Payoff-based College Admissions
Elite universities present themselves as bastions of meritocracy. But they routinely offer the children and grandchildren of major donors an easy path to admission, even when those students wouldn't otherwise qualify. Worse yet, the donations that open these doors are tax-deductible, and therefore heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Some questions surrounding college-admissions policies are complex and profound, but this one is painfully simple: We should press college officials to mean what they say about opportunity and equity, and to spend less time strong-arming wealthy donors. But at a bare minimum, we should get taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing campus shakedown artists.