Editorial: The true price of higher education

'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves.' – William Shakespeare, 'Julius Caesar'

Sonoma Unified School District students were exposed last week to obscenities so painful to explain that most parents wouldn't even know where to begin to help their children make sense of it.

And we're not talking about the Prestwood Elementary School second graders who mistakenly stumbled upon some naughty YouTube videos on the school iPads.

We mean the college admission cheating scandal that found greedy, priority-challenged parents lying, bribing and conning their entitled kids' way into so-called prestigious universities – all at the expense of studious teens who believed listening attentively, seeking help with difficult lessons and turning in all the available extra credit was a legitimate path to post-grad opportunity.

What a bunch of rubes.

And what a bunch of hypocrites we parents are – in our feigned disgust at the Marin Academy fauntleroys whose parents paid tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to falsify athletic achievements and rig test scores, or our faux outrage at the Hollywood power couples who bought exam proxies to change their daughters' college-entrance exam answers.

Because, while the gall of their brazenness is indeed stupefying, it's merely the steroidal version of what most North Bay middle-class parents have been doing since their kids were applying to their A-G focused private-college-feeder preschools.

Having faith in our kids' potential to find a life path based on their natural abilities and inherent personal interests is simply not a horse upon which many parents in these parts want to bet.

Sure, fulfillment for your child in a life helping others through work in the nonprofit sector is all well and good – but a soul-crushing career in the corporate world will not only pay the bills, but afford parental bragging rights to boot.

Bill Macy and Felicity Huffman want the best for their kids, just like the rest of us. Their method of polishing up an application to USC is just a little more direct, that's all.

It's a matter of education as industry; it's a game of improvement as profit motive.

The game starts in pre-K, when the search for a nursery school that will 'prepare' tots for kindergarten begins. ('Ma'am, little Logan still eats paste; maybe he could use another prep-year in daycare…') And it continues along that vein through high school when the get-into-a-prestigious-college sweepstakes get serious. And seriously expensive.

Sure, your kid has to take such college-readiness tests as the ACT and SAT – oftentimes both, and then one of them a couple of more times to improve their score – at $50 a pop; but before that there's the pre-SAT and, of course, the requisite test-practice courses, online at $999 for an 18-hour course, or live test tutoring at $125 a session.

Of course, colleges weight part of your kid's worth on their SATs, and generally the other part on grades – so hopefully you've spent the $90 each for several advanced-placement, or AP, tests to artificially inflate Junior's ho-hum B-range GPA.

OK, so you've spent a load and finagled better SAT and GPA numbers. Now you're ready to start paying for college – college applications, that is.

Colleges often charge between $50 and $100 simply to apply to their school, irrespective of whether a student gets in, which in most cases, they likely won't. Some guidance counselors recommend applying to about eight universities of your choice, and a couple of sure-thing back-ups just in case. You might want to have your checkbook handy, Mom and Dad.

Face it, families: Admission to a school good enough for your parents to name drop at dinner parties can cost thousands.

It's hardly surprising that parents with a bit more disposable cash would parlay what's already a somewhat rigged system into a completely rigged system. They tell themselves they're not really cheating needy students out of an admission – the low-income families have their own poor-kid scholarships to apply for. No, this is just separating the upper-middle-class players from the middle-middle-class pretenders. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight, scholars.

Because, as the writers of 'Love Story' may have put it: Love is never having to say, 'we're sorry to inform you that we will not be able to offer you admission in the entering class of 2020.'

What's lost in it all, of course, is the concept that the pathway to self-betterment is education – not the education system. Learning shouldn't be a means to an end result – learning should be the end result.

There is a time in youth when there's an intangible joy to learning – when the world is this cage-less zoo shimmering with outlandish creatures, magical places and mysteries to be solved.

When the discovery of such phenomena as the visible spectrum and the Ramones first four albums are like doors opening to a new world.

Our 16-year-old son still has this sense of wonder – he loves world history and all its ironies, triumphs and fool's errands; he's not as sure about math, doesn't mesh with his aversion to stubborn rigidity. His best day of the week is his guitar lesson with a local jazz musician, as they laugh over minor triads and work through the riff to 'Crazy Train'; his worst is having to ride his bike to school in the rain.

He hugs his mom a lot; annoys his little brother and sister to no end; longs to travel; would kill me if he knew I was writing about him; and conveys a real sense of affection for his grandparents.

I refuse to tell him that in a little more than a year all the books he's read, all the owl pellets he's dissected and all the stars he's gazed upon will be quantified into a number between zero and 1,600 upon which his value will be assessed by a middle-aged admissions clerk at an institution more interested in what he brings to them than they bring to him.

That the smoothness of his collegiate pathway lies in direct correlation to the soulessness of its stepping stones.

That his worth can be measured on anything other than scales of effort, love and basic human decency.

I refuse because a part of me still holds out that it isn't entirely true.

But that part of me is the 16-year-old of 30 years ago who also used to gaze upon the stars.

That was a long time ago.

Today is different. Today we've got tests to prep for; checks to tear.

We've got scales to tip.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.