Prosperous Cheaters

In what has to be the saddest commentary on today's cultural ills, John Stossel of ABC's 20/20 will air a special report tonight entitled "Big Cheats on Campus."

In the report, Stossel shows just how rampant cheating has become on college campuses and even more startling, how blase students are about it. Apparently, paying up to $40K a year to have your work done for you, using text messaging to cheat on tests, shelling out cash for pre-written or custom term papers is all within the bounds of fair play according to these students. At a minimum, plagarism from the Internet is quite commonplace for those who cannot afford the big bucks schemes.

All in all, it seems to herald a generation who has had life just a little too easy and expect a little too much. Even the poorest of the poor students cannot possibly imagine the devastating poverty of the Great Depression when for most, any schooling was out of the question (much less college) as young people scrambled for work to assist their desperate families.

My father considered himself one of the fortunate ones. He had left his Aurora, Ill., home at age nine and lived in a firehouse for most of the Great Depression, sometimes working for a farm woman who could provide him room and board for his work. He had a talent for football and got a full scholarship to Northwestern University as a quarterback. Playing football in those days was not the glamour gig of today.

Although Dad maintained grades at the top of his class despite work, football and courses, his scholarship flat ran out of money. At one point, Dad said, he was walking down the street, starving for a meal and he saw a shiny dime on the sidewalk just at the moment he had almost given up hope. That was enough for a meal for him. He said he never passed over a penny or any kind of change on the sidewalk again.

Dad's college career was interrupted by World War II, where he distinguished himself as an O.S.S. agent on the front lines of both the Pacific and the European theaters. When he got back, despite not having completed college, he was awarded a place in the graduate school of banking at the University of Washington. He graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Nothing had ever been handed to my father. Everything he had, he had made for himself. Those of us who have had things handed to us on a silver platter have to work extra hard to make sure that we don't take these things for granted and make the most out of the privileges we enjoy.

One of my father's greatest regrets in life was a sense that he had never completed his education. The top priority for him was making sure that I had every educational opportunity available to me. Upon his demise, as he requested, I put the proceeds from his insurance policy into 529 accounts for his grandsons for their education.

To learn that many of today's students have little to no respect for the privilege of the educational opportunities they have today truly disgusts me. Contrary to what they have been told all of their lives by the liberal chattering class, education is not a "right", it is a privilege.