I went to college in the mid 1970s. This was a time of transition for many things. One of them was a change in admissions policies that mostly opened it to better scrutiny. By and large, this was a good thing. Policies that had been discriminatory were changed, and lots of people who had been denied college were able to go. For most people, a college degree opens lots of doors. When I went to college, most people didn't have college aspirations, although many people took advantage of Junior College and the specialized trade schools. Today, most people do have college aspirations, including the vast majority who do not have the aptitude for it. This has opened a gigantic market for scam colleges and perhaps even worse, scam college lenders.
Wealthy and upper middle class families have always seen college as a natural step for their children and the vast majority saw to it that their kids got in. Most got in through the various aptitude measurements, but plenty of kids really didn't have the aptitude. In the old days, the college was happy to take a kid that wouldn't have otherwise made it, in return for a nice donation. This would be sufficient to provide the kid with tutoring and other needed support, and in most cases it was sufficient to give a scholarship to a bunch of other kids who did deserve it but couldn't afford it. This was a good arrangement. Everybody understood that the kid was there on the merits of daddy's donation, and kid would end up having career undistinguished by anything but the nice diploma and probably a large bar tab and perhaps a few racy scenes in the tabloids. It was corrupt, but openly so, and the good it did far outweighed the bad.
The new admissions schemes have ended most of the corruption. But not all. Good parents will do their very best to open doors for their kids, and if open corruption is blocked, they will find ways around the rules. The recent scandal involving sports recruiters getting students admitted on the basis of non-existent talent, mostly in relatively obscure sports, is an example of this. Lori Loughlin apparently spent $500,000 getting her two kids into USC. Had this been open, that could have provided 12-15 student-years of free rides for deserving students. Instead, it mostly went to various scammers.
Most of the people who went to college this way in the old days lived undistinguished lives. There are a few exceptions though. It's pretty clear that Donald Trump doesn't have the mental wherewithal to get into a decent college, much less a good one like UPenn. Daddy Fred plainly found a way to open the door though. Don apparently did attend a few classes, but managed to be remembered mostly for being absent from most of his senior year while he started his real estate business in New York, and somehow graduating anyway.
I say: This is ok, but there should be a clear paper trail to be found by anyone who is curious, such as grad schools and newspaper reporters. If each undeserving student pays for a half dozen or more deserving ones, that's an acceptable price, provided the undeserving student can be prevented from using their purchased diploma for evil, as the Trumps did. An undeserved admission should never be used for admission to subsequent education, such as medical school. On the other hand, there are plenty of cases of bad students waking up during their college years and going on to do something great, so it shouldn't be a barrier either. MCATs, GREs, LSATs, and actual decent college grades should be sufficient to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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