Show Notes

To start off the New Year, I had a fascinating discussion with Mr. Sahaj Sharda.  Sahaj is an author that brings passion to his analysis of recent trends in higher education and encourages educators and institutions of higher learning to simply do better.  Given the support schools receive from taxpayers and the need for the best education possible for graduates that enter into careers each year, the stakes in having that education be as good as possible, In his newest book, The College Cartel, Sahaj Sharda is starting an essential debate about the monopolistic greed of the Ivy League colleges and other elite schools. In recent years, elite colleges have been sued for price-fixing, sued for discrimination in admissions, and scandalized by Varsity Blues. Sahaj's book is both an exploration of these scandals and an analysis of the underlying force creating them: an artificial scarcity of elite seats. 

A graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, America's
top-ranked high school, and Georgetown University, Sahaj noticed early on that plenty of intelligent students who can obviously handle the rigor at elite colleges are rejected every year. Having been an undergraduate student at Georgetown when the Varsity Blues scandal broke out, Sahaj further witnessed a fellow classmate's parents sentenced to jail. Seeing these things, Sahaj was forced to question why. His book is an attempt to answer the question and explore the reasons behind the answers with both objective data and personal anecdotes.