Famous Actresses Paid Bundles Of Money To Bribe Their Kids’ Way Into College. Here’s Why.

by Ben Shapiro,

These elite universities are the feeder networks — the training grounds, if you will — the educational camps for training and producing people to fill spots in the administrative state (bureaucrats, media, lobbyists, lawyers, etc).

The answer is obvious: no, it wouldn’t. Colleges aren’t about training kids for the real world, or teaching them significant modes of thinking, or examining timeless truths. Universities aren’t about skill sets, either – at least in the humanities. They’re about two things: credentialism and social connections.

In our society, there is an easy way to be perceived as intellectually meritorious: point to your degree. Those with a college degree all-too-often sneer at those without one, as though lack of a college degree were an indicator of innate ability or future lack of success. That simply isn’t true. But for generations, the widespread perception has been that the smartest kids go to college – and that the relative merit of each college confers a similar level of merit on the students. A student who goes to Yale is smarter than one who goes to junior college. This provides a lifelong advantage: employers are willing to take more chances on those who earn a Yale degree than those who went to junior college, for example.

Then there’s social connection. Social institutions in the United States have been fading over time. Churches used to provide us our chief means of social connection. Colleges now do. JD Vance writes in Hillbilly Elegy that admission to Yale Law School granted him social capital: “the networks of people and institutions around us have real economic value.” They also have social value. We often get jobs from friends, or from friends of friends. The social circles in which we travel matter. That’s true for those born rich as well as those born poor.

Here’s the problem: neither of these priorities actually demands that universities teach anything. Credentialism occurs upon admission, so long as you aren’t thrown out of school; social capital begins to accrue with presence, not with performance.

After I was admitted to Harvard Law School, I attended orientation. Our 500-strong class was gathered in Memorial Hall, in historic Sanders Theater, where then-Dean Elena Kagan (now Supreme Court Justice) spoke to us. She informed us that the competition was over – we were in! No need to worry about the stuff we’d seen in The Paper Chase – we were all going to leave with degrees and jobs. Not just that – as graduates of Harvard Law, we were destined to rule the universe. She informed us of how many alumni were in the Senate, how many in Congress, how many on the Supreme Court. The battle was over upon our acceptance to the institution.

All of this has significant social ramifications, of course. It means that our meritocracy doesn’t begin in college – it ends, for many, upon admission to college.

That’s why rich and famous people would spend oodles of money just to get their kids into top universities: not because their kids won’t have jobs or will go hungry, but because they want their kids credentialed and admitted into the social club.

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