Everything is for sale in America, so why not grades? : Let’s Make a Deal

I have always enjoyed working near a large university, not because of the glow of learning that lights the campus but because universities are so often in foment.

Hardly a year passes that someone doesn’t want to burn a bra, a book or an effigy for an outrage that at first offends the academic spirit but then is forgotten by the spring break, when the collective concentration wanders from righteous cause to beer and sex.

I have been privileged over the past few years to report on two of the righteous causes that briefly captured the general interest and thus splashed beyond their puddle of origin at Cal State Northridge into the outside world.

One was a student feminist attempt to abridge the First Amendment by outlawing girlie magazines on campus. It was more an exercise in training-bra polemics than serious social warfare, shaping noisy young women for future feminist engagements in the grown-up world. When the smoke cleared, their effort lay in shambles and the vision of Thomas Jefferson remained secure.

The second issue encompassed anonymous accusations of sexual harassment of female students by male teachers, trailing dark rumors of quid pro quo exchanges involving sex and grades. The matter received wide attention but was ultimately resolved, as almost everything is, when a campus committee was appointed to study the problem.

Meanwhile, I’m pleased to report, a new crisis has reared its preppy head at Cal State, which is to say the alleged selling of grades by two faculty members in the Pan-African Studies Department. This, at least, has nothing to do with sex but simply involves good old American enterprise.

The two faculty members are accused of having promised A grades to students who sold 20 raffle tickets that would benefit a nonprofit foundation headed by one of the professors. The tickets sold for $5 each. Many of the students, I am told, were simply buying the tickets themselves which, in effect, meant they were buying an A for $100. Bs, one student said, went for 15 raffle tickets or $75.

Three classes were canceled as a result of the revelation and the two faculty members are crying innocence with the same emotional fervor that Ollie North has employed to elevate disgrace to a level of national heroism. One of the professors even implied that selling raffle tickets as a class project was meant to help shy students overcome their social timidity.

University spokespeople, meanwhile, are attempting to communicate the seriousness of what they call a “breach of educational standards.” A vice president said that selling tickets for a raffle is not a “legitimate instructional activity” and suggested there were “sufficiently serious irregularities to raise doubts of educational relevance.”

For those unaccustomed to academic argot, that means somebody screwed up.

I’m probably not as shocked and appalled as I ought to be. If the charges are true, the professors, in fact, demonstrated a unique application of the free-market spirit. Everything is for sale in America, so why not grades? Buying a university degree is no worse than buying one’s way into heaven and would certainly alleviate the crowded conditions higher education is forced to endure.

One undergrad pointed out that the main attraction of the for-sale A was that you didn’t have to go to class. Apply this across the board. If grades were made generally available for a price, a student who wanted a degree without the boredom of study could simply mail a check in and go about his slothful way, thus opening our classrooms to those with a more traditional, though certainly less imaginative, outlook.

One could perceive this as a form of deregulating America’s universities, a condition of which Ronald Reagan would most certainly approve after consulting Nancy and the stars.

More students in the end would receive graduate degrees and this in itself would raise America’s esteem in the eyes of the world, statistically at least. Imagine being able to boast that 82% of our students have bachelors’ degrees, 72% have MAs and 63% are Ph.D.s.

Fair and equitable price structures would have to be established, of course, to ensure that a level of consistency, if not quality, is maintained. What I’m saying is you won’t be able to buy an A in business ethics for the same low price you’d pay for an A in aerobics. This is no flea market, baby.

Courses of study which ultimately would lead to positions in more lucrative fields such as personal injury law might even be limited to the highest bidders, thus assuring that our better professions would not be cluttered by those of dimmer social eclat.

I envision a brave new era for academia and, at last, a nation of people able to achieve their grandest goals armed not with a head full of esoteric knowledge, but with simple proof of purchase.

If that doesn’t save our universities, I wouldn’t worry too much. The Japanese will probably buy them someday anyhow.