Now the rich want your pity, too

Affluent parents devote extraordinary resources — money, time, string-pulling, to getting their kids into College A, which is infinitesimally better on some measures than College B. The first 18 years in the lives of the children of these parents have become an expensive, extended college preparation course.

It is surely true that this imposes enormous stress on the child or young adult in question, and possibly on the whole family. As one remedy, Mr. Markovits suggests that highly selective schools should “modestly increase the number of rich students” admitted, in order to “relax competition among rich applicants.” This is a regressive proposal, but it flows naturally enough from a concern about the plight of the overstretched children of the elite classes. To be fair, he also wants them to admit more poor and middle-class students, by expanding their class sizes.

There is nothing wrong with parents spending a lot of money on their children. If they want to pay for them to attend a highly selective private college, religious institution or small liberal arts college, it’s their money. The problem is not so much that rich people are spending as much as they are on these goods — although that, too, is absurd. It is that they have begun to feel burdened by these costs and everything that leads up to them, all of which they have convinced themselves are unavoidable.