This is not a good time for American higher education, but as bad as this may seem, matters are even worse.  The students themselves are part of the problem when they seek admission to top schools with tactics that are at best questionable and at worst dishonest.

Dishonesty is rampant.  Students will even misrepresent their race or ethnicity.  This is hardly a surprise in today’s academic world that prizes diversity, and admissions officers willingly lower standards to achieve it.  According to one study, some 34% of white students admitted lying about their ethnic identify for purposes of admission or financial aid, with “Native American” being the most popular subterfuge and 13% falsely claiming to be Latino.  Ten percent of these whites checked the African-American ancestry box.  The deceit generally worked: 77% of those lying were admitted.  

Deceit is further encouraged by “college admission counselors” to help youngsters whose families can afford to guide Junior into a school beyond his true academic abilities.  This industry includes independent tutors charging by the hour and firms belonging to the Independent Educational Consultants Association that expertly handle tasks like choosing the best high school courses, providing specialized summer programs, and deciding where to apply, plus tips to handle college interviews and obtaining outstanding letters of recommendation among multiple other services.  

Counselors will manage all the details — even rewrites of your college application essay.  The Varsity Blues scandal that resulted in criminal penalties exposed oft-hidden tactics such as bribes and hiring others to take your exams, but other exposed tactics, notably generous donations to the school, are perfectly legal.  Top-notch consultants can be expensive — as much as $15,260.

The current heightened competition for places at elite schools has, as expected, encouraged innovation.  The online Scholar Launch offers options that start at $3,500 to connect high school students with specialists who will help them write and then publish “a scholarly paper.”  This is not outright fraud, since the students paper will appear in a journal called Scholarly Review that boasts of its thorough review process conducted by “highly accomplished professors and academics,” with the final paper being “published” as a “preprint.”  Scholar Launch is only one of 20 such for-fee sites that help high-schoolers embellish their résumés.

The latest option for college applicants is using artificial intelligence for everything from navigating the admissions progress to perfecting the required admissions essay.  A Forbes article illustrated a student’s use of ChatGPT when applying to Vanderbilt University.  One applicant asked the A.I. program: “As a prospective student visiting Vanderbilt University who’s interested in engineering, debate team, and Asian-American life on campus, what are some questions to ask on a college tour when interacting with my tour guide?”

This expensive “professionalization” of the college admissions process clearly helps the rich.  A police officer’s son might try for a Harvard scholarship, but Dad probably cannot afford expensive admission counselors to polish his son’s essay or help him choose au courant extracurricular activities.  And the son’s after-school pizza delivery job is not exactly eye-catching to an admissions officer infatuated with “crafting” a “diverse freshman class.”  Working-class applicants would be better off promoting LGBT rights in Zimbabwe than delivering for Domino’s.

Ironically, eliminating the SAT to help black and Hispanic applicants will only increase the benefits of expensive coaching.  Specifically, absent a measure of raw intellectual ability captured by the verbal SAT test, the costly helping hand to build impressive résumés necessarily looms larger.  The cop’s son might have scored a perfect 1600 if the school required the test or weighted heavily, but since so many schools now downplay such displays of brain power, the cop’s son must compete with rivals who, thanks to expensive help, submitted stellar personal statements, “published” articles in “peer reviewed journals,” and benefited from other comparable eye-catching advantages.    

Will these beneficiaries of expensive gaming the system fail once they enter college sans their life-support apparatus?  Hardly.  The extensive paid support network continues.

The internet abounds with paper-writing services, and one such site even assures potential buyers that they can receive papers in as little as three hours.  Everything is done by experts and is 100% original and thus undetectable with plagiarism software.  (Various legal disclaimers are also supplied if those submitting the paper are caught.)  Another site offers papers at between $10 and $13 a page.  

Numerous online sites where students evaluate their professors also help guide strugglers toward instructors notable for easy grades and fluff assignments.  Some sites supply class notes and other services to ensure an “A.”  Now, thanks to the inside dope, few intellectually challenged youngsters risk accidentally enrolling in a tough course requiring hard work.  According to Wikipedia, the leader in this rating field is Rate My Professor, which claims to offer information from 8,000 schools, 1, 7 million professors, and 19 million ratings.  

If all else fails, just major in an ideologically infused grievance studies discipline light on rigorous scholarship and heavy on regurgitating the teacher’s orthodoxy.  Though some might smirk at a Gender Studies degree with a minor in Communications, a diploma is a diploma, especially from a name-brand prestige school.  

In short, millions of college students have grown dependent on a life support system antithetical to a strong work ethic thanks to being able to hire experts to grease the path to admission and, after they enroll, hire others for their class notes and course papers.  Add receiving “As” for mediocre work, and the path to a diploma is assured.

Given this reality, it is hardly surprising that according to one recent survey, nearly half of all American firms plan to eliminate the college degree as a requirement for entry-level jobs.  Even high-tech IBM and Google have done so.  The prestigious consulting company Accenture began an apprenticeship program in 2016, and of the 1,600 people hired through that program, 80% did not have a four-year degree.  As the firm’s North American CEO said, “a person’s educational credentials are not the only indicators of success, so we advanced our approach to hiring to focus on skills, experiences and potential.”  Many employers might now decide that it is preferable to hire ambitious immigrant with just a high school diploma accustomed to working 50 hours a week without an army of helpers.

Eventually, outside the tough, no-nonsense hard sciences and engineering, a college degree, even from an elite school, may lose its value.  Who wants an employee insisting upon mentors, coaches, and endless other support services to get the job done — then being hyper-sensitive about every imaginable injustice thanks to courses teaching that systemic oppression is everywhere?  Just ask Anheuser-Busch about employees believing that it’s cool to be transgendered.  

Recall the American automobile industry, which beginning in the 1960s, began producing shoddy cars whose defects were masked by expensive marketing.  Eventually, the public tired of American gas-guzzling clunkers, no matter what their prestige, and welcomed better built Japanese imports.  The once prestigious American college diploma will be the next Edsel.  We can only feel sorry for all those heavily indebted college graduates whose diplomas are slowly losing their value.

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