This means new buildings and “amenities.” Expanding the curriculum. Hiring the best professors and paying them well even if they teach for only a few hours every week, guaranteeing lifetime employment (tenure), and giving frequent sabbaticals. A big-name public university must also offer a full menu of athletic options – a football or basketball program that can “compete” and, likely, a coach who makes in the low seven figures. They need swimming pools, climbing walls, elaborate gyms. Student unions with coffee shops where students can stop for a latte between classes. And, then, someone must manage this infrastructure, so bring on the administrators. Four years of college became, not a simple continuation of a student’s education – of learning at a more specialized and higher level – but an “experience.” Choosing your college is no longer about finding the best place to learn. Rather, it’s about discovering the “right fit.” Parents became accustomed to the ordeal known as the “college tour.” You and your kid drove to schools, were greeted by some bright young thing who told you about the joys and satisfactions of being a part of “the community,” and toured the wonderful facilities, one of which might even be the library. You got a look at the dormitory room where your kid would be living. Likely as not, it was nicer than their room at home. But how to pay for it? The sovereign answer to that question is always... borrow the money .
FROM EDUCATION TO ’EXPERIENCE’ As we recently learned, wealthy hedge funders and second-tier Hollywood actresses paid bribes to get their otherwise unqualified darlings into schools that would bestow a degree and, supposedly, set them up for life. The bribes were reported as charitable contributions when it came time to do the taxes. One of the parents worked for a Silicon Valley investment firm where, according to news reports, his responsibilities included, “promoting social good.” Knowing that an applicant’s athletic accomplishment would increase chances of acceptance, the man paid $250,000 for a photoshopped picture of his son punting a football. The kid didn’t even play the game. But, then, corruption inevitably infiltrates where there is a promise of big money. No reason to expect that the college admissions game should be immune. And no one is excusing the corrupt and illegal acts, rather the schools profess they are shocked, shocked by the whole thing. It is what is accepted – and expensive – about our system of higher education that is dangerous. It is a system that incentives young people and their parents to shop for the “best” school that will accept them. That incentivizes the schools to do all they can to make themselves desirable to the most qualified students.
Corruption inevitably infiltrates where there is a promise of big money.
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April 2019
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