>... and it was like, the kids though, and it was funny 'cause the kids will call me and say, "Maybe I should do that again. I did pretty well and if I took it again, I'll do better even" Right? And they just have no idea that they didn't even get the score that they thought they got.
Can you even imagine what those people are going through?
One day you are a USC/Harvard/Stanford grad. The next day you are a fraud. And not only that, you are revealed to the entire world to be dumb as a box of rocks, just totally naked and shamed. And you had no clue. Your closest family members spent tens of thousands of dollars fooling you, committing very serious crimes on your behalf, and all the while, lying to you about your intelligence and work ethic.
For those people, it must feel like The Truman Show or an episode of The Twilight Zone. It's totally unreal.
I saw similar fabrications growing up as I attended one of the wealthiest high schools in the country. The top 10 of my graduating class got complete scholarships the most expensive schools in the country and the parents were willing to do anything to the school faculty to make sure their child had a higher class rank.
(source: https://youtu.be/lveMkZc-NRE, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/style/olivia-jade-giannul...)
Seriously, I was staying at the Trump hotel in Chicago (before Trump ran for president -- before I ever gave much thought about Donald Trump). Anyway, there was a looping video on the TV and she was inviting guests to stay at any one of their other Trump hotels around "North America and Canada." It was at that moment I realized that she thought North America was some kind of Northern area of America. I no longer wonder how she got into Wharton.
Lori Laughlin's daughter was probably a pretty poor student. Apparently she paid upwards of $500k to get in via the student athlete route, even though she's not an athlete. She's apparently a fairly well known Youtube/Instagram blogger who has made posts about not even wanting to be in college.
If you're not smart enough to fill out a form - imagine how you'll go during study.
As opposed to the SAT fakers where you can get into college and skate on by for a couple semesters / years without getting kicked out.
I also don’t get how the coaches didn’t think that they would get caught. Don’t they have to publish lists of students athletes? Presumably with the USC one the only way they got in was via a recommendation from the rowing coach.
And then you wonder if the people behind these fraudulent entrance schemes might have considered it worthwhile to leverage their position further by holding it over the parents/students in future.
Would they stoop so low?
[edit: s/Ivy-league/top-tier]
And now? I mean, it all blew up in their faces. All their best intentions made everything just so much more horrible for their children. They'll never wash this off.
My lord, not even Aristophanes himself could write a tragedy on this scale.
EDIT: And the parents were laughing with their fixer at the deception that they pulled on their kids! They were laughing at the naivete of their very children that they fooled. I can't even begin to process what was going through those parents' minds. What were they thinking?!
What makes you think they wrote their own application?
It's not really that far off the general experience of being an American, what with all the stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen research, the history of which apparently no one seems to know about, let alone work into their fundamental understanding of what our country is and how it came to be.
To some degree, the notion that it's "totally unreal" speaks to how thoroughly failed most Americans have been by both history education and our common mythos.
Anybody who does these kind of things does it because of positive feed back loops training over years. So they have a fair bit of clue. It's just the incentive ladder works that way.
Corruption exists because people want to be corrupt.
My mother did well in the Masters program at Stanford and I would have likely gotten in if she donated a couple million dollars but she didn’t and I didn’t (despite getting an invitation a year after accepting enrollment at another university).
It’s not like we ever had that type of money, but if we did I wouldn’t have wanted that.
It seems like they’re targeting this more obvious version of bribery but not digging in and targeting the systemic issue of affluent people buying their children’s spot in college.
I really don’t think it’s much harder to prove that an underperforming student who got in because their parents donated a couple million (or tens of millions of) dollars took the place of a more qualified candidate. Maybe I’m wrong...
In this case, we're talking about bribery of specific employees to act against the interests of their employer. That's simply corruption.
They might be equally non-meritocratic, but they're definitely not equally dishonest or equally socially harmful.
However, the daughter was rejected outright due to a multitude of factors. She wasn't violent, or addicted, or lazy. Nothing like that. She just wasn't ahead of the other applicants.
Well, you can imagine that the parents were none too enthused. All the love they had for that college, those dreams for their daughter, gone. There were phone calls and in person visits. Still, the daughter was not what they were looking for.
In the end, things have gone alright for everyone. The building still has their names on it, though the donations have ceased. The daughter is doing just fine at the school she is now at. The college is dealing with it's own issues just as it ever was.
Though there may be corruption at many universities and colleges, there are still a fair number of places where merit and fair decisions still reign. I'd look to those schools for the graduates to hire. Integrity is still in high demand, just as it will ever be.
This is a little overgenerous.
> In this case, we're talking about bribery of specific employees to act against the interests of their employer. That's simply corruption.
Perhaps. What crime is it?
I went and looked at the charges that were filed, here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/investigations-college-admis...
(Kudos to patch.com for actually including a link to the charges in their coverage. Middle finger to the Washington Post.)
Charges are divided into three groups, which appear to correspond to different roles in the bribery. At the top are four people "charged by information". William Singer and Mark Riddell are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. (And some other charges.) Based on the media coverage, this is because some payments in the bribery system took the form of donations to a nonprofit operated by Riddell, and this is tax fraud. (One of those other charges is "conspiracy to defraud the United States".) Rudy Meredith is charged with wire fraud, the catchall crime that everyone in the country is guilty of. John Vandemoer is charged with racketeering.
The second group, "charged by indictment", are all charged with racketeering, except for David Sidoo who is charged with mail and wire fraud. I don't know what these people are supposed to have done. I'd like to think that a racketeering charge requires the organization you're involved with to have committed a crime; that would imply that what they're really charged with is helping the sham charity commit tax fraud.
The third group, "charged by complaint", are the parents. One and all they are charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
It doesn't look to me like paying an admissions officer to admit your child is a crime at all. Similarly, bribing a maitre'd to seat you more quickly is bribing a specific employee to act against the interests of his employer, but it's not a crime. Taking the bribe might or might not be a crime. All of the charges here that involve a crime relate to using a sham nonprofit for tax benefits.
>>It may not be meritocratic, but it's not corrupt
Its just dampening the effects a little, but its the same though. Donating X, just means the person who bought in the donation gets promoted or gets awarded some bonus or gets rewards by their employer(university). Instead of receiving the bribe directly.
This is a classic trick from corruption handbooks used by ace corrupt people.
When you trade something for something which could be wrong, only stupid people directly do it through exchange of money. Clever people trade through favors and indirect profit/help. They also call this lobbying in places like politics. In many other places they call these things incentives, commissions, brokerage or whatever.
This is really one of those classic problems with defining corruption. Books and stories can always be cooked in a way to make anything look good.
I agree that the practice of university donations in exchange for college admission is neither legally corrupt nor dishonest.
However, it is still wrong according to our societal values.
That is, we have a value system that we implicitly adhere to and meritocracy is big part of our value system.
At least in the states, we believe that if you work just as hard and contribute just as much as your neighbor, you deserve to enjoy the same quality of life.
When parents purchase access to an elite university for their child, they are conferring an advantage to their child over the child's peers that is unearned and unfair.
Elite college admissions is a zero sum game. There are only a certain number of spots available and purchasing a spot for a kid who slacked off in school necessarily takes the same opportunity away from a more deserving kid.
Sometimes, alumni give to their alma mater for charitable reasons! And some USC grads do better than some Yale grads, I'm sure.
But maybe the IRS should try to brush back the most conspicuous cases of donating to receive admission. I'm seeing stories of admissions officers being pretty open about it at Ivy League schools.
Maybe not in the 1800s, but doing that today violates any number of published school policies. It likely also violates several laws, especially if the school receives state/federal funding (they all do). Violating published policies, circumventing established admission systems, and denying a spot for a qualified candidate in order to accommodate a wealthy donor, that is the definition of corruption.
A guy donates an engineering complex, and every engineering student on that campus gets to take advantage of said complex and its resources. Guy donates a new business school building and every student on that campus can take advantage of said building and its resources. In exchange, the university lets in two girls, their daughters or whatever, who might want to major in Art History and French, and coincidentally will likely be inheriting a few hundred million to upwards of a billion dollars in the future. (Future donors.)
It's a fair trade. I'm not wealthy on that level, but if I were calling the shots at a university I'd make that trade every time.
Donating for improvement that affects others is one thing, but donating for a quid pro quo might affect this.
If you believe the primary purpose of a university is to educate and certify, that is indeed "not much". But if you believe that the education is secondary, and the actual primary purpose is to cultivate a social network of influential graduates and dropouts, and to act as gatekeeper to future opportunities, then that bribe is better than a perfect SAT score.
That kid will end up with seed money or angel investments from mommy and daddy, and will be able to hire some former classmates right out of the gate, and they might build a unicorn, which will forever be tagged with "founded and built by a team of University X graduates".
In that sense, no one is robbing anybody of a spot. There are genius spots, and rich idiot spots, and the only problem is getting a few from each pile into the same rooms, with a reason to talk about their futures. One way is to coerce the rich kid into studying (or cheating) their coursework by paying off the genius kid. Management training.
Buying a basketball team and hiring a coach in order to win is legal. Paying one player to lose a game is not legal.
I understand the legality and the law is the law, but let's cut the c*ap, both sides are cheating. The poorer side gets caught because they don't have the money needed to bribe the University, they have just enough to bribe its employees.
Front Door: Student performance (scholastic and academic)
Back Door: Family donations
Side Door: What this article is about. Part of the ruse was faking athletic credentials to get into a more likely of admissions candidates (athletes have an advantage, apparently).
So in this case, they lied.
My local college was a blessing to me. It provided me an education, a safe atmosphere, and most of all, confidence. It changed me for the better. I'd like to donate to the college if I were in the position to do so, and because I had such a great experience, I'd encourage my child (don't have one, yet) to go.
It this wrong of me?
how do you guard against it? Do you ban kids from
enrolling in or applying to colleges in which
their parent's (or close relative) has donated to?
Obviously, people's opinion on that will depend on their opinion on things like admissions essays and extracurricular activities; anything like "I learned a good work ethic helping my father with his senate campaign" will have to go.
Blind grading after admission would be sensible too, for the same reasons. Although perhaps difficult in subjects where individual students' work was identifiable even without their name.
But, generally, your point is correct. In this case, there was an explicit pay-off/bribe/fraud committed. In the case of the super-wealthy, there's a large donation and a wink-wink/handshake.
This is very different from buying entrance to a university. Universities are allowed to admit on any criteria that they want (with a few exceptions). They are private organizations.
When you "donate" $1.2m to a "consultancy" you're just committing fraud. Nobody benefits except your kid and the "consultancy." It's much easier to prove that this transaction is fraudulent.
So in this case the government is going after fraudsters because the government isn't getting paid, and neither is the school. I'd be willing to bet that the government would have continued looking the other way if a) the wealthy had paid taxes on their bribe or b) there was some indisputable asset one could point to and say "there's my donation!"
It's the opposite actually; if you're giving money to the development office then you're enabling more qualified students to attend the school.
That’s why college only costs 50k per year when it costs 150k to provide that service to you.
"Donating" to the owner to to exactly the same thing is considered good business.
Seeing this makes my blood boil. Not only is it essentially an open secret that the admissions process actively discriminates against Asians and other high-achieving ethnic groups--and gives a massive leg up to legacies, children of donors, etc.--these people thought they were good enough, by virtue of their wealth, to bribe and cheat their way into these top universities (and some of them, honestly, shouldn't even need cheating to get into!)
I've worked my tail off for the past four years (if not more) to weasel my way past the racially biased admissions office, and now I see this--brazen corruption from the elite whose egos ride on their trust-fund children's college acceptances.
After my personal experience and now this, I've come to a conclusion: the college admissions process in the US is fundamentally broken. This case isn't just an aberration--it's a pattern.
I shudder to imagine just what my children will have to go through.
</rant>
I shudder to imagine just what my children will have to go through.
Things have been known to improve as well to decline. Don't let your anger make you pessimistic, experience will supply you with plenty of occasions for that later.
Now if you linked to something like https://sub.media/ or https://itsgoingdown.org/ I'd understand...
US Attorney re the Huffman/Loughlin (among others) college scam: "We're not talking about donating a building...we're talking about fraud."
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1105493852578697217
Says quite a lot, doesn’t it.
A) a private university can set any criteria they want for admissions.
B) a private, federally accredited, university can set different criteria of admission for different people
C) If a parent donates large amount of money directly to the school, and their children get accept with lower criteria -- it is perfectly ok.
---
Are there conditions, that would not make this line of thinking not ok ?
Is donating 'sexual favors' ok ?
Should the same principles be applied for job promotions in private corporations ?
Is it ok to do similar differential treatment, for different students, for their grades throughout the study, and not just initial admission?
What does it mean to be an 'accredited university'? Does accreditation implies any form of fairness? Is that legally enforceable ?
Will the deans of those universities be responsible for lax rules, eg.. looking the other way?
… aren't those kinds of behaviors, that are then breading the 'financial services execs that 'look the other way' and caused financial crisis of '08?
So when Harvard professor whose salary comes from grants lectures a donor's child, who didn't get the grades to be there in the first place, it raises a question, if the arrangement makes sense.
> Is donating 'sexual favors' ok ?
Prostitution is currently illegal and I'm sure this against the most colleges code of conducts. I really can't imagine a possible future where this becomes a problem. "Come to HigherEdUniv, we accept an SAT score of 1400 or 1200 and a blow job".
> Should the same principles be applied for job promotions in private corporations ?
Sexual favors? No this is currently illegal and falls under sexual harassment / prostitution.
Giving a lot of money to a corporation for a promotion. This seems like pretty straightforward yes, companies exchange money for control all the time. YCombinator is founded on it.
Giving a lot of money to a boss without the agreement of the company for a promotion. This is shady but I've never seen or heard of this happen in the U.S. Normal corporate governance seems to take care of this issue.
> Is it ok to do similar differential treatment, for different students, for their grades throughout the study, and not just initial admission?
From a legal standpoint sure this seems ok. How long would a university exist if they did this, not very long.
> … aren't those kinds of behaviors, that are then breading the 'financial services execs that 'look the other way' and caused financial crisis of '08? Completely different problem and set of behaviors. These types of scams involve only a handful of people and have very little impact on society. Financial crises happen pretty often and affect everyone in the U.S.
It becomes a government and criminal matter when those same private institutions benefit from government regulations, such as loan guarantees, that are not available to other private institutions.
I wonder why they are only mentioning the “wealthy parents” in this article over the corrupt administrators that enabled them?
* Entrance exams in the US are created by one of several private entities (College Board, International Baccalaureate, ACT) and administered by the local secondary schools.
True. Usually the norm is that wealthy people are exempt from prosecution. I am sure whoever pursued this will get a lot of angry calls from powerful people.
Well, it's not like there's truth in advertising:
"We partner with your son or daughter to identify their strengths, unlock their potential, choose the right college, position themselves for admission, and outline a course of study and extracurricular experiences to lead to a life of success." -- http://www.thekeyworldwide.com/
Their legal bills could easily surpass the amount of money exchanged to get their kids into these schools.
Probably not. They can afford lawyers to defend them and negotiate plea deals and settlements.
*while also believing that, given the opportunity, I would choose to play it fair.
In practice, most of the defendants would be likely to get under 5 years assuming this is their first offense, don’t commit further crimes, etc.
If you could get into USC with a ~1000 SAT score like Huffman's daughter, would you even want to go? I wouldn't. It is shortchanging the achievement, and really missing the point of what admission to such a university represents.
The reality is that the college you attend, especially for undergrad, has relatively little bearing on your life as a whole. If you're in the GPA/SAT range to get into Stanford, but end up attending UC Irvine instead, you'll be just fine. You might even graduate with less debt and at the top of your class. On the other hand, if your parents bail you out and buy your way into Stanford when you're not qualified, it sets you up for a life of disappointment. You'll likely struggle to keep up with classmates, and won't know what it feels like to achieve on your own. It teaches reliance on mommy and daddy rather than reliance on yourself, which is not a sustainable approach to life when you get into the real world.
In most cases yes. But when we're talking about elite colleges, it has significant bearing. Living in the dorm with a future CEO may be helpful in your future job search, and if you go to an elite college, you have a much better chance of having done that.
Going to Stanford or Berkeley or MIT or UW and doing CS there will mean that when you graduate, a whole lot of hiring managers will see that you attended the same college they did and give you an automatic boost.
And if you go to USC film school, you're pretty much guaranteed to know someone who will one day be very successful in the film industry and will help you get jobs or connections to have your own projects produced. Heck, the school does that for you.
So yeah, in most cases it doesn't matter, but in some very specific cases it does.
I went to Stanford. I love my undergrad. But I also have faced plenty of rejection and adversity on the way and since graduating. What matters is how you respond to that rejection, which is what the struggle to earn admission reflects. Having your parents bail you out means you will never learn those lessons.
I think a lot of people (arguably the majority of people) view a degree as a piece of paper you need for a job. What you learn doesn't matter as much as having a high GPA from the right school and getting a job.
I think if you polled parents, it'd be a split of those willing to do fake scores, bribe officials, whatever it takes to give their kid a leg up.
An officially sanctioned form of this is retaking standardized tests and super-scoring. For those who can afford it, you can retake the test as many times as it takes to get the score you "deserve." If you can't get the right score in one sitting, you can cherry pick the best scores from the 4 or 5 times you took the test.
It defeats the whole purpose of a standardized test. It no longer a random sample of an estimate of a student's knowledge/ability. It's how well did you prepare. How much did you spend on tutors. How many times can you afford to take it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that SAT scores are all bullshit, especially for top schools.
The issue you raise with standardized testing could be addressed by subsidizing the cost for low income students or making the test free. The wealthy girl in the article apparently couldn’t get a good enough score regardless of how many times she could take the test. Personally I think we need some form of standardized testing because it’s the only standardized measurement tool that exists.
Maybe they don't think they're cheating. Maybe they've just grown up thinking they deserve whatever they can buy.
Many people are happy to take advantage of these unfair "bumps" that happen to be in their favor. Simply look at elite school admission rates by race and LSAT/GMAT/SAT/ACT scores [1]...you'll notice that it is a lot easier to get in if you're Black or Latino compared to Asian or White...Maybe they feel like they don't deserve it, maybe they do, who really knows?
> ...which is not a sustainable approach to life when you get into the real world.
The real world if full of unfair advantages metered out by race/gender/alma matter/cultural background/etc...Some people are fine taking advantage of it and some aren't...In the Navy they have something informally called the "Filipino Mafia" which basically means that there is an overrepresentation of Filipinos that kind of control things and give out good deals to fellow Filipinos...as a Filipino I sure as hell took advantage of this...I got the good assignments and the poor White kid with no racial support system in the Navy got stuck swabbing the deck...that is just how it goes...There are "good old boys" clubs, there are "diversity hires", as well as many other kinds of unfair, unjust, and undeserved rewards. That is the real world, racial groups sticking together, genders sticking together, rich people sticking together, etc...
[1] https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sa...
So if you have Private universities, those with means will find ways to game the system. And they will gain opportunity inequality over those that do not have the means.
Stated differently, having unequal education institutions means that those that are richer will always be at an advantage to getting in the better institutions and long term contribute to opportunity inequality.
"Authorities charged more than people, like actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, March 12 with being part of a long-running college admittance scam. (Allie Caren, Justin Scuiletti/The Washington Post)"
It seems to be saying that actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are more than people.
One of the HN comments quotes "The Justice Department on Tuesday charged more than 30 wealthy people — including two television stars". The article currently begins with "The Justice Department on Tuesday charged 50 people — including two television stars". I suppose it must have been edited—and, based on the caption I see, there must be less scrutiny that goes into edits than into the original.
Most programmers think we are in a meritocratic society and we all got to our positions based solely on raw ability, including me. Probably we are full of it. :-) I'm from a small town in the south, but my dad worked as an engineer at IBM. No doubt I was helped because I was around engineers, we talked about the world, and I knew I could probably make it there too. And he had money to help me in college.
1) financial compensation (ranging from bribes as described in the article all the way to large donations)
2) affirmative action
both of those approaches result in the admissions process deviating from being 100% meritocratic, and yet both of those approaches can be argued to help the educational institution and society overall (better facilities, more research, adding different perspectives, helping a disadvantaged group etc). I thought about this topic and this comparison in particular on my own over the weekend, so the coincidence of this being posted so soon feels a bit uncanny to me.
I went to school with a girl who’s mother pretended to be a guidance counselor and obtained a copy of the SAT test prior to the daughter taking the exam.
The daughter was accepted to Harvard, and the mother charged and convicted, but the daughter has a Harvard degree now.
Perhaps the tennis admission - there's no way she could not have known.
As a side note - somehow this topic and the wrong it represents to me makes me want to cry for mob justice.
It's why I roll my eyes so hard when investors say that attending a top school is a "signal" that makes you a better bet to invest in as a founder. That signal is pretty damn weak if those top schools so rampantly accept bribes.
Wow, not so fast. I'm a Stanford grad and I donate a bit of money every year when they ask. Should my future kids be excluded from admissions? There's a world of difference between donating and donating to get your kids admitted.
These elite schools all have massive endowments, on top of the ridiculously inflated tuition they charge, so give me a break if you're trying to tell me they need these donations.
Otherwise, the idea of an elite school on your resume "signaling" something about you is meaningless. These schools are supposed to be bastions of knowledge and research, not expensive country clubs for rich kids to network with each other.
But then neither is legacy preference of alumni's children. Or giving special treatment to large donors. Or a slew of other preferential admission policies.
How does one even start to fix this? It's structural and natural. The longer you live, the more you realize life isn't ideal. Meritocracy and fairness are wonderful ideals but ultimately impractical and unrealistic. Or maybe we just haven't evolved to that stage in human development?
I recently watched Forrest Gump and this story reminded me of Gump's mother trading sexual favors for school admission for her son. Was that ethical or even legal? I imagine we could argue about it forever and never come to a satisfactory conclusion.
For context: Yale's endowment is ~$40B and USC's is $5.5B.
For example California's public school system is one of the worst schools in the nation; even top schools like Palo Alto are pretty appalling compared to what I got on the east coast. And Palo Alto's schools get all sorts of "private" donations from PA residents, not shared with other schools. But almost all the high school and middle school students also receive private tutoring after school to make up for the crummy public education.
The coach is not a government employee, so aren't you legally permitted to bribe them?
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/investigations-college-admis...
Weird that they have so many of them on "mail fraud." That part confuses me more than it enlightens me.
Probably the best way for an experienced engineer to get in at this point.
I’m skeptical of the FBI’s investigative priorities. Wall Street is suddenly squeaky-clean? No more insider trading? Ponzi schemes have all gone away? Municipal governments across the land are staffed by honest and dedicated civil servants? All defense contractors are scrupulously precise about their billing and would never ever bribe a DOD procurement official?
I’m not saying it’s right to engage in cheating on the SAT or bribing someone to get into a university. But inarguably there are many more crimes that are far more serious.
This is a false dichotomy.
If all they did was go after the most heinous crimes, it would be immediately obvious that you can 'get away with' everything else.