In a comical trolling of elite America, plaintiff lawyers are suing Yale, MIT, Columbia, Duke, et al for price-fixing. The suit reveals how American universities favor the wealthy and powerful.
Delighted to see the attorneys working the class action have made good use of the Lynton emails from that Sony hack as they relate to Brown.
If you've haven't read the whole series of university-admission related emails in the Sony hack, it's a fascinating peak into life at the top of the US socio-economic pyramid. And there's lots lots more in that trove.
Great essay, although I was a little disappointed not to see one particular aspect of elite American universities explored. With a few notable exceptions like MIT it is not really the education which is valuable, but rather the access to incredibly potent influence and preferment networks. This even often extends to the parents buying into the dollar value of such networks.
I know it's not de rigueur to bemoan the suffering inflicted upon the children of the powerful, privileged few, but given the fact that so many of these institutions have gone so far as to prevent double vaxxed and boosted students from socialising with each other it's hard not to feel just a little sympathy for them. These are supposed to be the best years of their lives, after all- and what, with receiving a substandard zoom education, and deprived of the real value of their education ,they will be left with little more than a piece of paper to commemorate their time at a world-leading university. If it were me, I would be insisting upon a deferment and threatening legal action if one was not forthcoming.
Cartel has nothing on US higher ed who, via cartel pricing power, has extracted $1.5t in wealth from middle class homes. Few things have attacked the prosperity of the middle class like higher ed.
Every day in higher ed we try to answer one question: how do we increase our compensation while reducing our accountability? The answer has been a luxury position fed off a rejectionist culture and cartel pricing.
Here's a story you might have missed: did you know churches are the only tax-exempt charities in the US that don't have to file an IRS information return disclosing to the public how they spend the money donated to them? Every other organization must file such a disclosure because when people take a tax deduction for charitable donations, the public should have a right to be sure those funds are only used for legitimate charitable purposes. Why do churches get this special treatment? I've never been given a good, or even straight, answer.
I went to Columbia in 1964, but I remember the Harvard application which asked a series of questions to find out whether the applicant had any connections to a number of very wealthy families. My best friend did go to Harvard. When we compared notes, I had higher grades, higher test scores, more student activities, a National Merit Scholarship, and was co-captain of the swimming team. Yet he got in, and I didn't. The only explanation we could come up with is that I'm Jewish and he isn't. My late uncle was rejected by Harvard Med School because he was Jewish. Harvard admitted it at the time. I got a better education at Columbia, and my uncle became an international respected virologist with his degree from another school. College admissions has always been a racket.
Jan 11, 2022·edited Jan 11, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller
It's a stretch, but colleges which accept federal funds (or federal non-profit status!) should be barred from offering hereditary privilege under the Titles of Nobility clause. This should extend not just to legacy preferences*, but the hereditary privileges Matt mentions here in terms of a parent's pocketbook or primacy.
Jan 11, 2022·edited Jan 11, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller
I wonder how much money comes from graduate degree programs, and post-grad certificates. For example, at MIT, there are double the number of grad students to undergrad. And if you're not in a PhD program, if you're just doing a Masters, you have to pay it all (minus some scholarship they may find + work they may give you, but I think percentage-wise it's much less than undergrad financial aid).
And Harvard has expanded its student base, through certificates that pay well in the extension school. This blog says they struggle with their reputation, but many people feel very comfortable adding it to the list of degrees.
I worked on an urban development project in Dubai more than 10 years ago where we proposed (didn't happen) to put all these different Ivy League extension schools in. The architectural program was called "Edutainment." :)
"Elite universities want to imagine themselves as meritocratic, though in fact they cater to the wealthy professional class and the billionaires who employ them"
Sounds like the democratic party. Corrupt elitism. I hope the grads are not all as corrupt as the people who run the schools, because one of them will probably judge the case.
Hey Matt, big fan, just became a subscriber. I always thought how weird it was that my brother received rejection letters from three Ivy Leagues all in the same day. As an adult I understood how corrupt these institutions are, and this article perfectly sums up the problem, and part of the solution. Of course, if these organizations really cared about living up to their ideals, they’d drastically increase admissions. But it’s clearly not about that to them.
These DeBeers style universities love creating scarcity. The reality is that the education they impart need not take place in the same 200 year old space. Interesting that they can afford to open campuses in Abu Dabhi (an example not necessarily real) but expand very little within the US. At least Columbia is buying up half of Morningside Heights but is it to expand capacity or just a long-term investment?
This is where the FTC’s attention actually belongs: not on the distant past, but on the still-up-for-grabs present, in which Meta pumps its profits into selling the Quest 2 below cost — to great success this holiday season — and in acquiring all the most-used software in the space.
As Geary Johansen points out, the saddest thing in higher education is that it doesn't matter where you go to college. I remember a study decades ago that showed that high school GPA was a better predictor of future success than where one went to college, except for African American students, perhaps because of the opportunities to network with the white elite. (Sorry, I can't find it to provide a link, but here's another: https://time.com/54342/it-doesnt-matter-where-you-go-to-college/ ) I witnessed what the students at a rich Boston suburban high school suffered under the false premise that it mattered to their future that they get into a top college or university. The recent news of celebrities trying to game the system for their children - it's hardly a game if that's the way the system works and you are just trying to work within it. Hats off to Dr. Laurie Santos at Yale for beginning to show her students, and the rest of us, what happiness really is. It's no coincidence that The Science of Wellbeing course began with undergraduates at Yale.
The latest piece is nicely put. Lawyers are subscribing to BIG to learn which corporations are vulnerable to class-action suits? I love it.
Delighted to see the attorneys working the class action have made good use of the Lynton emails from that Sony hack as they relate to Brown.
If you've haven't read the whole series of university-admission related emails in the Sony hack, it's a fascinating peak into life at the top of the US socio-economic pyramid. And there's lots lots more in that trove.
Great essay, although I was a little disappointed not to see one particular aspect of elite American universities explored. With a few notable exceptions like MIT it is not really the education which is valuable, but rather the access to incredibly potent influence and preferment networks. This even often extends to the parents buying into the dollar value of such networks.
I know it's not de rigueur to bemoan the suffering inflicted upon the children of the powerful, privileged few, but given the fact that so many of these institutions have gone so far as to prevent double vaxxed and boosted students from socialising with each other it's hard not to feel just a little sympathy for them. These are supposed to be the best years of their lives, after all- and what, with receiving a substandard zoom education, and deprived of the real value of their education ,they will be left with little more than a piece of paper to commemorate their time at a world-leading university. If it were me, I would be insisting upon a deferment and threatening legal action if one was not forthcoming.
Still, caveat emptor, I suppose.
Important work, well done. Just subscribed.
Cartel has nothing on US higher ed who, via cartel pricing power, has extracted $1.5t in wealth from middle class homes. Few things have attacked the prosperity of the middle class like higher ed.
Every day in higher ed we try to answer one question: how do we increase our compensation while reducing our accountability? The answer has been a luxury position fed off a rejectionist culture and cartel pricing.
Here's a story you might have missed: did you know churches are the only tax-exempt charities in the US that don't have to file an IRS information return disclosing to the public how they spend the money donated to them? Every other organization must file such a disclosure because when people take a tax deduction for charitable donations, the public should have a right to be sure those funds are only used for legitimate charitable purposes. Why do churches get this special treatment? I've never been given a good, or even straight, answer.
I went to Columbia in 1964, but I remember the Harvard application which asked a series of questions to find out whether the applicant had any connections to a number of very wealthy families. My best friend did go to Harvard. When we compared notes, I had higher grades, higher test scores, more student activities, a National Merit Scholarship, and was co-captain of the swimming team. Yet he got in, and I didn't. The only explanation we could come up with is that I'm Jewish and he isn't. My late uncle was rejected by Harvard Med School because he was Jewish. Harvard admitted it at the time. I got a better education at Columbia, and my uncle became an international respected virologist with his degree from another school. College admissions has always been a racket.
It's a stretch, but colleges which accept federal funds (or federal non-profit status!) should be barred from offering hereditary privilege under the Titles of Nobility clause. This should extend not just to legacy preferences*, but the hereditary privileges Matt mentions here in terms of a parent's pocketbook or primacy.
* - With regard to legacy preferences at State-owned schools: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1027695
I wonder how much money comes from graduate degree programs, and post-grad certificates. For example, at MIT, there are double the number of grad students to undergrad. And if you're not in a PhD program, if you're just doing a Masters, you have to pay it all (minus some scholarship they may find + work they may give you, but I think percentage-wise it's much less than undergrad financial aid).
https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/enrollment-statistics-year/all
And Harvard has expanded its student base, through certificates that pay well in the extension school. This blog says they struggle with their reputation, but many people feel very comfortable adding it to the list of degrees.
https://blogs.harvard.edu/lamont/2020/04/21/why-the-harvard-extension-school-still-struggles-with-reputation/
I worked on an urban development project in Dubai more than 10 years ago where we proposed (didn't happen) to put all these different Ivy League extension schools in. The architectural program was called "Edutainment." :)
"Elite universities want to imagine themselves as meritocratic, though in fact they cater to the wealthy professional class and the billionaires who employ them"
Sounds like the democratic party. Corrupt elitism. I hope the grads are not all as corrupt as the people who run the schools, because one of them will probably judge the case.
Hey Matt, big fan, just became a subscriber. I always thought how weird it was that my brother received rejection letters from three Ivy Leagues all in the same day. As an adult I understood how corrupt these institutions are, and this article perfectly sums up the problem, and part of the solution. Of course, if these organizations really cared about living up to their ideals, they’d drastically increase admissions. But it’s clearly not about that to them.
These DeBeers style universities love creating scarcity. The reality is that the education they impart need not take place in the same 200 year old space. Interesting that they can afford to open campuses in Abu Dabhi (an example not necessarily real) but expand very little within the US. At least Columbia is buying up half of Morningside Heights but is it to expand capacity or just a long-term investment?
Love this line:
"In other words, top universities are increasingly tax-free hedge funds with educational arms attached for branding purposes."
Some antitrust news via Casey Newton
This is where the FTC’s attention actually belongs: not on the distant past, but on the still-up-for-grabs present, in which Meta pumps its profits into selling the Quest 2 below cost — to great success this holiday season — and in acquiring all the most-used software in the space.
https://www.platformer.news/p/metas-real-antitrust-problems-are?r=8ahwm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
As Geary Johansen points out, the saddest thing in higher education is that it doesn't matter where you go to college. I remember a study decades ago that showed that high school GPA was a better predictor of future success than where one went to college, except for African American students, perhaps because of the opportunities to network with the white elite. (Sorry, I can't find it to provide a link, but here's another: https://time.com/54342/it-doesnt-matter-where-you-go-to-college/ ) I witnessed what the students at a rich Boston suburban high school suffered under the false premise that it mattered to their future that they get into a top college or university. The recent news of celebrities trying to game the system for their children - it's hardly a game if that's the way the system works and you are just trying to work within it. Hats off to Dr. Laurie Santos at Yale for beginning to show her students, and the rest of us, what happiness really is. It's no coincidence that The Science of Wellbeing course began with undergraduates at Yale.
RICO laws apply now! Arrest everyone involved.
Tax these endowments, much moreso than Trump did. Make 'em pay out as opposed to a wealth-building schem for those who are already mega-rich