Junior Varsity

"Teachers teach that knowledge waits can lead to a hundred-dollar plates" (Bob Dylan)

It is confession time. I must confess I gave the admission staff at Georgia Southern University a ten dollar Wal-Mart gift card in order that my son would be accepted into the school and taught how to drink Fireball Whiskey.

I 'm joking.  My son earned his way into Georgia Southern the old fashion way. He filled out a form online.

This was the week we found out that Felicity Hoffman was married to William H. Macy.  We also found out that Lori Laughlin apparently has a lot of disposable income because she paid somebody $500K to get her daughter into the University of Southern California. In true kid fashion, the daughter posted a YouTube video saying "I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know."

Laughlin would have been better off just handing the $500k to her daughter.

Yes, the college admission bribery scandal is here and it will not go away any time soon.

Why?  Because most middle-class people try to send their kids to college because we have bought, with good reason, that a college degree is your ticket for success. And it is, but it is not the only ticket for success. Hard work, doing a good job, and (the easiest) just showing up are all tickets for success.

True story. I was working a temp job one time. I was hired full time because they said: "you show up".

It is going to be an issue because nobody really knows what it takes to be admitted to college. I defy anyone to give me a clear explanation on how to be accepted into the class of 2023 at the University of Georgia. Good luck.

It is going to be an issue because admission to "elite colleges" are not on academic merit. If it were, Asian-Americans would be 43 percent of the student population at Harvard University (by Harvard's own estimate) instead of 18 percent.

No, admission is a smorgasbord with money, legacy, and yes, a student's race given "points" or "weights" to allow the university to create a utopia of a  "diverse" (racial, but not political) community of individuals. Heather McDonald in The City Journal says, "In fact, admissions officers are simply allocating a scarce resource based on their own prejudices and inclinations".

It is going to be an issue because it doesn't seem like the graduates of these "elite" colleges are all that "elite" if you catch my drift. Do I have to name all of the Ivy League graduates who act like they have never stepped inside of a classroom?

It is somewhat of a cliche but some of the brightest people I know didn't go to "elite" colleges. I have a friend that went to Oklahoma State and he's one of the smartest individuals I ever met.   I graduated from college, my wife never went. Guess who does the checkbook for the family.


We have this debate over the grades of various politicians over the years. We can't see Donald Trump's grades but we never saw Barack Obama's either. My question is why do we care what grade a 20-year-old made in Western Lit?   Personally, I don't care if Bernie Sanders made straight A's, I'm not going to ever vote for him.

It is going to be an issue because it confirms what we thought to begin with:  College is somewhat of a scam.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to become a Democrat.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to party.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to do the least amount of work for the maximum amount of profit, which I admit is a pretty good skill.

College is all about making money for the college. That's why they advertise.  That's why they don't pay their best marketers:  football and basketball players.  That's why it costs so much.  It costs $67,580.00 a year to send a student to Harvard.  If your family makes under $65,000.00 they will "allow" a student to attend for free.  If your family makes $66,000.00, too bad, Y'all have to pick up the full freight.

We are going to be talking about this for a long time because it is about gaming the system.

This is why Elizabeth Warren will never be President.  She wasn't going around yapping about her Native American background because it was an interesting fun fact about her. No, it helped in employment, pure and simple.

People know that a piece of paper showing you've graduated from a fancy-schmancy school ensures you have a leg up on your competition. A graduate from Harvard will have an easier time (theoretically) finding employment than someone from Kennesaw State.  That's just a fact.

College has to change from being "a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense".  

In 2007, seniors at Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Duke, and UC-Berkely scored lower on an easy test of  American history than they did when they took the same test as freshmen.  If that doesn't tell you why socialism is making a comeback, I don't know what will.

It all reminds me of something that happened to Ronald Reagan in the '60s.  He was in Washington, DC and some campus radicals recognized him and began to surround his car.  They started shouting: "WE ARE THE FUTURE".  Reagan asked an aide for a pen and paper. He wrote "I WILL SELL MY BONDS" and showed it to the radicals.

If this doesn't improve, we all might want to sell our bonds.