Pity the rich. 

It used to be the middle class that got squeezed.  We had too little money to pay for college, but so much money that we had to buy tuition (and books, etc.) for the poor.  Still, we found other ways to succeed.  Then, having earned our way into the middle class, we struggled to get our kids into college, only to see them fall to the back of the line as members of the favored “quota gentry” were ushered to the front.

These days, it is the rich who are suffering (sarcasm intended).  Their money has not only failed to gain them the preferential treatment to which they have become accustomed, but worse for them, buying their way past more accomplished students has potentially landed them in jail.

Note that the topmost of the wealthy have not suffered these depredations.  The Kennedys and the Rockefellers can legally bribe their way into academia by founding a chair, a building, or parlaying their connections in the legacy category.  No one challenges them.

It is the rich who suffer now.  Ironically, there is now such a thing as being the second-rate wealthy, and being second-rate at anything is to be an abysmal failure.

But wait.  Are we not the nation of equal opportunity?  Do not applicants for college compete on a level playing field?

Of course not.  That has never been the case, nor will it be for the foreseeable future.  Ask any brilliant student trapped in a hellhole teachers-union-controlled school.  If they cannot land in one of the few charter schools, their prospects for educational excellence are dim, very dim indeed.  I remember seeing a TV news broadcast where a lottery was held for a limited number of charter school posts, and the losers were literally bawling, gushing tears of grief, as they faced their doom.  Their uncontrolled sobbing did not move the hearts of the unqualified so-called teachers who oppose, tooth and nail, opening up any more charter schools.

Life is not fair, and that is the first lesson that people should learn.  How to deal with the unfairness is the second.

Political reform is of course, badly needed, but waiting for it has seen generations of students graduate whether or not they could read their diplomas.  It will not come about for many more years, if ever.

So what, then, can be done?  Maybe it’s hopeless, but if there is hope, here is a list.

For starters, education can return to its original duty of training students for good citizenship, and stop being the vehicle for ideological and political indoctrination by the left.  Western Civilization and civics must be reintroduced, along with history.  Discipline and accountability must be rigid, at least compared with today’s lax standards.  The so-called studies of gender-class-oppression must be replaced by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Students who fail, for any reason, must be redirected to career fields in which they can both produce something of value for society, and succeed at it for themselves.

Our existential enemy, Communist China, is already implementing goal-oriented policies comparable to these, adapted of course to their society.

And they do not play fair.