Edit: I guess, though, that the point of degrees from schools like these is not the degree, but the connections. But I'd guess those could be purchased as well.
If you do business in the Middle East, you begin to notice the kids of the elites all went to weird no-name Western schools. Turns out they want a Western degree, but don’t want to be away from the capital too long. So they find random universities who will give them a degree for, essentially, no-show remote learning classes. Win-win.
It is a form of pride and pretend superiority, false legitimacy and so on.
As someone without a college degree in tech, and who has attempted but failed to get a tradition “corporate” job based on skills and track record I can sort of understand. Not the same thing at all, but you’d be amazed (or not?) at how much importance some folks put on having a piece of paper even in casual social settings in some circles. Actual skills need not apply.
One could say the same of a billionaire buying their idiot kid an Ivy League education. They're clearly not going to benefit from it. But it looks good and might fool a person here and there.
Too bad too, since the half of undergrads who weren’t cheaters were the nicest, brightest, salt-of-the-earth people.
This may vary by department or over time, but I think there's no reason to believe a Harvard Undergrad Alumni you meet ever did any college level work.
But this was just before all the RateAProfessor sites got big and when I was still proud of my cum laude GPA. About 5 years later is when I started hearing everyone was getting As at Harvard, so I think it was a sudden shift right after your time and certainly not just a Harvard thing.
This made me laugh out loud.
There are majors at every university that are easy to graduate from. Often these are aimed precisely at academically unambitious athletes and well-connected mediocre students.
Harvard is no exception.
Getting into elite schools is the hard part. Graduating is not.
> But I'd guess those could be purchased as well.
Maybe? Not really? If you’re already part of that social circle and socio-economic status (SES), you don’t have to buy it. If you’re not already in that that SES, then building elite connections requires quite a bit of cultivation that, imho, is not easy for most college-aged kids to pull off, largely due to ignorance of SES/class distinctions in the US.
There's no need to buy grades. All grades are A anyway.