College Admissions Scandals
By James E. Horn

The College admission process has been a scam for generations.

Currently, wealthy parents have been buying the way for their offspring into prestigious schools using all manner of bribes and incentives whether the kids were competitive, had passed SAT’s, entrance examinations, etc. or not. Parents paid professionals to take entry exams for their stupid children, and then paid professors to give passing grades all of the way along through graduation. In some cases, very worthy but less affluent children were disenfranchised. Is this fair?

During wartime (WWI, WWII, Korea, VietNam), people could buy their way into colleges and then receive exemptions or deferrals from military service. Their grades were not an issue. Those who could not pay the fees were drafted. Was this fair? Those who served honorably were then granted, via the G.I. Bill, benefits that enabled them to get good educations. This was clearly fair.

Universities and colleges in every corner of America grant waivers (and in some cases even pay cash bonuses) to “students” based solely on their athletic prowess. Universities are sometimes caught and penalized for violating rules to get athletes onto their teams and even to give big $$$ to some (under the table). Those athletes are NOT competitive in the academic arena, but are in fact professionals being well compensated to play sports. Is this fair?

Then, of course is the “granting” business where big and little Grand Pubah’s of places like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China, Bandar Sri Begawan, etc. bestow often recurring multi-million dollar gifts to universities to establish facilities and programs that benefit their political agendas and non-competitive offspring with passing grades and more.

The newest gimmick is to grant race, ethnicity, and zip code based “adversity” allowances to boost SAT scores for less competitive students. This, of course is bigoted and biased against competitive white, Asian, and otherwise capable students who are being denied access to so-called top schools like Yale and Harvard (whose standing as quality institutions are rapidly diminishing). Knowing this, Native American (Indian), Hispanic, Black, Moslem kids, etc. who know that they are not being held to the same standards have less incentive to push themselves to achieve, actually making the problem worse.

It is a shameful situation that harms those who are good, decent, and worthy as it benefits the privileged, wealthy, and lazy.