College Fall

I feel like I’m at Manny’s Deli for lunch, walking down the buffet aisle almost overwhelmed by the tasty options. I’m writing this blog hoping to pick the tastiest threads to weave together.

The Supreme Court ruled that Affirmative Action was unconstitutional at Harvard and the University of North Carolina last week.

At long last, in my opinion. 

If there was ever a broken system it was Harvard’s admission to the Freshman class, limited to 2,000 students. First, Harvard had 30 percent of spaces allocated to legacies. These were the children of former graduates, particularly famous and wealthy ones. Then there were the Dean’s choices, mostly top of the class at elite prep schools. Then there were the athletes, who had to have top grades and good test scores–mostly white. This covered 50 percent of the class. 

But there was the problem of super smart, dedicated Asian kids who did not fall into any of those categories. Unfortunately for Harvard, there were too many of them. They could easily take up the remaining 50 percent of the class, and the school didn’t want that. Harvard handled its Asian problem partly by taking black students in the name of Affirmative Action, to somehow make up for the endemic racism in America.

Asian parents did not like this result. They viewed it as denying the American dream of being treated equally. They partnered with a dedicated Jewish lawyer, Edward Blum, who sued the college. After almost 10 years in the Courts, and the country swinging away from Harvard’s elitism, they won. Affirmative Action, which was a form of a racist quota according to the Court, was deemed unconstitutional according to the 14th Amendment.

Sadly, the Court did not rule on the issue of 30 percent legacies at Harvard. They also didn’t address the refusal of Ivy league schools to expand their enrollments by using their multi-billion dollar nontaxable endowment funds.

The Court did not look at the huge mess colleges have become, allowing tuition to rise 10 times faster than inflation over the last five decades, much faster than personal earnings have risen. Subsidized college debt was also struck down by the Court, declared a disguise for helping the richer families versus the poorer ones who saw college as beyond their grasp.

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I could go on and on about the morass of college education in America, but the latest Northwestern University story helps illustrate it in a more colorful way. 

Yesterday, Pat Fitzgerald, the esteemed Wildcat football coach, was fired by Northwestern’s president.

The Daily Northwestern, the college student newspaper, had exposed an ugly “hazing” scandal with the team, in which Freshman players who did not do well in practice were “ran,” which meant being put into an empty dark locker room where older masked players sexually mistreated them.

The coaching staff was evidently aware of this conduct and condoned it.

Head Coach Fitzgerald, who had played linebacker and excelled at Northwestern, became its leader after the previous head coach Randy Walker had died unexpectedly in 2006. In 2020, Fitzgerald was awarded a $57 million 10-year contract.

After the The Daily Northwestern piece came out and was corroborated by several other athletes, the scandal was expanded to include racial incidents, and the University President reluctantly gave Fitzgerald the ax.

As a personal aside, when I was applying to colleges I knew not to apply to Northwestern because they had a strict Jewish quota. Things have changed some since, but the Lakeshore Campus in Evanston still sickens me. Recently, the town of Evanston voted to give reparations to Black homeowners whose homes bordered the campus. They had been forced to sell their homes to the university so Northwestern could expand. A small number, perhaps 40, who can prove their families were forced to move out, will get $25,000 from Evanston.

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Do Northwestern’s transgressions and the Supreme Court’s decisions about Harvard’s Affirmative Action and student loan forgiveness have a common thread in the widespread arrogance of elite colleges?

I think so. Do you? 

Question: What are the most important issues American colleges need to solve? What could they do about them?