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I grew up in a different class than most of my peers. It’s interesting to see how many of them are willing to go all out for their kids when it comes to college

I grew up in a different class than most of my peers. It’s interesting to see how many of them are willing to go all out for their kids when it comes to college. Touring many schools, application prep, savings accounts, meal plans, etc. It sometimes seems as this support comes out of nowhere after years of not being involved in their child’s life. So my question is what motivates this? Are they right? Is it really important for their kids future to go to a top 70 instead of 130? (I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money) Is this based on college being a good time in their life and they are projecting that experience? Do they feel obligated to “finish strong” in regards to parenting? The attitude of my parents is to make sure the degree will lead to a job, and then find a local and cheap school to get that credential. I believe there may be taboo class issues around this topic that are not vocalized.

prododev 2y ago
Where your kid goes to school is a status symbol. And like most status symbols, it is a foolish and conspicuous waste. Americans love to root for teams and build their identities around what teams they are on. In sports, in politics, in college selection, even which state or city they are from. College selection is just an easy way to buy yourself into a team.
- grandempire 2y ago
  I’m gonna need a steel man here. Is this real status they are buying? If so it has real impact? These are otherwise shrewd people.
  - prododev 2y ago
    Bragging about where your kid goes to school is extremely common. It signals not only what can you afford (like a car), but also lets you buy and display a bunch of gear. (University name) Dad is like a super common apparel and bumper sticker item. And having, e.g., Stanford Dad is more prestigious than eg New Mexico State Dad apparel.
    - grandempire 2y ago
      Yes, but having gone to Stanford is significantly better than New Mexico State. But is UC Berkeley better than community college transfer to UC Davis?
      - bdangubic 2y ago
        while having paper from Stanford may open some doors for you if you network well while you are there the degree from New Mexico State can get you a lucrative career if you know wtf you are doing. business work on the bottom line and in my three decades in the industry I have found more gems from non-Ivy league schools than otherwise by a wide margin
- drillsteps5 2y ago
  Your second statement is accurate and contradicts your first statement. Going into the right school puts you on the right team which will make your future career easier, as your school affiliation will send the right signals to hiring managers/business partners/investors/customers/whoever you will need to work with.
  - prododev 2y ago
    Not in my industry (software engineering). Hiring managers barely care about what school you went to. It might afford you more career fair opportunities, but that's about it. Now, some schools will give you more educational opportunities and better education, but honestly? The margins aren't that huge.
    - grandempire 2y ago
      You’re wrong. Test 1: If a resume showed up from Stanford CS, how likely would it be that you or your coworkers would completely ignore it without giving them a call? Test 2: if you had an employee with Stanford CS how likely would it be that your coworkers would ever mention that individual having that degree?
      - prododev 2y ago
        #1 reasonably high? We turn down plenty of Stanford grads. What's their GitHub like? #2 degree basically never comes up, except if someone is saying they had an atypical degree path. And institution? Never, unless it's a part of someone's identity and they are a big "I am a college team guy"
    - drillsteps5 2y ago
      I do not think the very selective schools provide better education. I'm not an educator, but I've done my research and it's a general agreement. They do give you a better start in your career. You have ability to participate in research/development activities alongside with your professors who are leading experts in the industry, you create connections in the real world through the projects you participate in, and therefore you will have much more opportunities for a better start. Many good companies (FAANG or whatever did/will replace them) recruit out of these schools. The likes of Deloitte, Google, all the 3-letter agencies do not recruit out of Iowa state, they only do top 20. As you progress in your career it starts to matter less where you went (you can still tap your college connections many years later though), but if you managed to have a good start, your ceiling will be higher, too. Even if you managed to graduate without much career prospects despite all the opportunities the school provided, you will still have the brand name on the resume which will make the recruiters and hiring managers to give you extra consideration. Is this worth extra $100K debt you got to put yourself through Harvard? Not necessarily. But it might be.
silvestrov 2y ago
I wonder how many of those peers that can evaluate the quality of the teaching itself. I'm guessing a lot of people (especially those without an university education) look at how impressive the buildings and facilities are because those are the status signals they understand. I don't think many check how large percentage of lessons are run by assistants. So too many US colleges end up being 80% overly expensive hotel and 20% education.
- grandempire 2y ago
  It’s well understood that teaching quality is a small part of the package value, so I dont even know if it matters for this decision.
- BigGreenJorts 2y ago
  Because the 80% overly expensive hotel is precisely what you're paying for. Quality of education is a bare minimum requirement. The rest is the people you'll meet. Be that your neighbors in the expensive hotel or the professors you'll work with, or the activities that will bond you with those people.
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  Well, I think that's half right, in that "how large percentage of lessons are run by assistants" isn't necessarily a great measure of "quality of teaching" either. In some cases the TAs may be better teachers than the professors.
lumost 2y ago
Lack of involvement can come from multiple issues. I don’t spend as much time with my kids as I’d like. Partly so that we can have good education, a decent home, activities, and college without stress. The push into college is kinda the last hurrah for parents to set their kids up. Taking it seriously helps the (soon to be adult) kids take it seriously, finding a good fit can have an outsized impact on what they do next. I do wish we lived in a world where we could be both involved and supportive of future endeavors. I grew up in a lower middle class home. College involved atrocious debt while my parents were uninvolved as … they were still busy working. Why can’t we have time for ourselves in society?
- grandempire 2y ago
  I think this a poor justification for uninvolvement. All families need resources - so satisfying that can justify all your time. But for many people on this forum that does not occupy all their time and attention, except for brief exceptions. What differentiates quality of upbringing is not resources. So working harder at your white collar job does not make you a better parent.
  - lumost 2y ago
    I don’t think it makes me a better parent, apologies if that was how it was interpreted. The point is that there is no other alternative. My observation, at least in tech - is that the expectation of greater than 40 hours of work per week is ever present. There is no choice to earn less, take it easy, and have more time for other pursuits. If both parents are under this expectation then there are fewer hours to be involved. A break of 1-2 years will be held against you in future interviews. From talking with other parents, this is a common conundrum across industries. No one feels that they have enough time to be a good parent. More concretely, what work arrangements do you have or are aware of which allow you to cap the hours worked while affording a livable home life?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      There are many tech jobs where 40 hours and no more is normal. If you are not in one find a new one.
csa 2y ago
> Are they right? Maybe > Is it really important for their kids future to go to a top 70 instead of 130? There are definitely rough cutoffs. Using your ballpark thresholds, yes, there can be a big difference in 70ish and 130ish in terms of opportunities. The big issue is whether the student will avail themselves of these opportunities. > (I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money) Oh, definitely not true unless the student avails themselves of the available opportunities. At top 5, it’s only worth the money (assuming that you’re price sensitive) if the student does one or more things like uses the school alumni network, develops a robust network in school, works with top tier researchers, accesses unique learning opportunities, goes into fields that only pull from these schools (e.g., investment banking, consulting, etc.), tapping into the varsity athlete network, and other things like that. If they just go and get a degree and then do whatever they were going to do if they had gone to State U, then it’s wasted money. The classroom education at the top 5 universities is largely not that good. Smaller liberal arts colleges do a better job of classroom education, imho, if thats what someone is looking for. > Is this based on college being a good time in their life and they are projecting that experience? Maybe. There’s probably a lot of intuitively knowing that it’s better to go to a good school without necessarily knowing what about going to a good school makes it matter. > The attitude of my parents is to make sure the degree will lead to a job, and then find a local and cheap school to get that credential. Smart, but very limiting if you have ambitions beyond being a middle manager. > I believe there may be taboo class issues around this topic that are not vocalized. Class issues, yes. Taboo… I’m not so sure.
- grandempire 2y ago
  > unless the student avails themselves of the available opportunities. I was imagining it in personal terms. I would have paid any amount of money for myself because I believe it would have worked for the reasons you mentioned. > knowing that it’s better to go to a good school without… That’s likely. > but very limiting if you have ambitions beyond being a middle manager. Say more. That kind of thing sounds worth paying for. > Taboo For example, someone might secretly think state school education was a waste of time, but not want to talk bad about their peer’s schooling. Or want their child to socialize with other well-to-do families.
rafram 2y ago
> I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money Is it, though? Of course people who go to Harvard et al. do well afterwards, but many of them came from wealthy families and were bound to do well no matter what. If you’re poor, Harvard [1] is less likely to make you rich than UC Riverside [2]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/harvard-university https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-california-riverside https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...
- grandempire 2y ago
  Money is not the same as status, and opens different job opportunities like key government officials . I would be more interested in a survey that includes whether the participant was satisfied with their career trajectory
- antasvara 2y ago
  Which measure are you going off there? Because I see the "Chance a poor student has to become a rich adult" metric at 41% for UC Riverside and 58% for Harvard. There is the "overall mobility" metric that favors UC Riverside, but the way that's being measured would seem to skew in favor of whichever college has students in lower quintiles (a top quintile kid can't move up 2 quintiles).
  - rafram 2y ago
    Ah, you're right, I misread. But 41% vs 58% isn't a big enough difference to pay "any amount" for IMO - and the gap is much smaller with other public universities like Irvine (55%) and SUNY Binghampton (54%).
    - lumost 2y ago
      Quintiles is a poor measure given the extremes of inequality. The Pareto distribution of income and wealth has folks in the top 10/1/.1/.01 percentiles with vastly different lifestyles compared to the other percentiles.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
I know someone who is a guidance counselor at an ultra elite high school. He globetrots every year to a plethora of institutions that are desperate to attract those students. All presumably because they want the alumni bucks when they have their own children. For a certain class, higher education serves an entirely different purpose.
HEmanZ 2y ago
Attitudes around college in the US are really fascinating to me, because I’ve found they vary a lot from region to region and I think really reinforce class divides. I grew up in an area/class where my parents and their friends believed: - All universities and even community colleges are equally good, except for maybe the Ivey league schools they’ve heard about, but no one actually goes to those. - All majors are equally good, except whatever makes you a doctor, which is the best. - Colleges on the east and west coast are very bad because they are purely for liberal indoctrination - The highest earning career path from college is becoming a doctor, and if you become a doctor you are very upper class. - what is majoring in finance? Is that like being a bank teller? - what is studying computer science? Is that like working at Best Buy? Once I got to college and met what I now think of as “the American urban professional class” I found a completely different set of beliefs, where college rankings were do-or-die, everyone wants their kid to go into finance, consulting, or tech, or get an MBA, and everyone seems to inherit large corporate networks from their parents. I’m sure this has all sorts of culture war implications. I know the politics of the community I grew up in has more to do with distrusting/disliking the urban professional class than any wholistic political ideology. Probably both groups should learn something from each other.
jackcosgrove 2y ago
I just searched for "best predictor of career success" and found a bunch of conflicting results. Open networks, conscientiousness, grit, intelligence, class, etc. This is actually reassuring, since if there were a known path to success everyone would crowd into it. Curiously I didn't see any articles or studies saying "it's partially random" because no one wants to hear that. I think academic prestige is best understood as a safety net. It won't guarantee success, because nothing can, but it can do a decent job preventing failure. In that respect the parents are right. Academic assistance is a way they can convert financial resources into something that can't be taken away from their children (and isn't subject to the gift tax limit). That said it's easy to go overboard, and many do. Unless you want to work in a small number of careers that have target lists of schools they recruit from (which again is because the credential is a selling point to clients, not because the education is better), there is no difference between a public university and a prestigious one. To the extent parents know that prestige is signalling all the way down, and does not imply being better at what you do or knowing more about your subject, they do have some inside perspective compared to the population at large.
- grandempire 2y ago
  > Academic assistance is a way they can convert financial resources into something that can't be taken away from their children (and isn't subject to the gift tax limit). This is a really good summary. The end result is a permanent, non-transferable, protection with strong resistance to “inflation”. > they do have some inside perspective compared to the population at large. Would that advantage manifest as playing into the system - looking for opportunities for signaling? Or discounting - finding good education with less signaling value.
  - jackcosgrove 2y ago
    > Would that advantage manifest as playing into the system - looking for opportunities for signaling? Or discounting - finding good education with less signaling value. Good question! I think that can play out both ways, ultimately based on how wealthy the parents are. If money is no object, play the prestige game. If you are middle class and know the rules of the game, maximize value. For example, I am acquainted with parents who are teachers at a prestigious private school. Their child attended said school because of subsidized tuition, and then attended college in an honors program at a state university in the middle of the country. He was paid to attend! The parents are fully abreast of all the studies on the effects of education, both being teachers and being in the middle of the college admissions frenzy that goes on in these schools. So they know how the game works, and they are playing it to the max for value. On the other hand, at this school are children from generational wealth who play obscure sports from an early age to give them an edge in admissions. The children never need to actually earn a living, and the target school admission is seen as a defense of a family legacy and bragging rights for the parents - pure prestige.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

prododev 2y ago

Where your kid goes to school is a status symbol. And like most status symbols, it is a foolish and conspicuous waste. Americans love to root for teams and build their identities around what teams they are on. In sports, in politics, in college selection, even which state or city they are from. College selection is just an easy way to buy yourself into a team.

grandempire 2y ago
I’m gonna need a steel man here. Is this real status they are buying? If so it has real impact? These are otherwise shrewd people.
- prododev 2y ago
  Bragging about where your kid goes to school is extremely common. It signals not only what can you afford (like a car), but also lets you buy and display a bunch of gear. (University name) Dad is like a super common apparel and bumper sticker item. And having, e.g., Stanford Dad is more prestigious than eg New Mexico State Dad apparel.
  - grandempire 2y ago
    Yes, but having gone to Stanford is significantly better than New Mexico State. But is UC Berkeley better than community college transfer to UC Davis?
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      while having paper from Stanford may open some doors for you if you network well while you are there the degree from New Mexico State can get you a lucrative career if you know wtf you are doing. business work on the bottom line and in my three decades in the industry I have found more gems from non-Ivy league schools than otherwise by a wide margin
drillsteps5 2y ago
Your second statement is accurate and contradicts your first statement. Going into the right school puts you on the right team which will make your future career easier, as your school affiliation will send the right signals to hiring managers/business partners/investors/customers/whoever you will need to work with.
- prododev 2y ago
  Not in my industry (software engineering). Hiring managers barely care about what school you went to. It might afford you more career fair opportunities, but that's about it. Now, some schools will give you more educational opportunities and better education, but honestly? The margins aren't that huge.
  - grandempire 2y ago
    You’re wrong. Test 1: If a resume showed up from Stanford CS, how likely would it be that you or your coworkers would completely ignore it without giving them a call? Test 2: if you had an employee with Stanford CS how likely would it be that your coworkers would ever mention that individual having that degree?
    - prododev 2y ago
      #1 reasonably high? We turn down plenty of Stanford grads. What's their GitHub like? #2 degree basically never comes up, except if someone is saying they had an atypical degree path. And institution? Never, unless it's a part of someone's identity and they are a big "I am a college team guy"
  - drillsteps5 2y ago
    I do not think the very selective schools provide better education. I'm not an educator, but I've done my research and it's a general agreement. They do give you a better start in your career. You have ability to participate in research/development activities alongside with your professors who are leading experts in the industry, you create connections in the real world through the projects you participate in, and therefore you will have much more opportunities for a better start. Many good companies (FAANG or whatever did/will replace them) recruit out of these schools. The likes of Deloitte, Google, all the 3-letter agencies do not recruit out of Iowa state, they only do top 20. As you progress in your career it starts to matter less where you went (you can still tap your college connections many years later though), but if you managed to have a good start, your ceiling will be higher, too. Even if you managed to graduate without much career prospects despite all the opportunities the school provided, you will still have the brand name on the resume which will make the recruiters and hiring managers to give you extra consideration. Is this worth extra $100K debt you got to put yourself through Harvard? Not necessarily. But it might be.

silvestrov 2y ago

I wonder how many of those peers that can evaluate the quality of the teaching itself. I'm guessing a lot of people (especially those without an university education) look at how impressive the buildings and facilities are because those are the status signals they understand. I don't think many check how large percentage of lessons are run by assistants. So too many US colleges end up being 80% overly expensive hotel and 20% education.

grandempire 2y ago
It’s well understood that teaching quality is a small part of the package value, so I dont even know if it matters for this decision.
BigGreenJorts 2y ago
Because the 80% overly expensive hotel is precisely what you're paying for. Quality of education is a bare minimum requirement. The rest is the people you'll meet. Be that your neighbors in the expensive hotel or the professors you'll work with, or the activities that will bond you with those people.
BrenBarn 2y ago
Well, I think that's half right, in that "how large percentage of lessons are run by assistants" isn't necessarily a great measure of "quality of teaching" either. In some cases the TAs may be better teachers than the professors.

lumost 2y ago

Lack of involvement can come from multiple issues. I don’t spend as much time with my kids as I’d like. Partly so that we can have good education, a decent home, activities, and college without stress. The push into college is kinda the last hurrah for parents to set their kids up. Taking it seriously helps the (soon to be adult) kids take it seriously, finding a good fit can have an outsized impact on what they do next. I do wish we lived in a world where we could be both involved and supportive of future endeavors. I grew up in a lower middle class home. College involved atrocious debt while my parents were uninvolved as … they were still busy working. Why can’t we have time for ourselves in society?

grandempire 2y ago
I think this a poor justification for uninvolvement. All families need resources - so satisfying that can justify all your time. But for many people on this forum that does not occupy all their time and attention, except for brief exceptions. What differentiates quality of upbringing is not resources. So working harder at your white collar job does not make you a better parent.
- lumost 2y ago
  I don’t think it makes me a better parent, apologies if that was how it was interpreted. The point is that there is no other alternative. My observation, at least in tech - is that the expectation of greater than 40 hours of work per week is ever present. There is no choice to earn less, take it easy, and have more time for other pursuits. If both parents are under this expectation then there are fewer hours to be involved. A break of 1-2 years will be held against you in future interviews. From talking with other parents, this is a common conundrum across industries. No one feels that they have enough time to be a good parent. More concretely, what work arrangements do you have or are aware of which allow you to cap the hours worked while affording a livable home life?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    There are many tech jobs where 40 hours and no more is normal. If you are not in one find a new one.

csa 2y ago

> Are they right? Maybe > Is it really important for their kids future to go to a top 70 instead of 130? There are definitely rough cutoffs. Using your ballpark thresholds, yes, there can be a big difference in 70ish and 130ish in terms of opportunities. The big issue is whether the student will avail themselves of these opportunities. > (I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money) Oh, definitely not true unless the student avails themselves of the available opportunities. At top 5, it’s only worth the money (assuming that you’re price sensitive) if the student does one or more things like uses the school alumni network, develops a robust network in school, works with top tier researchers, accesses unique learning opportunities, goes into fields that only pull from these schools (e.g., investment banking, consulting, etc.), tapping into the varsity athlete network, and other things like that. If they just go and get a degree and then do whatever they were going to do if they had gone to State U, then it’s wasted money. The classroom education at the top 5 universities is largely not that good. Smaller liberal arts colleges do a better job of classroom education, imho, if thats what someone is looking for. > Is this based on college being a good time in their life and they are projecting that experience? Maybe. There’s probably a lot of intuitively knowing that it’s better to go to a good school without necessarily knowing what about going to a good school makes it matter. > The attitude of my parents is to make sure the degree will lead to a job, and then find a local and cheap school to get that credential. Smart, but very limiting if you have ambitions beyond being a middle manager. > I believe there may be taboo class issues around this topic that are not vocalized. Class issues, yes. Taboo… I’m not so sure.

grandempire 2y ago
> unless the student avails themselves of the available opportunities. I was imagining it in personal terms. I would have paid any amount of money for myself because I believe it would have worked for the reasons you mentioned. > knowing that it’s better to go to a good school without… That’s likely. > but very limiting if you have ambitions beyond being a middle manager. Say more. That kind of thing sounds worth paying for. > Taboo For example, someone might secretly think state school education was a waste of time, but not want to talk bad about their peer’s schooling. Or want their child to socialize with other well-to-do families.

rafram 2y ago

> I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money Is it, though? Of course people who go to Harvard et al. do well afterwards, but many of them came from wealthy families and were bound to do well no matter what. If you’re poor, Harvard [1] is less likely to make you rich than UC Riverside [2]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/harvard-university https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-california-riverside https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

grandempire 2y ago
Money is not the same as status, and opens different job opportunities like key government officials . I would be more interested in a survey that includes whether the participant was satisfied with their career trajectory
antasvara 2y ago
Which measure are you going off there? Because I see the "Chance a poor student has to become a rich adult" metric at 41% for UC Riverside and 58% for Harvard. There is the "overall mobility" metric that favors UC Riverside, but the way that's being measured would seem to skew in favor of whichever college has students in lower quintiles (a top quintile kid can't move up 2 quintiles).
- rafram 2y ago
  Ah, you're right, I misread. But 41% vs 58% isn't a big enough difference to pay "any amount" for IMO - and the gap is much smaller with other public universities like Irvine (55%) and SUNY Binghampton (54%).
  - lumost 2y ago
    Quintiles is a poor measure given the extremes of inequality. The Pareto distribution of income and wealth has folks in the top 10/1/.1/.01 percentiles with vastly different lifestyles compared to the other percentiles.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

I know someone who is a guidance counselor at an ultra elite high school. He globetrots every year to a plethora of institutions that are desperate to attract those students. All presumably because they want the alumni bucks when they have their own children. For a certain class, higher education serves an entirely different purpose.

HEmanZ 2y ago

Attitudes around college in the US are really fascinating to me, because I’ve found they vary a lot from region to region and I think really reinforce class divides. I grew up in an area/class where my parents and their friends believed: - All universities and even community colleges are equally good, except for maybe the Ivey league schools they’ve heard about, but no one actually goes to those. - All majors are equally good, except whatever makes you a doctor, which is the best. - Colleges on the east and west coast are very bad because they are purely for liberal indoctrination - The highest earning career path from college is becoming a doctor, and if you become a doctor you are very upper class. - what is majoring in finance? Is that like being a bank teller? - what is studying computer science? Is that like working at Best Buy? Once I got to college and met what I now think of as “the American urban professional class” I found a completely different set of beliefs, where college rankings were do-or-die, everyone wants their kid to go into finance, consulting, or tech, or get an MBA, and everyone seems to inherit large corporate networks from their parents. I’m sure this has all sorts of culture war implications. I know the politics of the community I grew up in has more to do with distrusting/disliking the urban professional class than any wholistic political ideology. Probably both groups should learn something from each other.

jackcosgrove 2y ago

I just searched for "best predictor of career success" and found a bunch of conflicting results. Open networks, conscientiousness, grit, intelligence, class, etc. This is actually reassuring, since if there were a known path to success everyone would crowd into it. Curiously I didn't see any articles or studies saying "it's partially random" because no one wants to hear that. I think academic prestige is best understood as a safety net. It won't guarantee success, because nothing can, but it can do a decent job preventing failure. In that respect the parents are right. Academic assistance is a way they can convert financial resources into something that can't be taken away from their children (and isn't subject to the gift tax limit). That said it's easy to go overboard, and many do. Unless you want to work in a small number of careers that have target lists of schools they recruit from (which again is because the credential is a selling point to clients, not because the education is better), there is no difference between a public university and a prestigious one. To the extent parents know that prestige is signalling all the way down, and does not imply being better at what you do or knowing more about your subject, they do have some inside perspective compared to the population at large.

grandempire 2y ago
> Academic assistance is a way they can convert financial resources into something that can't be taken away from their children (and isn't subject to the gift tax limit). This is a really good summary. The end result is a permanent, non-transferable, protection with strong resistance to “inflation”. > they do have some inside perspective compared to the population at large. Would that advantage manifest as playing into the system - looking for opportunities for signaling? Or discounting - finding good education with less signaling value.
- jackcosgrove 2y ago
  > Would that advantage manifest as playing into the system - looking for opportunities for signaling? Or discounting - finding good education with less signaling value. Good question! I think that can play out both ways, ultimately based on how wealthy the parents are. If money is no object, play the prestige game. If you are middle class and know the rules of the game, maximize value. For example, I am acquainted with parents who are teachers at a prestigious private school. Their child attended said school because of subsidized tuition, and then attended college in an honors program at a state university in the middle of the country. He was paid to attend! The parents are fully abreast of all the studies on the effects of education, both being teachers and being in the middle of the college admissions frenzy that goes on in these schools. So they know how the game works, and they are playing it to the max for value. On the other hand, at this school are children from generational wealth who play obscure sports from an early age to give them an edge in admissions. The children never need to actually earn a living, and the target school admission is seen as a defense of a family legacy and bragging rights for the parents - pure prestige.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]