On a broad level, he told me, the case reveals a fundamental “crisis” in American society. “As America has become more and more unequal, affluent parents have become increasingly desperate to pass on their advantages to their children and to avoid downward mobility at all costs,” Mr. Karabel said. “California is an epicenter of enormous wealth,” he said. Irvine, and he emphasized that thousands of first-generation college students are getting world-class educations at California’s public universities in particular. The scandal, he said, is troubling in large part because it erodes students’ trust in those institutions.

Source: New York Times March 13, 2019 13:07 UTC