How Admissions Really Work: If The College Admissions Scandal Shocked You, Read This

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There are lots of ways that wealthy families get a boost in the college admissions process. Most are quite legal.

Donations: It’s no secret that well-off alumni give money to their alma maters. This cash can make a difference when the kids of these alumni grow up and apply to college. The issue came up last fall in the Harvard University admissions trial — which focused on the ways that the school factors race into admission. That trial also lifted the the veil on how the process can work, and among evidence presented were email exchanges between Harvard officials discussing connections between applicants and major donors.

Legacy admissions: Nearly half of private colleges and universities (42 percent) and 6 percent of public ones take into account whether an applicant’s family members attended that school, according to Inside Higher Ed. Harvard officials defended their use of legacy admissions in court filings, saying the practice helps connect the school with its alumni, whose financial support is essential.

Campus visits: Some colleges consider whether or not students “demonstrate interest” in their schools by making the costly trip to visit campus. But not every family can afford that trip.

Applying early decision: At many schools, students are more likely to be admitted in the early action or early decision cycles, which occur in the fall instead of the spring. But research shows that early options favor white and wealthy students.

College consulting and test prep: As The New York Times reported last week, some well-off families pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for guidance from college consultants. These consultants are part of an entire industry devoted to getting wealthy teens into their schools of choice.

AOC gets it. She sees that fear is dividing us. We can address income inequality. We can address climate change, if we get together and get to work. #SXSW @AOC pic.twitter.com/I8tSbAc97u

— Bill Nye (@BillNye) March 10, 2019

“I’m a white guy,” he said. “I think the problem on both sides is fear. People of my ancestry are afraid to pay for everything as immigrants come into this country. People who work at the diner in Alabama are afraid to try to ask for what is reasonable. So, do you have a plan to work with people in Congress that are afraid? I think that’s what’s going on with many of the conservatives, especially when it comes to climate change. People are just afraid of what will happen if we try to make these big changes.”

“One of the keys to dismantling fear is dismantling a zero-sum mentality,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “It means the rejection outright of the logic that says someone else’s gain necessitates my loss and that my gain must necessitate someone else’s loss … We can give without a take.”

Addressing complaints that her plan costs too much, she said people are “viewing progress as a cost instead of as an investment … When we choose to invest in our system, we are choosing to create wealth.”

"As we get more specialized, the rich will get richer," he continued. "The question is: 'How do you take care of a guy who is a wonderful citizen whose father died in Normandy and just doesn't have market skills?' I think the income tax credit is the best way to address that."

"That probably means more taxes for guys like me, and I'm fine with it," he said.

• Earned Income Tax Credit Is a Cheap Way to Beat Poverty, Bloomberg
• The minimum wage versus the earned income tax credit for reducing poverty,  IZA World of Labor
• A False Choice: Earned Income Tax Credit or Minimum Wage Increase, Huffington Post

The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of “the color line.” From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics – beautiful in design and powerful in content – make visible a wide spectrum of black experience.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphics in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination. As Maria Popova wrote, these data portraits shaped how “Du Bois himself thought about sociology, informing the ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later in The Souls of Black Folk.”

A White House report recently proclaimed that the “War on Poverty is largely over and a success.” United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said it was “ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America.”

According to the Credit Suisse 2018 Global Wealth Databook, 34 million American adults are among the WORLD’S POOREST 10%. How is that possible? In a word, debt. In more excruciating words: stifling, misery-inducing, deadly amounts of debt for the poorest Americans. And it goes beyond dollars to the “deaths of despair” caused by the stresses of inferior health care coverage, stagnating incomes, and out-of-control inequality.

Since 2008 consumer debt has risen almost 50 percent. The percentage of families with more debt than savings is higher now than at any time since 1962.

It’s estimated that a typical U.S. household needs about $60,000 annually to meet all expenses.

No American adult in the bottom 40% has more than $31,124 in total wealth, including house and car and savings (Table 3-4).

While 1 in 7 Americans is part of the world’s poorest 10%, nearly 3 in 7 Americans are part of the world’s richest 10%.

Many of today’s ‘gig’ jobs don’t pay a living wage, and most have no retirement or health benefits, no job security, no government regulations backing them, and usually a longer work day, with many people putting in 10- to 12-hour days for $13 per hour or less. According to a New York Times report, “41.7 million laborers – nearly a third of the American work force – earn less than $12 an hour, and almost none of their employers offer health insurance.”

• Economic policy of Donald Trump, Wikipedia
• Trump's Tax Reform Plan Explained, Investopedia

Republicans may act like they want to transform the GOP into a “workers party,” pretend they care about the concerns of struggling coal miners and farmers, rail against abortion, cheer the appointment of conservative judges, and talk about fighting terrorism and deporting immigrants, but there is one thing that matters more to Republicans than anything else — and that is helping the nation’s very wealthiest individuals and families become ever richer.

That is the singular domestic achievement of the Republican Party in its 38-year run of dominance over American politics, and it’s obviously something the party wants to push as far as it possibly can while it still clings to power in Washington.

That's because most investment income flows to the top of the economic pyramid. 

Like income and wealth, stock ownership is heavily concentrated in the uppermost echelons of the economy. 

• The bottom 60 percent of households COMBINED own just 1.8 percent of American stock. 
• The top 1 percent, by contrast, owns over 40 percent of the country's stock, up from 34 percent in 2001. 

“Children from high-income backgrounds who show signs of low academic ability at age five are 35 per cent more likely to become high earners than their poorer peers who show early signs of high ability,”