Bottom line: our admissions process is badly flawed. I blame it partly on the decline in the predominance in academic values coinciding with the bureaucratization of the university. Administrators are crowding out faculty not only numerically but in terms of power. I blame it partly on our academic obsession with evaluating people on the basis of group characteristics, not individual merit. What would Alexis de Tocqueville say visiting 21st century America, learning that students bribe their way into a ticket for economic success by lying about their ability to hit tennis balls? Is that the new American exceptionalism?
Apparently.
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes. The college-admissions scandal should make everyone furious.
Academia has been infuriating me for years. It’s a generational disaster, not just for the kids, but the Republic itself.