LEGACY RACIAL TYRANNY SERIES

If this familiar view is right, then the problem with meritocracy is not with the principle but with our failure to live up to it. They also agree, implicitly at least, that those who get in based on merit have earned their admission and deserve the benefits that flow from it. From this point of view, the admissions scandal is an egregious instance of the broader, pervasive unfairness that prevents higher education from living up to the meritocratic principle it professes.ĭespite their disagreements, those who consider the cheating scandal a shocking departure from standard admissions practices and those who consider it an extreme example of tendencies already prevalent in college admissions share a common premise: Students should be admitted to college based on merit. At all but the handful of colleges wealthy enough to admit students without regard for their ability to pay, those who do not need financial aid are more likely than their needy counterparts to get in.Ĭritics point to these inequalities as evidence that higher education is not the meritocracy it claims to be. And don’t forget the potential benefits of legacy admission and donor appreciation. Not only do wealthy parents enroll their children in SAT prep courses, they hire private admissions counselors to burnish their applications, enroll them in dance and music lessons, train them in elite sports such as fencing, squash, golf, tennis, crew, lacrosse, and sailing, the better to qualify for recruitment to college teams, and send them off to perform good works in distant places to demonstrate concern for the downtrodden.

The richer a student’s family, the higher the score he or she is likely to receive.

In practice, however, SAT scores closely track family income.

Standardized tests such as the SAT purport to measure merit. Measures of merit are hard to disentangle from economic advantage. Money hovers over the front door as well as the back. In practice, of course, it is not that simple. Admission based on merit defines entry through the “front door.” As Singer put it, the front door “means you get in on your own.” It represents what most people consider fair. He referred to his own technique of bribes and faked test scores as a surer “side door” approach.įrom the standpoint of fairness, however, it is hard to distinguish between the “back door” and the “side door.” Both give an edge to children of wealthy parents who are admitted instead of better-qualified applicants. But he noted that strategy offered no guarantee of admission. In describing his scam, Singer noted that some try to ensure entrance for marginally qualified applicants through the “back door,” giving a college a major gift. In ways that people struggled to articulate, it was an emblematic scandal, one that raised larger questions about who gets ahead, and why. But the outrage expressed something deeper. Everyone agreed that bribing and cheating to gain admission to elite colleges was reprehensible. In a polarized time, when Americans could scarcely agree on anything, it drew massive coverage and condemnation across the political spectrum - on Fox News and MSNBC, in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. In all, Singer took in $25 million over eight years.

LEGACY RACIAL TYRANNY SERIES

Another celebrity, the actress Felicity Huffman, known for her role in the television series “Desperate Housewives,” somehow got a bargain rate for only $15,000, Singer put in the fix for her daughter’s SAT. Television actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, paid Singer $500,000 to get their two daughters admitted to USC as bogus recruits to the crew team. For students lacking the stellar academic credentials top colleges required, Singer devised corrupt workarounds.įor instance, the chairman of a prestigious law firm paid $75,000 for his daughter to take a college entrance exam at a test center supervised by a proctor paid by Singer to ensure the student received the score she needed. Singer’s company specialized in gaming the intensely competitive college admissions system that had in recent decades become the primary gateway to prosperity and prestige. They charged 33 wealthy parents with engaging in an elaborate cheating scheme to get their children admitted to elite universities including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, and the University of Southern California.Īt the heart of the scam was an unscrupulous consultant named William Singer, who ran a business that catered to anxious, affluent parents. In March 2019, as high school students awaited the results of their college applications, federal prosecutors made a stunning announcement. Excerpted from “Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” by Michael J.

Legacy racial tyranny