Frank Bruni: When did college become so cruel?

This May 21, 2018 photo shows the Wake Forest University commencement on Hearn Plaza, in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dozens of people were charged Tuesday, March 12, 2019, in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly bribed college coaches and other insiders to get their children into some of the nation's most elite schools. The coaches worked at such schools as Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. (Walt Unks/The Winston-Salem Journal via AP) Paul Tough’s important new book on the broken promises of higher education begins with a chapter that he succeeds in making as suspenseful as the prologue of any serial-killer novel and as heart-rending as the climax of an epic romance. It describes a high school senior who is waiting to hear if she has been accepted at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

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