US Millionaires Underestimate Their Children

Federal prosecutors have recently released outrageous and incredible details of a scandal that started in the administration offices of renowned U.S. universities. The scandal implicates Hollywood personalities and business millionaires who have paid staff at universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Yale to admit their children — and perhaps other family members — as students. The scandal has grown and aroused interest because of the immoral — even criminal — tangled web of bribery involving a whole monetized and apparently legal system that has permeated the admission offices of many prominent U.S. universities. It is believed that one of the ringleaders is William Singer, 58, of Newport Beach, California, founder of Edge College & Career Network, and its charity counterpart, Key Worldwide Foundation, who has been cooperating with authorities since September.

According to Rebecca Halleck of The New York Times, actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli are among the 50 people publicly charged in a bribery scheme to secure places for students in elite colleges. As Masha Gessen of The New Yorker states, “It includes bizarre details, like the Photoshopping of photographs of said children’s faces onto the bodies of outstanding young athletes … it says something intuitively obvious but barely articulated about American society: its entire education system is a scam, perpetrated by a few upon the many.”

Writer Frank Bruni adds, “It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying — which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him—and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but how much of a difference is there, really? Both elevate money over accomplishment.” Both allow you to attend a given university, but the “accomplishment” is undermined by an unjust and corrupt system.

In the act of bribery, the millionaires who surreptitiously pay to enable their kids’ admission are simply laying out in each case the fact that their children lack the intelligence, ability, discipline and even good health to compete with those who pursue the moral route. Those who choose this route may do so because, among other reasons, they don’t have the resources for bribery, and, even if they did, they prefer to trust in the capabilities of their children. On the other hand, we have the corruption of those who accept the bribes – the universities which give priority to the briber; not to mention the obligation these institutions have to declare all monetary income to the federal and state tax authorities.

One reason for this corruption is the obsession with Ivy League institutions, the oldest, most prestigious and most expensive universities, which have historically attracted the best faculty in the country — and much of the world — and have served as the cradles of research in various fields. In addition, there are prestigious state universities that come at a price that has become prohibitive for a four-year bachelor’s degree. They should be free as they are in other countries; student debt in the U.S. today is exorbitant. However, to consider it socialism that the state pays for the first four years of college is ignorant and demonstrates a desire to maintain low tax rates for multimillionaires, some of whom bribe universities to admit their children, proving that from the start, they consider their children to be inept.