This issue is sort

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This issue is sort of a perennial — the ridiculously lavish paychecks and perks of the execs at the Educational Testing Service, the SAT folks. But apparently it’s getting even worse. There’s an article about it in today’s Times. The new CEO — the aptly-named Kurt Landgraf — had to get by on a mere $800,000 for his first ten months on the job.

The Times talks about the salaries. But ETS’s campus in Princeton, New Jersey is equally outrageous. Those SAT sign-up fees — paid by this and that striving high school senior, or his or her parents — are so fat that there’s just nowhere to put all the money. So to find something to do with all that money that keeps pouring in they end up finding new fountains, or sculpted gardens, or whatever other knick-knacks of abundance cash can easily be converted into. The ETS campus is like the Versailles of American meritocracy. Or, I guess it’s better to say that it’s the Versailles of the folks who administer the American meritocracy. It’s a perennial scandal. It never changes.

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