Students face decline of Ivy League reputation
In today’s world, the social capital of Ivy League Institutions has plummeted to new lows. With the latest scandal involving Cornell University and the egregious rape case they attempted to sweep under the rug in conjunction with the local district attorney’s office, it is fair to examine the behavior and public image of the rest of the universities deemed to be the most prestigious in the country.
Columbia University’s less recent, but still relevant, poor treatment of peaceful student “Free Palestine” protestors on their campus led to hundreds of arrests. Their student newspaper reported that the speakers at the event “called out the boards of trustees at Columbia and the City University of New York for alleged deference to corporate interests,” an accusation that has been echoed by national news outlets and confirmed by publicly available information. If moneyed interests are enough to criminalize our constitutional right to peaceful protest, what is to stop them from reducing our rights to nothing at all?
The Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs released an article this year, describing how Yale University’s medical school discriminated against admissions based on race. This is one of the most recent scandals to come out of Yale, but the most memorable and infamous were the actions of a fraternity in 2010 when their members marched through campus chanting “No means yes, yes means anal.” This led to a light suspension of the organization for five years, but the presentation sticks to the image of the university more than 15 years later.
Harvard University’s medical school is involved in a legal case this year where one of their morgue managers was caught stealing body parts from donated corpses to sell for profit on the black market. Scathingly it was revealed that the school had allegedly been involved in several cover up operations throughout the years regarding this case, which is something they are currently facing civil lawsuits for in addition to the $53 million payout to the families of the donor’s bodies which were desecrated and sold. The litigation with this case is ongoing.
With tuition prices ranging from $60-100k per year, the cost of education outprices the majority of Americans, making the venture of costly application fees and lengthy essay writing to get into the schools much less appealing. As employers continue to shift towards searching for concrete skills in future employees, a degree from an overpriced university of inflated importance is less of a promise to a stable career and more of a severe financial burden. The prestige that going to an ivy league university used to hold is quickly plummeting with the morally corrupt findings continuing to be uncovered by the increased scrutiny from the students, media and the courts.
