Seidman: Uneven college playing field fuels unearned privilege
The reality is money, fame and power, all held disproportionately by whites, speak loudest in this country, and always have.
Like everyone else, I was appalled by the revelations in the recent college admissions scandal, in which parents bribed, lied and falsified photographs and documents in order to gain their children’s admittance to elite universities. For obvious reasons — but especially for the damage it has done to the kids, both those unaware of their parents’ meddling and those rejected because they didn’t have the same power to influence — it was deeply disheartening. Evidently, if your pockets are deep enough and your ethics unscrupulous enough, your too can go to the college of your dreams.
…..A recent presentation by Mark Paul, an assistant professor of economics at New College of Florida, underscored the growing wealth disparity in America that fuels and perpetuates ingrained systems of privilege like this one. A former economic advisor to Bernie Sanders, Paul detailed the widening divide between the top 10 percent of American households, which owns 76 percent of all the country’s wealth, and the bottom half of America which “has virtually no wealth at all.”
Read the entire piece here.