Elite Colleges Don’t Understand Which Business They’re In

Wealthy and famous institutions of higher learning, including the one where I work, are in a crisis of their own making. Universities exist for the production and dissemination of ideas, and make hiring and admission decisions toward that end. At the same time, elite educational institutions have irresponsibly positioned themselves as something entirely different: as the arbiters of applicants’ intrinsic merit. Like a soccer team scoring an own goal, they are hurting themselves with their clumsiness and overconfidence.

Soccer is the right analogy, as it happens. This week, the U.S. Justice Department unveiled 50 indictments in a brazen bribery scheme that, according to prosecutors, involved kickbacks to athletics coaches at Stanford, the University of Southern California, and a number of other competitive schools. At Yale, where. He had sought to arrange the admission of two would-be Yalies in return for cash.