College Admissions Cheating Racket

[Dill]

Affirmative Action for the wealthy took a hit today.

Wealthy parents, actresses, coaches, among those charged in massive college cheating admission scandal, federal prosecutors say
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/12/us/college-admission-cheating-scheme/index.html

(CNN)In what is being called the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted, wealthy parents, Hollywood actresses, coaches and college prep executives have been accused of carrying out a nationwide fraud to get students into prestigious universities, according to a federal indictment.
The scheme had two major pieces. In the first part, parents allegedly paid a college prep organization to take the test on behalf of students or to correct their answers. Second, the organization allegedly bribed college coaches to help admit the students into college as recruited athletes, regardless of their abilities, prosecutors said.
Federal court documents also allege that some defendants created fake athletic profiles for students to make them appear to be successful athletes.

Live Updates: Ringleader pleads guilty in $25 million nationwide college admissions cheating scam
https://abcnews.go.com/US/hollywood-actors-ceos-charged-nationwide-college-admissions-cheating/story?id=61627873

Those indicted in the investigation, dubbed "Operation Varsity Blues," allegedly paid bribes of up to $6.5 million to get their children into elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California, federal prosecutors said.

"This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud," Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said at a news conference.
"There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy and, I'll add, there will not be a separate criminal justice system either," Lelling said.

Apparently some of these children of the wealthy were, with the help of coaches, able to pass themselves off as athletes too.

This brings Kushner's acceptance into Harvard back into the limelight.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/12/college-admissions-scam-kushner-harvard-acceptance-under-scrutiny/3147027002/

But will all this distract us from Harvard's "personal rating," supposed to deny worthy Asian students from coveted admission in favor of Black and Hispanic students?
https://admissionscase.harvard.edu/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/us/harvard-affirmative-action-asian-americans.html

[Dill]

Some hints here as to what is really at stake in college admissions to elite universities.


College admissions: The real scandal is what's perfectly legal: ANALYSIS
https://abcnews.go.com/US/college-admissions-real-scandal-perfectly-legal-analysis/story?id=61638365

It’s tragic. It’s infuriating. And it’s the logical result of the insanity of our sham "meritocracy."

Today, hearing about this federal investigation, many Americans might just shrug and say to themselves that the game of college admissions has for decades been a racket -- a criminal complaint only confirms the fact under law.

They also sense that this racket has become one of the main drivers of inequality in the United States in recent decades.

Privileged families have long been engaged in a "meritocratic" arms race to get their kids into these "elite" institutions. There’s the $50,000 to $60,000 private schools with their minimalist student-teacher ratios, the violin lessons, the tennis instructors and travel soccer teams, the resume-building work-study summers abroad, the internships with famous corporations and NGOs, and, yes, all the tutoring to make those gleaming grades and ace those college admissions tests—all of it—it’s a profound corruption of the meaning and purpose of “education,” far more corrosive to our society than anything in today’s indictments.

Because it’s perfectly legal.

And I'd argue it represents a gigantic theft of wealth and opportunity happening every day in plain sight.

But you can’t really blame the parents. Parents aren’t stupid. They are responding rationally on behalf of their children to the viciously skewed incentives of the American economy.

In 1968, as Steven Brill recounts in his book "Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall-and Those Fighting to Reverse It," a freshly minted graduate from a “top-tier” law school received a starting salary about 25 percent higher than the annual income of the average American family. Today, Brill notes these young lawyers earn a salary more than 230 percent higher than the average American. Among business and finance grads from “top” schools, the disparities can be even greater. The Harvard Business School graduating class of 1986 reported a median net worth of $6 million in 2012, at a time when the markets were still recovering from the financial crisis. The figure would be much higher today. The median net worth of the average American household is $97,300.

So, as many economists and others have pointed out, we can’t kid ourselves any more about what the admissions process for “elite” colleges has actually become in America: “a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across the generations,” as Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits declared.

“Although it was once the engine of American social mobility, meritocracy today blocks equality of opportunity,” Markovits said in an extraordinary commencement speech at Yale Law School in 2015. “The student bodies at elite colleges once again skew massively towards wealth.”

Markovits went on to estimate the cost of all those years of college prep, and concluded it was the economic equivalent of a traditional inheritance of $5-$10 million.

“In general, children from poor or even middle-class households cannot possibly compete—when they apply to places like Yale—with people who have imbibed this massive, sustained, planned, and practiced investment, from birth or even in the womb,” Markovits concluded. “American meritocracy has become precisely what it was invented to combat.”

That, ultimately, is a political problem. And you know who else isn’t stupid? American voters.

The upheavals in our politics in recent years—the populisms of right and left, the openness to all kinds of ideas and policy proposals previously considered radical, the rejection of the consensus economics of the last several decades—represent the democratic efforts of Americans to break the stranglehold of unwarranted privilege in our society and economy, and give new reality to the tarnished promise of equality. Seen in that light, these upheavals, these elections and campaigns and debates we cover—they’re so all-American they’re almost heroic. We live in extraordinary times.

Finally, spare a thought for all the high-school seniors (the ones whose parents aren’t rich and don’t pay bribes) who are today waiting on those April admissions letters. Waiting to learn their fate. Because that’s what it feels like in today’s America—fate. It feels like where you get into college is your fate. And that needs to change.

Terry Moran is a Senior National Correspondent for ABC News based in Washington, D.C.

[Benton]

Let me say I'm shocked... shocked... that a handful of wealthy people are paying other wealthy people to get their kids special treatment.

That aside, I really can't figure out: why?

Kushner didn't have to go to some smarty pants school. His dad made his money the old fashioned way: he inherited a company (real estate) and then lied and cheated his way to making millions. The younger Kushner could have just done the same. Why the need to bribe the prep school kid into an Ivy League school? Just putting on airs?

[Dill]

(03-13-2019, 01:19 AM)Benton Wrote: Let me say I'm shocked... shocked... that a handful of wealthy people are paying other wealthy people to get their kids special treatment.

That aside, I really can't figure out: why?

Kushner didn't have to go to some smarty pants school. His dad made his money the old fashioned way: he inherited a company (real estate) and then lied and cheated his way to making millions. The younger Kushner could have just done the same. Why the need to bribe the prep school kid into an Ivy League school? Just putting on airs?

As I understand it, part of the drive is related to status, both for the nouveau riche and the old money.  You are extremely wealthy, and of course so are your friends. They and their children went to Harvard, Chicago and Stanford.  Yours was accepted to Mississippi Valley State.  Why, with your hundreds of millions, would you let that stand?

Same pressure from the kids' side. The children of your parents' friends are talking about the connections they are making at Yale and Georgetown over dinner, while you hold back your stories about the party animals at U Cal Chico.  You are the only guy at the Yacht party going to a state school that isn't Michigan or Berkeley. Crazy Rich Americans.

So "airs" are pretty important. You show up at an event where all the men your age wear 100,000 dollar watches. Where did you go to school again?

But beyond the airs, you do have a chance to connect with the smartest people in the world--the people who are going to run it in the coming decades. That's more than airs. That's business and power. That's Kushner with the Middle East portfolio.

[*michaelsean*]

Aunt Becky? Say it ain’t so.

[SunsetBengal]

Do you mean to tell me that wealthy kids have advantages that I don't, and that their not subject to being scrutinized upon the same standards as I?

[Belsnickel]

The only thing shocking about this story to me is how many people seem to be surprised by this revelation. It's not like pop culture hasn't been poking fun at this paradigm for decades or anything. I do understand the why, but that doesn't make it any better. But hey, capitalism and all that. Supply, demand, if you can afford it than you can have it.

[CJD]

So, like...in all honesty...did people think rich people DIDN'T do something like this to get their kids into schools that they wouldn't normally qualify for?

I know this is supposed to be a shocking expose, but I find myself not really caring that much simply because this is just adding detail to something I was fairly certain was happening all across the country anyway.

Rich people solve problems with money. I didn't realize it would require hiring a person to fake athletics and all that stuff, granted. I figured it was mostly just "If we donate a million dollars to help your school build that new wing of the medical school, can my kid get in without meeting the qualifications?"

But even still, I'm surprised by how many people appear to be shocked by this story.

[*michaelsean*]

(03-13-2019, 08:23 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: The only thing shocking about this story to me is how many people seem to be surprised by this revelation. It's not like pop culture hasn't been poking fun at this paradigm for decades or anything. I do understand the why, but that doesn't make it any better. But hey, capitalism and all that. Supply, demand, if you can afford it than you can have it.

The second article Dill posted was capitalism.  I wouldn't call the first one, the one with bribery and fraud, capitalism. 

[Belsnickel]

(03-13-2019, 08:53 AM)michaelsean Wrote: The second article Dill posted was capitalism.  I wouldn't call the first one, the one with bribery and fraud, capitalism. 

Eh, it's the free market.

[*michaelsean*]

(03-13-2019, 08:54 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Eh, it's the free market.

I don't think even the free market allows you to sell something that isn't yours to sell or to commit fraud.  (Ninja noted)

[GMDino]

"Getting preference" and "bribery" plus flat out lying is slightly different in my book.  But I'm betting the big names will pay a fine and the rest will end up out of a job because they aren't big names.

[Benton]

(03-13-2019, 01:37 AM)Dill Wrote: As I understand it, part of the drive is related to status, both for the nouveau riche and the old money.  You are extremely wealthy, and of course so are your friends. They and their children went to Harvard, Chicago and Stanford.  Yours was accepted to Mississippi Valley State.  Why, with your hundreds of millions, would you let that stand?

Same pressure from the kids' side. The children of your parents' friends are talking about the connections they are making at Yale and Georgetown over dinner, while you hold back your stories about the party animals at U Cal Chico.  You are the only guy at the Yacht party going to a state school that isn't Michigan or Berkeley. Crazy Rich Americans.

So "airs" are pretty important. You show up at an event where all the men your age wear 100,000 dollar watches. Where did you go to school again?

But beyond the airs, you do have a chance to connect with the smartest people in the world--the people who are going to run it in the coming decades. That's more than airs. That's business and power. That's Kushner with the Middle East portfolio.

Robert Kraft may roll up to the strip mall in a chauffered Benz, but he gets tugged with the same Jergens as the construction worker in the next stall. If anything, I think the modern world is showing more and more that we're all pretty much the same. Some of us just let more handed to them.

[Bengalzona]

"Rich folk cheat to get their kids in better schools." - Pretty much a non-story, IMO. The only reason this is in the news is because they did not take the traditional and accepted route of just buying a new building for a school in exchange for admission. Instead, they went through the testing services. Next year, the testing services will probably have 100 times as many offers to do this now that people realize this could happen for their kids.

Ain't that America. Wealth privilege, which is acceptable because the goal in this country is to envy and try to achieve wealth. If you are not trying to attain that goal, then you are a communist, socialist, subversive terrorist. The continuing bifurcation of society into 'haves' and 'have nots' is appropriate, because our society tells us it is. So wave the dam flag and shut the hell up about it.

[Dill]

(03-13-2019, 09:42 AM)Benton Wrote: Robert Kraft may roll up to the strip mall in a chauffered Benz, but he gets tugged with the same Jergens as the construction worker in the next stall. If anything, I think the modern world is showing more and more that we're all pretty much the same. Some of us just let more handed to them.

That "more handed" makes quite a bit of difference, if it shuts off others' opportunities and funds class control of the nation's politics and wealth.

Equal access to a strip mall doesn't cancel the expanding privilege which accompanies our widening wealth gap.

[Dill]

(03-13-2019, 08:44 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: So, like...in all honesty...did people think rich people DIDN'T do something like this to get their kids into schools that they wouldn't normally qualify for?

I know this is supposed to be a shocking expose, but I find myself not really caring that much simply because this is just adding detail to something I was fairly certain was happening all across the country anyway.

Rich people solve problems with money. I didn't realize it would require hiring a person to fake athletics and all that stuff, granted. I figured it was mostly just "If we donate a million dollars to help your school build that new wing of the medical school, can my kid get in without meeting the qualifications?"

But even still, I'm surprised by how many people appear to be shocked by this story.

You are happy they got caught though, right?

I am happy they got caught, AND that mechanics of the process have been exposed, along with the issue of access.

Also, the point of my second posted article was to align this with some another access issue, namely Affirmative Action for minorities. People seem to care a lot about that if it is framed as displacing qualified white students. I am wondering if this will be similarly framed, and perhaps lead to more public discussion of access to higher ed, or be forgotten as a one off scandal.

Or, more interesting, could it even be framed as liberal elite privilege or some such? "Leftism" even?

[CJD]

(03-13-2019, 12:37 PM)Dill Wrote: You are happy they got caught though, right?

I am happy they got caught, AND that mechanics of the process have been exposed, along with the issue of access.

Also, the point of my second posted article was to align this with some another access issue, namely Affirmative Action for minorities.  People seem to care a lot about that if it is framed as displacing qualified white students. I am wondering if this will be similarly framed, and perhaps lead to more public discussion of access to higher ed, or be forgotten as a one off scandal.  

Or, more interesting, could it even be framed as liberal elite privilege or some such?  "Leftism" even?

Sure. I think the ability for rich people to abuse the system with their money is a thing that you can't ever really...change. But I'm glad this specific subset of people who were abusing the system with their money may face some sort of consequences.

Although I'd be surprised if many, if any, of them served any actual jail time, as that's not a thing rich people typically do, after all.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

I can't tell you how pleased this string of arrests makes me.  I consistently point out to people that Hollywood celebrities lecturing people about morality is like OJ being a domestic violence counselor.  As far as consequences go, I think they'll be far more serious than some of you seem to think.  If the information I've heard is accurate one of the issues was that the payments were made to a charitable foundation, hence they were tax deductible.  If that's the case then everyone is looking at tax fraud in addition to anything else connected to this scam.  If true then I hope some people are going to get custodial sentences. 

[Benton]

(03-13-2019, 12:33 PM)Dill Wrote: That "more handed" makes quite a bit of difference, if it shuts off others' opportunities and funds class control of the nation's politics and wealth.

Equal access to a strip mall doesn't cancel the expanding privilege which accompanies our widening wealth gap.

Agreed. If it does.

But, in fairness, it's not like most of the Ivy League schools weren't already shuttering the poor.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/yale-university

Using Yale as an example, the bottom 20% of income earners make up 2% of their population, while the top 20% of earners make up nearly 3-out-of-4 students. 

The rich have access to things the poor don't. That's not a huge problem. In terms of schools like Yale, it's not a big deal, as it really doesn't make you a better lawyer, doctor, whatever if you came from one of those schools. It just means you most likely had your future handed to you.

The problem is the greater access of wealth to governance, which is a different issue. A lot of the issues we have are because people are dumb enough to think rich people are better leaders just because they're rich. Which is why an income bracket with 5% of the people makes decisions that impact the other 95% of the people.

[Dill]

(03-13-2019, 01:39 PM)Benton Wrote: Agreed. If it does.

But, in fairness, it's not like most of the Ivy League schools weren't already shuttering the poor.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/yale-university

Using Yale as an example, the bottom 20% of income earners make up 2% of their population, while the top 20% of earners make up nearly 3-out-of-4 students. 

The rich have access to things the poor don't. That's not a huge problem. In terms of schools like Yale, it's not a big deal, as it really doesn't make you a better lawyer, doctor, whatever if you came from one of those schools. It just means you most likely had your future handed to you.

The problem is the greater access of wealth to governance, which is a different issue. A lot of the issues we have are because people are dumb enough to think rich people are better leaders just because they're rich. Which is why an income bracket with 5% of the people makes decisions that impact the other 95% of the people.

I agree with most of this. Though if I were hiring a lawyer though, especially for a law firm, I would expect a better product from Yale than most other schools in the lower three quartiles, if only because the get the cream to work with in the first place, and then expose them to first rate professors.

The articles, I think, connect wealth to governance via access to elite schools. That is not the only route, of course, the most direct being to simply pay lobbyists and contribute to campaigns.  When it comes to distributing ambassadorships--both sides do it.

All people don't buy the "rich=smart" equation. But certainly enough did in the last election to make it a serious problem. 
I wonder if there is any other country on earth where the rich are so admired by the not-so-rich.