Two of the members of my private high school’s board of trustees spent time behind bars for their complicity in the Operation Varsity Blues Scandal. One received the longest prison sentence of any of the parents charged. Both conspired to buy their children’s way into my alma mater, the execrable University of Southern California.

I bring this up to highlight my own understanding of just how corrupt elite higher education has become. One might wonder why a Hot Pocket heiress and a hedge fund manager would risk hard time to get their kids into a B-list university with A-list celebrities, but that’s precisely the point: the modern university degree is valued not as proof of a certain, specialized skill set, but rather as a price signal to employers — evidence that you have the connections and chops to con your way through four years of recruitment seasons and happy hours.