The College Admissions Mess

The four unspoken rules:

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.

Climate Change

No, The New Republic, it’s not this generation’s Vietnam War.

College Children

Who do not belong in college.

What a societal disaster.

[Monday-morning update]

Are parents robbing children of their adulthood?

Yes. This is one of the things that drove the “keep your ‘child’ on your health insurance until he’s 26.”

Meanwhile, what happens when all of childhood becomes college prep. In this formulation, the kids are being robbed of their childhood. In some sense, both things are happening.

[Bumped]

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!