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George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen offers an opinion on the recent revelations that some people don't know how to buy Junior's admission to college. Cowen suggests the scheme -- which involved direct payment to university officials who could guarantee admission to the briber's children, rather than the hint that mom and dad think a new library would look awesome on campus -- shows a weirdly dualistic view of college.

On the one hand, the parents obviously wanted their kids in top schools (although as an Okie, I have to wonder about those parents willing to break the law to get their kid into the University of Texas). Which means that the kids' presence in those schools, and whatever benefits accrued from it, was something the parents valued.

On the other hand, they didn't value it enough to take advantage of the many legal advantages they had that would have made admission to a preferred college more likely. Tutoring, test prep, résumé-enhancing activities -- there's a long list of options open to folks who have the money to pay for them. And each of those options is a leg up on the average applicant. In one sense, admission was only worth buying -- it wasn't worth earning.

Several of the news stories focused on how many of the students concerned might not have qualified for admission had their ticket not been purchased under the table. Of course, universities admit academically suspect students all the time in exchange for revenue -- it's called college athletics. While most smaller schools and many sports fill their team rosters with true student-athletes, quite a few of the schools involved in this scandal have have shown up in exposés of young people who made it onto campus without being ready for anything but the playing field. And when they excel on that playing field, all kinds of money rolls into the school coffers and coaches' pockets via endorsement deals and the like. None of it rolls to the students, of course, because the school is already offering them the benefit of a highly useful degree.

It's an immense mess, which makes it kind of ironic that it can really be described in one word: Ick.