Parental care & affection customarily extends well into screening marriage prospects & charting future careers. 

     Wrestling to achieve financial success makes some parents more inclined than others to extend themselves in to the political & academic realm where a single persuasive letter might chart a course of future academic & financial success. When gaining admission to one of the "right" schools earns a comfortable, middle-class life style, what's wrong with another e-mail or call to an influential legislator?

     Parents know the difference such intervention made in their own careers--ensuring pleasant dinnertime conversation filled with tales of exotic travel, comfortable surroundings & cherished grandchildren. 

     Who would fault a doting parent when another deserving prospect is denied admission or academic standards are compromised? 

     State of Illinois politicians have come under fire of late for meddling in the U of I's admission process. Students, initially denied admission as undergraduates, graduate students & University of Illinois law students have been later admitted over the objections of faculty & staff.

     While making big headlines in The Chicago Tribune, it may not come as a surprise that this practice is as old as those hundred dollar bills stuffed in to the love nest shoeboxes of the late Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell.

     Admittedly, this blogger enjoyed the hospitality of one US Senator more than a generation ago when one of the leaders of the Illinois Manufacturer's Association sponsored admission to the University of Illinois. Admission was no guarantee that sheltered high school academic success in a class of 88 would convey on to the U of I campus as academically proficient Chicagoans collided with this mild-mannered East Central Illinois native on a campus just 35 miles from my hometown.

     While some may question basic fairness that resulted in admission to a program which would be closed just two years later, others may ask what's the draw?

     Parents know what their offspring have yet to learn: it makes a big difference that you graduated from college, more so, that you earned a degree from one of the top universities. So-called middling schools won't do if graduates are looking for big jobs on Wall Street or in comfortable corporate cubicles.

     How is this standard maintained?

     Fellow alumni corporate recruiters are naturally inclined to recruit, lubricate business relations & steer a fortunate few to the adjacent cubicle & corner offices of their palatial towers.

     The presumption is that one should favor rigorous admissions standards & academic reputations of one college or university over another. That the process should guarantee that all students affiliated with or graduating from such steller centers of academic achievement are somehow ordained to lead their corporate employers to financial prominence.

     What the Chicago Tribune's investigative report should have discovered is that being smart enough to do the work may be all that's necessary to graduate from the State's flagship university.

     Such a conclusion would have put an end to helicopter parents & their academic lieges escalating the admissions standards beyond the reach of promising students from many of the State's smallest towns & challenged neighborhoods, leaving political intervention or affirmative action as the only means to admission.

     Another approach might inject a measure of fairness by inviting all eligible students who are deemed smart enough to do the work & graduate to be placed in to a University of Illinois academic admissions lottery. This proposed approach would finally dispense with the political intervention, legacy claims & even affirmative action assertion.

     Recommended reading for freshman students would be one of the best selling non-fiction books--Outliers. In that book, students might learn to question the claims of so-called "self-made men & women," explore those subtle interventions which launch careers & the nourishment of neighborhood, race, ethnicity & religious affiliation. The author, Malcolm Gladwell observed that “Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

     While some who've mastered the legacy admissions system might take offense if their children were divered to another "middling school," their frustrated offspring might learn the value of collaboration over competition, measure success in its rich diversity & appreciate the distinction between social caste & democratic tradition.  

     That might be the best lesson of all.

 

Mark A. Fredrickson

President

Northwest Area Citizens Organization