Your Kid Here For $250k

The college admissions scandal presses our “unfairness” button like no other.

- Cristina Lindblad

There’s a much-viewed video on the internet showing how a capuchin monkey reacts when it gets rewarded for a task with a bit of boring cucumber while the capuchin in the next cage gets a grape for the same task. The wronged primate throws the cucumber back at the experimenter in rage and disgust, then reaches through a hole and pounds the counter before slamming the cage’s clear plastic wall with both fists. Unspoken: “Gimme a damn grape, lady.”

Parents of college-bound students are reacting with equally righteous indignation to a new admissions cheating scandal, in which Hollywood celebrities and CEOs are accused of paying bribes to help their kids cut in line to get into top universities. In a March 12 court filing, the federal government said clients paid a combined $25 million in bribes to sports coaches and college administrators from 2011 to 2018 to get their kids into such schools as Yale, Stanford, the University of California at Los Angeles, and Georgetown.