Harvard and Affirmative Action for the Rich

Alex Beam of the Boston Globe asks, can you buy your way into Harvard? Of course you can, if my friend Dan Golden's new book, ``The Price of Admission," is to be believed. You can also buy your way into Duke -- home of the notorious ``development admits , " where fund-raisers collaborate on admissions decisions -- and many other top-tier universities in the country.

Golden's book is a well-reported critique of what amounts to affirmative action for rich people, who enjoy a panoply of preferences in the college admission process that outsiders could never dream of. The best-known examples are ``legacy" admissions for alumni children; scholarships reserved for upper-class sports, such as rowing; and the ultimate preference: dough. When you read how Harvard treats the children of its fat - cat Committee on University Resources -- who enjoy such perks as sit-downs with the director of admissions, personal campus tours, and access to the coveted ``Z-list" of deferred applicants -- suddenly real affirmative action for people who need it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

The most egregious example of pay-for-Crimson - play is that of Jared Kushner , now the youthful owner of The New York Observer. While Jared was applying to colleges, his dad, New Jersey billionaire developer Charles Kushner , pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, to be paid in installments. (Kushner pere pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other counts in 2004 and recently completed a prison sentence.) An official at Kushner's high school told Golden: ``There was no way anybody in . . . the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen." Kushner graduated from Harvard in 2003.

A spokesman for Kushner said he would not be available for comment. In a prepared statement, Harvard admissions dean William Fitzsimmons affirmed that ``all students admitted to Harvard are fully qualified to be here." Uhn huh. Sure Dean, sure.