Aside from cheating at the school, parents are doing unreasonable things to get their children into Berkeley. In one of my composition courses, we recently discussed why some students cheat. Some of the responses were amazing. I found these rationalizations disturbing. But even more disturbing was the boldness with which they offered these rationalizations, the blindness their reasoning projected, and the oblivion they had to what they were saying about themselves and the value they have for education.
Many college students have a certain blindness that breeds a sort of self-deception.
They think they can rightly say what is relevant for the course of study even before they are significantly involved in that course of study. One student, in suggesting why some students cheat, stated that if one is taking a course of study leading to a paralegal certificate, there is very little, if any, relevance an animal anatomy course would have, so you may cheat on it. Of course, a practicing paralegal or a lawyer readily sees the blindness of such an assertion. But this is student reasoning and one of the many rationalizations used to justify a practice that has reached epidemic proportions in school and in society. Too many people will do any easy thing to receive the status of the intelligentsia and the possible financial remunerations it brings.