One of my best friends during my university years was a very ambitious young girl whose parents were barely reading and writing and who was ambitious enough to get a superb scholarship at Georgetown University. Her hardwork was an inspiration for me, and many others that were during those times more interested to test life, love and relationships instead of dedicating the best light hours to intensive study and exam preparations. At a certain extent, we knew that sooner or later we will find our place - because we were coming from middle-class families with a clear intellectual status in the society - therefore we did not have too prove that much. Meanwhile, my friend was catching up reading the books that we had included in our weekly reading plan or learning the languages our relatives started to practice with us at a very early age. We not even need to work too hard to pay our college debts because even if our parents were not always so well-off, there will be always some successful relative that probably will help with a loan one day, when the knife was getting closer to the skin.
It was good for America that a friend like mine, with a poor immigrant background, worked so hard to get into one of the most elitist universities, preparing future American diplomats. For me, it was an example that although nightmarish sometimes, the American dream is still working. And I am still convinced that hard work and dedication pays off, although nowadays it is getting harden and harder to cope with the post-university trauma of huge debts and the lack of social and professional integration. Why do you need so much hard work and financial pressure when once you graduated, you can hardly find a good academic or professional position, as most of the best jobs are offered based on a personal CV that counts less your academic achievements instead of your good family connections. With the right high-class connections you can have any job you want, regardless your grades and the circle is shrinking more and more each day.
The recent scandal involving bribes and favoritism in top league American universities as Yale, UCLA, USC and Standford is only one of the many examples in this respect. Although it involves mostly big money paid for admissions of athletes who couldn't play in various sport academic teams, it touches violently also to the ways in which people with a certain visibility consider that their children deserve a better place into the society. The fact that a protagonist from a movie called 'Desperate Housewives' wants her offspring to be part of the American intellectual elites and pays heavily for this - possibly with some of her years as well - tells a lot about what are we talking about.
The fact that parents with an intellectual background want their children to be part of the same elites is not commendable in itself, but it does not request a more equal status than someone else. Let's compete and show your skills, but the departure point shall be the same. There is no genetical guarantee of brain further development or conservation from an intellectual generation to the other.
The fact that politicians and well-offs offer themselves huge donations to universities although their deep system of belief is completely against the chore system of the said universities and societies in the middle of which those operate - remember the Muammar Gaddafi's links to LSE? - is a proof that the elites' system in our brave new world is getting through a deep crisis. No 'desperate' money will help this situation, until the entire crisis is evaluated in all its details.
A clear and immediate answer - which has to do not only with America and its system, but has to do with the ways in which education operates and contributes to the overall reproduction of elites - would probably help avoiding a further wave of non-values and mediocrity in a system aimed to promote the difference between values and non-values.
