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By now you’ve probably heard about the college admissions scandal involving children of the rich and famous. The latest scandal involves moving away from the traditional method of cheating to help your kids get into college my making a “generous” donation to build a new science wing or arts center, and by coincidence your son or daughter now “qualifies” to make it into that school. This new one involves hiring professionals to help students cheat on SAT scores or college admissions essays to get into the institutions of higher learning. The bigger question is not who was involved, but why they do it.
Our current social system is theoretically based on meritocracy, where positions, opportunities, and respect are awarded to those who deserve it; while theoretically this is a great and fair system, in reality we know American society is hardly based on meritocracy. Not only because it’s not entirely possible to have one, but because those who control the top positions in business, law, medicine, journalism, academia, or politics have little interest in doing anything but maintaining the status quo because they benefit from it.
It should not matter where one attends school, yet we see increasingly “prestigious” universities filling the ranks of top positions in society. Whether it’s a Forbes 30 under 30 list, scholarly academic positions, or the leading elected officials, an increasingly smaller share of schools contribute an increasingly larger share of the top of the social order. All 9 Supreme Court justices attended an Ivy League institution, and 8 of 9 are Harvard or Yale graduates. A disproportionate share of top businesspeople  and lawyers went to a “top-tier” school, where having the right social connections and brand name on the sheepskin can help open doors that are closed to people who don’t have that brand name or who don’t live in the top social order. As inequality on our society grows (income, wealth, opportunity, etc), you will see more desperation from parents to make sure their son or daughter gets into these schools so they can benefit from being in the “club” while otherwise decent colleges or trade schools will be seen as “inferior”.
Unfortunately, we also have a society where those who attended these “prestigious” schools control most of our institutions, and set it up so those who are fellow attendees have an “in” that is not provided. It is not clear why so many Americans tolerate a system which favors a small few at the expense of everyone else, but perhaps daily propaganda from the media elites (many of whom also share the same connections- Chelsea Clinton anyone?) has persuaded the average fool that s/he is better of letting the “smarter, better-educated” people make all the decisions because they must be good if they went to the proper schools, no?
Until or unless ordinary Americans wake up and realize how corrosive the rigging has become on our society, we will continue to see cheating scandals like this one, and opportunity gaps for all but a select few (whether deserving or not) and the top of the ladder. You can tell how badly the elites want to preserve the system: Check out the dating app The League, which is exclusively for people who went to a “top” university. And see how many people have signed up for this, because they want to make sure they date and marry only the “sophisticated” group and not have to deal with the rest of us riff-raff. The graduates of these universities want to have children who will also benefit from a rigged system and perpetuate the inequality cycle.
 
Bradan’s World’s hope is to see a world where one’s ambition and drive determines success, not who your parents are or whether you are in the “right” social circle. We will continue advocating for good education for all and will always support the truth, not the mainstream media propaganda.