College admissions scam: Not just another ethics scandal

Would a parent cheat to get a child into college? Apparently so, if this week's headlines are any indication.

The story of #LoriLoughlin, #FelicityHuffman, and 761 other parents and families implicated in the #WilliamRickSinger story of bribery and conspiracy to gain entry to the country's most prestigious universities brings the assault on ethics to a whole new level.

Cheating for money, for power, or for notoriety is understandable, if despicable. But the very point of university is education, which should be -- and once was -- founded on intellectual integrity. Cheating to pass is bad enough. Cheating to gain entry to the halls of wisdom is perverse.

Of course, colleges themselves have contributed to the breakdown of intellectual honesty. The pervasive campus culture of ideology, indoctrination, and groupthink has long eaten away at the foundations of truth. The ideal of a marketplace of higher thinking that was once the hallmark of higher education is on life support, and fading fast.

So it comes as no surprise that parents will seek to corrupt the system of education in order to immerse their children in that very system.

The real tragedy is that it comes as no surprise.

Photo Credit: Steve Buissinne via Pixabay