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There’s a Larger Lie Beyond the College Admissions Bribery Case
Time ^ | March 14, 2019 | Bryan Caplan

Posted on 03/15/2019 6:12:15 AM PDT by C19fan

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I spent almost a decade on college campuses most as a student some as a lecturer. Two were at top 30 universities and one at a premier public university. Half the students do not care. They do not bother going to class and only show up for the examinations. One student in a class I taught failed to show up for a midterm despite me reminding the students an exam was coming up for several weeks before the exam. He wanted to do a makeover I did not use these words but I told him to ***k Off.
1 posted on 03/15/2019 6:12:15 AM PDT by C19fan
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To: C19fan

Let’s not assume that this is the first crime or moral compromise these lowlifes made on the way accumulating their wealth. Rich scum is still scum.


2 posted on 03/15/2019 6:16:28 AM PDT by allendale (.)
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To: All

WRT STATUS SCHOOLS:

Nancy’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, graduated from USC’s prestigious Annenberg School for Communication in 1993.

How’d she get in? Mom use the pull of campaign bucks?


3 posted on 03/15/2019 6:21:24 AM PDT by Liz ( Our side has 8 trillion bullets; the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.)
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To: C19fan

Is there a single institution in this country that has any integrity?


4 posted on 03/15/2019 6:22:08 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: C19fan

In a warped, backhanded way this scandal advances the socialist agenda.

“The game really IS rigged! There IS NO meritocracy! You’re gettin’ SCROOOOOOD!!”


5 posted on 03/15/2019 6:23:05 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: C19fan
"If the US University System were a stock, I would SHORT it."

--Peter Thiel, famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist

6 posted on 03/15/2019 6:23:24 AM PDT by gaijin
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To: wastoute
Is there a single institution in this country that has any integrity?

Apparently the answer is no.


7 posted on 03/15/2019 6:23:36 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: C19fan

For sure.

Academia is a house of cards.

American taxpayers are consistently conned so this ‘myth’ may be prepetuated

Education? Enlightenment? Not on your life. It has nothing to do with any of that.

It’s a real Ponzi con with the faculty and administrators at the top if the food chain. Without fed $$$$ so subsidize their BS, they’d be on the street- struggling to find a ‘real’ job-and most of them would go home disappointed!!


8 posted on 03/15/2019 6:25:57 AM PDT by SMARTY (Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values. Ortega y Gasset)
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To: C19fan

Words strung together into one big grammatically correct mass of no meaning.


9 posted on 03/15/2019 6:25:57 AM PDT by Fhios
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To: Liz

I thought USC was where you went to play Football if you wanted to get drafted by the NFL.


10 posted on 03/15/2019 6:26:18 AM PDT by Old Retired Army Guy
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To: C19fan

I want one of these pundits — preferably a liberal one — to write a column explaining why nobody in this case paid even a $100 bribe to get their kids into Howard University.


11 posted on 03/15/2019 6:26:49 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey.")
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To: Fhios

Gives new meaning of going with the flow.


12 posted on 03/15/2019 6:27:08 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET (urope. Why do they put up with this.)
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To: C19fan
I have been doing research on the early American colleges. The ones our Founders graduated from. Like Harvard.

They started out as essentially Bible colleges, but within two generations they became full liberal art institutions awarding only one degree and that was in philosophy. In order to be admitted you had to have a reading knowledge of Greek and a working knowledge of Latin. Your capstone class was moral philosophy (which is the study of ethics, virtue and vice) and on graduation day you were expected to debate your professor in Latin in front of your entire graduating class.

Half of our Founders graduated from a colonial college. The other half, like Benjamin Franklin, desired to go to college but was unable to do so. Our Constitution could have been written and debated in Latin.

Far cry from a bachelors at Harvard today. They would be absolutely appalled at this bribery case.

13 posted on 03/15/2019 6:29:19 AM PDT by Slyfox (Not my circus, not my monkeys)
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To: C19fan
If you want to be a Master of the Universe, you pretty much have to go to one of the "top schools". Bu the top schools are pretty much a joke. The people who go to those schools are NOT the people who should be Masters of the Universe. Obama is one example of thousands.

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
-- William F. Buckley

14 posted on 03/15/2019 6:30:28 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: wastoute
"Is there a single institution in this country that has any integrity?"

Hillsdale College

15 posted on 03/15/2019 6:30:35 AM PDT by Cannoneer ("the question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." Ayn Rand)
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To: Fhios

I’d say he nailed it.


16 posted on 03/15/2019 6:30:50 AM PDT by NonValueAdded (#DeplorableMe #BitterClinger #HillNO! #cishet #MyPresident #MAGA #Winning #covfefe #BuildIt)
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To: C19fan

Bottom line in all of this is another push for free college for anyone who wants it. So we all be equal.

Still agenda driven.


17 posted on 03/15/2019 6:31:14 AM PDT by Jaded (Pope Francis? Not really a fan... miss the last guy who recognized how Islam spread... the sword.ag)
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To: Slyfox
They would be absolutely appalled at this bribery case.

I think they'd be more appalled that people would actually pay $300,000+ bribes to get their kids into such mediocre institutions.

18 posted on 03/15/2019 6:31:59 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey.")
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To: C19fan
From Ben Shapiro writing on Daily Wire:

"The question is why. Both these families are wealthy. The children of these families weren’t going to lack for opportunity in life. Furthermore, isn’t college designed to train people for the real world? Wouldn’t admission under false pretenses result in the kids flunking out? Wouldn’t their lack of merit be revealed by the simple pressure of the schooling?

The answer is obvious: no, it wouldn’t. Colleges aren’t about training kids for the real world, or teaching them significant modes of thinking, or examining timeless truths. Universities aren’t about skill sets, either – at least in the humanities. They’re about two things: credentialism and social connections.

In our society, there is an easy way to be perceived as intellectually meritorious: point to your degree. Those with a college degree all-too-often sneer at those without one, as though lack of a college degree were an indicator of innate ability or future lack of success. That simply isn’t true. But for generations, the widespread perception has been that the smartest kids go to college – and that the relative merit of each college confers a similar level of merit on the students. A student who goes to Yale is smarter than one who goes to junior college. This provides a lifelong advantage: employers are willing to take more chances on those who earn a Yale degree than those who went to junior college, for example.

Then there’s social connection. Social institutions in the United States have been fading over time. Churches used to provide us our chief means of social connection. Colleges now do. JD Vance writes in Hillbilly Elegy that admission to Yale Law School granted him social capital: “the networks of people and institutions around us have real economic value.” They also have social value. We often get jobs from friends, or from friends of friends. The social circles in which we travel matter. That’s true for those born rich as well as those born poor.

Here’s the problem: neither of these priorities actually demands that universities teach anything. Credentialism occurs upon admission, so long as you aren’t thrown out of school; social capital begins to accrue with presence, not with performance. Hence colleges watering down curricula and grades in order to make it easier to credential, and to generate less friction. That’s what students and parents demand: not skills, not education, but credentialism and social capital.

After I was admitted to Harvard Law School, I attended orientation. Our 500-strong class was gathered in Memorial Hall, in historic Sanders Theater, where then-Dean Elena Kagan (now Supreme Court Justice) spoke to us. She informed us that the competition was over – we were in! No need to worry about the stuff we’d seen in The Paper Chase – we were all going to leave with degrees and jobs. Not just that – as graduates of Harvard Law, we were destined to rule the universe. She informed us of how many alumni were in the Senate, how many in Congress, how many on the Supreme Court. The battle was over upon our acceptance to the institution."

19 posted on 03/15/2019 6:32:53 AM PDT by Baynative ("A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams." - John Barrymore)
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To: wastoute

Hillsdale College.


20 posted on 03/15/2019 6:33:30 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds ("The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." M. Thatcher)
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