamentally, our society.
The great lengths that these privileged families were willing to undergo to secure their children an elite education shows that the value of these degrees cannot be understated.
It’s as if you get a head start in life. A degree from Stanford or Yale means you have higher employment opportunities, easier access to venture capital, and a lifelong connections with ambitious, successful colleagues who may one day propel your career and overall state of well being.
From income inequality due to the higher employment prospects of these degrees to the lawsuit against affirmative action that put Asian Americans at a major advantage, the admissions process of these universities have caused more harm than good. The recent college admissions scandal is both a symptom and byproduct if such inequity.
From a long-term perspective, however, we recognize that these higher institutions will continue to encounter difficulty, not only by backlash given the the unfairness and inequity of the current admissions process, but also by the huge advancements of Internet education.
The digital revolution, while as some have argued that it certainly has caused its fair share of income inequality, has also given us equal access to education and a superb quality of delivery of content that spearheads the universal dispersement of knowledge.
One day, these higher institutions may lose their luster as online education gains its foothold. But that is not going to happen anytime soon, at least not quite in our generation given by the ultra competitive desire among students and parents to get accepted in our nation’s most elite universities.
The recent college admissions scandal is no joke, and needs to be taken seriously. And as long as higher education survives, the college admissions process needs some reconsideration, and evaluated to establish merit-based solutions to uphold the values that institutions of higher learning are expected of – the purest pursuit of knowledge and the advancement of society.
