THE REAL SCANDAL AT OUR UNIVERSITIES
Editorial by Kevin Ryan

Since word broke yesterday that 50 people had been charged in a college admissions bribery scandal, the media and politicians have been racing to shape a narrative around it.

‘It’s proof that the wealthy rig the system!’ says the left. ‘It’s proof that liberal Hollywood stars are elitist hypocrites!’ says the right.

I think both sides are missing the bigger story. Yes, wealthy elites, including those in Hollywood, often find ways to game the system. But this particular incident isn’t an example of a privilege of wealth. These people didn’t take advantage of some legal benefit or loophole that’s unfairly available to the rich.

They broke the law.

If you’re willing to break the law, there are lots of ways to manipulate the system that don’t require having millions of dollars (lying about your race, anyone?).

Instead, all this talk of manipulating your way into elite universities misses the real story, in my opinion:

How the heck can someone who needs to cheat on their SAT and bribe a coach to gain admission on a phony athletic scholarship, then manage to get a degree at a supposedly elite academic institution?

It’d be like a j.v. baseball player bribing his way into the Boston Red Sox Spring tryouts… and then managing to make the team.

What does that say about the quality of these institutions?

Famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz wondered aloud on cable news yesterday whether such a scheme would even be possible in his day, when study at the top institutions was much more rigorous. Unqualified individuals who nonetheless managed to gain entry would quickly fail out, Dershowitz said. If that was still the case today, paying a large bribe to help an unqualified student gain entry would make no financial sense.

But clearly that’s no longer the case. It’s getting easier and easier to get good grades at our nation’s institutions of higher learning. In 1960, just 15% of all grades given in college were ‘A’s. More people got ‘D’s and ‘F’s than ‘A’s. Today, 45% of all grades are ‘A’s, nearly 8 times more than all ‘D’s and ‘F’s combined. In some schools, grades aren’t even given out anymore!

And this despite the fact that university students spend far less of their time on actual academic work than ever before. On average, students in a typical semester spend only between 12 and 14 hours per week studying, approximately 50% less time than full-time college students did a few decades ago. Including the hours spent in classes and labs, students spend less than 16% of their time each week on academic pursuits.

Is it any wonder one study found that 36% of students show no significant increase in learning abilities after four years in college?

And yet demand for a degree is as high as ever. Universities are awash in money from 17 million enrollees, fueled by ever-increasing subsidized loans and grants that allow the schools to keep raising tuition. With so much money at stake, colleges have little incentive to fail out students who probably shouldn’t even be there.

Perhaps all this explains how some students manage to attain a degree in economics from an elite institution like Boston University, yet just a few years later show no apparent understanding of economics? Just sayin’.

Could you provide a link to the article?

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted under questioning from Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe last summer that "the FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information," the congressman alleged in a social media post late Tuesday, citing a newly unearthed transcript of Page's closed-door testimony.

Gov. Gavin Newsom to halt death penalty despite voter efforts to hasten executions

Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign an executive order Wednesday placing a moratorium on the death penalty for all 737 inmates on California’s death row, ensuring that no executions will take place while he is governor, an administration source has confirmed.
...

In November 2016, Californians passed a measure to speed up executions, the last of which occurred 13 years ago. Most of that measure, Proposition 66, was upheld by the state Supreme Court and a judge was reviewing California’s lethal injection protocol, which Newsom withdrew Wednesday.

As lieutenant governor, Newsom backed a competing ballot measure in 2016 to repeal the death penalty, which voters rejected.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday rejected what he called a culture of outrage from both Democrats and Republicans amid the fallout from recently resurfaced offensive comments he made about women and minorities years ago.

Carlson delivered a roughly seven-minute opening monologue on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” peppered with graphics that read “The Mob,” “Crackdown on Dissent” and “Liberal Hypocrisy.” While he did not reference any of his specific controversial comments, he doubled down on his initial refusal to apologize for them.

“We’ve always apologized when we’re wrong, and we’ll continue to do that,” he added. “That’s what decent people do. They apologize. But we will never bow to the mob, ever, no matter what.”

Let’s get some things straight about the budget: spending more money* doesn’t make you morally superior. More dollars for unsustainable programs doesn’t mean you have a bigger heart.

My generation will suffer if we don’t start making responsible reforms to our spending.

{Congress} passed bills that would impose fines on those who insult state officials, the flag and the constitution, or spread fake news online. Repeat offenders could be jailed. The bills need the president’s signature to become law. Human-rights groups say that the vaguely worded laws open the door to direct censorship.