How Some People's Kids Get into University

Our hearts are all a' flutter and our ire has been raised by the revelation that a number of people, mainly in the USA, have been charged with either bribing or lying to get their kids into a university of their choice or else facilitating/receiving those bribes or lies. Not surprisingly, the amount of money paid seems to be substantial. Perhaps even less surprising is that the lies and bribes were not all that sophisticated or even clever. What is surprising is the fact that some people are shocked that rich people, people who are part of the elite, people who generally see themselves as not needing to follow the same rules as the rest of us - have done these things.

Surely it cannot be a surprise to anyone that the wealthy for well over a century have seen universities as the rightful place for their offspring to find their way into adulthood and hopefully maturity. While private universities such as Harvard or Yale were originally founded to provide education to ministers (Christian), they have long been a place where the elite go to meet others like themselves and to establish networks that will smooth their future paths. And there is nothing wrong with that. We would like to believe that universities are a place where young people go to have their minds expanded, the reality, however, is that that does not happen for the majority of students. Most of us, most of the time, end up hanging around with people who are like us, who have similar values and interests. University students whether they are attending a 150-year-old institution in the US or a British one that is 800 years old are no different than the rest of the population. We all spend our time with people with whom we are comfortable.

By lying or at least allowing lies to be told about their offspring or by bribing/buying a university spot, not only have those parents broken the law but they have also damaged the reputations of the institutions and I would hope, offended their peers who did not bend the rules. However, I would guess that as donating money to a university and then a child being accepted to that university is not an unusual event. It might cause some personal embarrassment but no one will really care. Such fraud is so common that a popular, long-running television show (Suits) has as a lead character, an individual who earned his living by taking university entrance tests for other people.

This most recent example of the elite paying to get additional, unearned privileges is just a reminder to the rest of us of how those elite maintain their status and their power within a society. It is a dangerous practice because every time someone uses their money or their status to purchase a place in a university class - it means that someone else, someone whose parents do not have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase entrance into a university does not get in. Every time that happens, those that feel dispossessed, disenfranchised and isolated from the opportunities supposedly available to us all - are provided with another reason why there is no point in trying, that there is no reason to even pretend that they have a chance to succeed.

People giving up hope is never good for society.

Controlling Research and its Findings

One of the cornerstones behind our belief in science is that the research is independent - free from any taint of manipulation by those companies or individuals who have a vested interest in the results. We also assume that when the findings are published - they are presented in recognized journals after having been reviewed by competent, non-involved peers. While far less discussed, I think that the majority of Canadians make the assumption that the research is available to the public.

Unfortunately, very little of the above appears to be always true. Most people are aware of how flawed the research was on smoking and cancer. We are all aware that doctors and other scientist were paid, by tobacco companies, to say things that they knew not to be true. Certainly, the more current debate on what to believe in terms of climate change has been fraught with competing information, some of it provided by coal and oil companies. But somehow we have hung on to the belief that most of the time we can trust most of the information that scientists produce. It may be less true than ever before.

Two stories have been quietly circulating somewhere off of the front page of major media outlets that suggest that we may need to re-visit how we see scientific research. The first story is that when Health Canada was determining as to whether or not the use of Monsanto's Roundup would be allowed, they reviewed numerous pieces of research. Some of those reports were, at the very least, indirectly paid for and edited by Monsanto. Which in itself does not prove that the findings that glyphosate was not dangerous were wrong, but given the millions of dollars involved - it should make one suspicious as to how neutral were some of the researchers.

It would perhaps make things more transparent if anyone could access the information and perhaps even more importantly who funded the research. I might not be able to understand complicated try. The second story that I suspect that has drifted well under the radar of most Canadians is the fact that access to academic research, research that is frequently wholly or partially funded through the Canadian taxpayer is not available to most Canadians. In fact, accessing it may be becoming too expensive for some universities.

The present system is that all research that is published by recognized journals is only available if an university purchases on an annual basis a licence from the publishing company. Canadian universities paid out over $300 million last year for the right to have professors and students have access to a variety of academic journals. The journals are published online, the papers are written and reviewed at no cost to the publishers. The general public can purchase a subscription but the cost can be up to $3,000-$5,000 for a single year. They can also purchase a single article. Again the costs can be prohibitive if one is just curious.

So - we can't be sure whether or not the research that is presented to government agencies is valid, free from inappropriate influence and we do not have easy, affordable access to the same research that the government has to make the decisions for ourselves. The only access we have to information is what the companies or their shills give us or else the information from organizations who are perhaps equally as biased from another perspective.

It is not surprising that so many of us do not have a clue as to who to believe anymore. We are prevented from collect the information to make our own decisions.

Getting to the Front of the Line

Most of us (Canadians) get through life with relatively few life crises. Most of us, except at birth and at death do not use a lot of government funded services - or at least that is our perception of ourselves. Therefore, when we or a family member need a special service, we act as if it is our right to have exactly what we need when we need it. If it is not immediately available, we act as if our rights have been in some way violated. This sense of entitlement allows us to ignore the expense of the service, the fact that the demand for services is constantly expanding (if not always in the right direction) or that money is a finite resource.

Take for example the most recent protest in Ontario complaining about the government's plan to support families with young children who have been diagnosed with autism. For well over 20 years ago programs designed around Applied Behavioural Analysis, or ABA have had a waiting list. Parents have consistently complained that their children were not getting access to the programs until it was too late. These can be very expensive programs, sometimes costing $60,000 to $80,000 a year per child. Families have gone into debt to privately fund these programs. Parents have also complained that sometimes the bureaucracy can be cumbersome and that perhaps if families could administer the funds (as opposed to going through an agency), the program would be more efficient. The Ontario government could have done nothing. They instead, clearly not understanding the issue, decided to address two of the problems - get rid of the 23,000 person waiting list by giving every family some money and then let at least some families administer their own programs.

Of course, without adding to the budget - these changes just meant that more people were getting access to the same amount of money. The consequences are that no one is getting enough money to effectively help their children. Clearly, this is an issue for the families and for the systems that support these families. There is nowhere for these parents to go to get assistance - their resources will be drained and so will the resources of hospitals, schools and the court systems.

Whereas 40-50 years ago some of these children would have been institutionalized and others would have left school when they were 12 -14 - perhaps to have been employed in menial jobs - there are no more institutions nor are there very many jobs that do not, at the very least, required high school graduation. By creating a society that attempts to be more open, that attempts to include more people in our communities we have created a society that becomes responsible for all individuals.

It would have cost between 12 and 18 million dollars, this year, to support all of the young children in Ontario labelled as being autistic. Next year it would have cost more, the year after that - even more. There is no limit to the potential growth to this program. I do not disagree that the community must be responsible for supporting all families - I spent 30 plus years supporting and arguing on behalf of individuals who had been institutionalized, shunned, ignored and hidden away but we need to have a discussion about what it costs and how we are going to pay for it.

There are a thousand other programs that need better funding. All of those programs are vital to the people directly impacted by the lack of that specific service. We all can't all be a priority, we all can't be at the top of the list for new services or for increased funding. Somehow we need to collectively decide how we decide who is a priority.

The present way of advocating for increased support requires people to make their needs more important than anyone else's. That is not the way to build better communities