"The question is why. Both these families are wealthy. The children of these families werent going to lack for opportunity in life. Furthermore, isnt college designed to train people for the real world? Wouldnt admission under false pretenses result in the kids flunking out? Wouldnt their lack of merit be revealed by the simple pressure of the schooling?
The answer is obvious: no, it wouldnt. Colleges arent about training kids for the real world, or teaching them significant modes of thinking, or examining timeless truths. Universities arent about skill sets, either at least in the humanities. Theyre 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 isnt 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 theres 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. Thats true for those born rich as well as those born poor.
Heres the problem: neither of these priorities actually demands that universities teach anything. Credentialism occurs upon admission, so long as you arent 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. Thats 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 wed 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."
POST 19- Thanks.
The last paragraph on Kagan’s remarks are memorable.
Thanks
Summed up by the old adage; “it’s not what you know but who you know”.