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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

3 Responses

  1. James D. says:

    A brilliant summation of the real issue. This parallels the tax code, where the top and bottom are net beneficiaries of government largess and the middle foots the bill. This all became clear to me years ago when I read “Revolution from the Middle. Damn, I miss Sam Francis. I wish he was still around.

  2. Irv Phillips says:

    This is great, Dr. Fleming, you are spot on. A few added details, if I may, based on my own experiences as student and parent and as a student assessment analyst. I don’t think most Americans, including (particularly, perhaps) the educated (sic) ones, understand just how much the standards are dropped for minorities. Years ago it was revealed that some prestige schools had white-black average SAT gaps of over two hundred points. For Asians (versus blacks) the gap was even higher. This is enormous. What we have now, and the recent court case involving angry Asian parents taking on Harvard has brought to the fore what has indeed been going on for some time, is an admission process which rejects Asian students who have close to, and in some cases actual, perfect scores because colleges have to fill their quota of minority students (the existence of which, in their shameless dishonesty, they of course deny).

    The recent kerfuffle over bribery (yes, it’s been going on for a long time. I had a high school teacher who knew someone who took Teddy Kennedy’s Spanish exam (i.e. so he could fulfill his foreign language requirement)) is a wonderful story for the media because they can use it to draw attention from the real scandal, which is, as Dr. Fleming said, the absurdly reduced standards for minorities. Are children of alumni (“legacy students” as they are called) given a leg up? Certainly. Are athletes, as well? Yes. However, I assure you that the average SAT/ACT gap between each of the latter two and the average student is smaller, probably considerably, than the black-white, black-Asian, and even the Hispanic-white and Hispanic-Asian disparities.

    A few other points: the Ivies and other prestige schools are loaded with athletes. Of my kids’ classmates who ended up enrolling at these, I would imagine that close to half are playing college sports. This has been going on since I was in college, at least.

    The Hispanic-white (or Asian) gap, while not as big as the black gap, is of importance because the percentage of Hispanic college students is increasing and will continue to. This means that those who qualify strictly on the basis of their academic bona fides will be ever more squeezed out: most universities, particularly the elite ones, have not substantially increased their enrollments for at least a generation. The number of applicants, has, however consistently gone up. So, the scam continues. I have heard now, about a thousand times, that “this can’t continue!” Well, until, Dr. Fleming says, college isn’t the “price of admission” and the elite schools aren’t the path to more prestigious graduate schools and careers, it won’t stop.

  3. Dot says:

    I read years ago that some colleges had courses geared for minority students who were admitted on a basketball or football scholarship. They are anatomically superior to whites. In that sense, they bring MONEY into the college, including prestigious colleges.