[ExI] elite college bribery scandal

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting Bill Wallace:

> Long before this latest craze, Harvard etc. was the place to go to  
> meet people.  It doesn't matter what your grades are.  You will meet  
> the elite who will run politics, business, and who knows what else.   
> Joining the elite clubs gives you ins for life if you are accepted.  
> Even at lower levels, where you got your MBA or doctorate is a  
> bragging right thing.  You won't be asked what you did your  
> dissertation on - you will be asked what university you went to.  
> The only way to beat this system for the individual is to be a  
> genius. Nobody cared where Einstein got educated.

This is pretty much the way things are. My question is thus: is this  
way things ought to be? The reason I ask is that America seems to be a  
plutocratic republic with delusions of being an egalitarian  
meritocracy. I am not entirely against the idea of a plutocracy, but  
if so, then why the pretense toward meritocracy? Is it so that elites  
privileged from birth can pat themselves on the back for walking to  
the finish line of a very unfair race? Is it to keep the proles  
thinking that they are one promotion or innovation away from the big  
leagues? Is it a deliberate scam to sell student loans? Or some  
pathological form of self-deception?

And going off of Caplan's premises, if we have it within our  
technological reach to make educational dimplomas and degrees honest  
signals of academic achievement rather than signals of wealth and  
privilege, should we implement that technology? Would it make a  
difference?


Stuart LaForge

>
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 5:13 PM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 14, 2019, at 2:37 PM, <spike at rainier66.com>  
> <spike at rainier66.com> wrote: 
>
> Perhaps you have heard of the latest conniption: rich people buying  
> their offspring into elite colleges.
>
>  
>
> Here’s my question:
>
>  
>
> (BillW, your opinion weighs a lot on this.)
>
>  
>
> What is the biggest differences between a highly selective state  
> university (such as the UC system) and the elite universities?   
> Rather, why should one pay more to go to the elite schools?
>
>
> Bryan Caplan weighed in on this:
> http://time.com/5551315/college-bribery-larger-lie/
>
> Regards,
> Dan   Sample my Kindle books at:
> http://author.to/DanUst
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