Was it Really Worth It?

More years ago than I care to remember I had just completed a two-year hitch at a junior college due to an overlong apprenticeship as a young screw-off and was in the process of filling out applications to several four-year schools.

In the end, I had narrowed the choices to two: Cornell University or the University of Denver. The choice was made easier for me when the powers that be at Cornell took a look at my grades and told me to go to Denver. Technically, Cornell wait-listed me much to my father’s amazement.

“You? Cornell? Really?”

So much for a patenal booster in self-confidence. But to be fair, my mother was equally astonished.

So, I spent the next several years in the Mile-High City getting my degree and like countless other students, accruing debt from school loans.

Flash forward to the present. I, like probably millions of others was a bit shocked when the national scandal broke concerning under-the-table payments for admission into elite colleges, a ring that included coaches, administrators, scores of obscenely wealthy parents and two high-profile actresses who, often played rather wholesome characters on television.

Not that I was so naïve as to believe that test cheating and side bribes to get into college didn’t occur on a regular basis, but what was so hard to believe was the massive scope of this national disgrace.

My first question was “where were all these people when I was applying?” I was joking of course.

Sort of.

Unlike the hedge fund couples who forked over freakish amounts of money to alter test scores in order to get their kids into institutions like Stanford and USC and Harvard, my insurance adjuster father and lab technician mother entrusted me with the process of securing a four-year diploma.

But what I think really galled me about this whole ugly episode was the nonchalant and entitlement attitude of the very children these parents blatantly skirted the law to help.

I could almost see – almost – if some of the offspring wanted to go to medical or law school or even accounting and pursue a career in any of those professional services.

But one little mush wit who was scheduled to attend the University of Southern California admitted as much that she harbored no interest at all in higher learning and only wanted to “party on game days and hang out.”

This was who her parents risked prison sentences to help?

Had either of my daughters given me that response during their senior year in high school, come June their next stop would have been at an armed-forces recruiting office.

And now many of them may only get to see their parents during visiting days.