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Replies to: Feds uncover admissions test cheating plot
The College Board plans to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT to try to capture their social and economic background, jumping into the debate raging over race and class in college admissions.
Read in The Wall Street Journal: https://apple.news/AQl-gC3C2Tgy5GMfJWI_nxQ
I guess this will solve the problem. Not.
Yale does have this lax fund. We don't know much more about it. Nor that donations led to abuses.
More likely, the endowment just frees up cash that can be used to support other athletic programs. That's the model -- hoops and football generate a surplus, then the surplus is spent on money consuming teams.
Almost no college athletic programs are rich enough to send any dollars to the academic side. ND and Bama and (maybe) Texas do this, but that's about it. Much much much more common is the athletic program (even after accounting for football and hoops revenue) that takes money from the academic side.
For example, UVA just raised a $10 million dollar endowment for its mens basketball program. As the current national champion and a top program in the ACC power conference, UVA hoops makes a lot of dough. But about 15% of the UVA athletics budget comes from mandatory student fees (aka tuition). Those fees mostly fund other teams at UVA. UVA lacrosse, baseball, soccer, tennis, rowing have all won national championships recently, but those teams consume cash. The extra funding provided to hoops frees up dollars that can be used for the rowing team. Or to take less subsidy from the academic side.
Which is all fine with me. The UVA English department also consumes cash. UVA has decided it likes to have (and is willing to support financially) a strong lacrosse team and also a strong English department.
With a corrupt coach, or AD in the system, it would be easy to bypass Admissions scrutiny.
You apply to the college. It's the coach's attention that diverts your app (or changes the process.) If the coach doesn't come through for you, you are still in the app pool. An adcom can't ust insert a kid on the coach's recruit list, not at will. If an adcom thinks a kid has a unsual talent and notices the kid isn't on the coach's list (or is sort of a wait and see from the coach,) the adcoms might contact the coach. The rest of whether an adcom could corrupty influence a coach is speculation. And not the focus of VB,
At Stanford, I know an elite discus thrower. This girl was given a spot in the masters program so she could have a fifth year, as I think she was not throwing her discus one year. She went to international competitions for most of the school year, and she was close to Olympic level and went pro. For her, Stanford was only about coaching and athletics, but she earned a bachelors and masters degree in some design field too, somehow, although she rarely hung out at Stanford, she was always on the road.
Division 1 sports is a business at all big state schools, and I assumed at Harvard but I don't know that much about Division 1, so if you clarify it would be helpful. Thanks.
In some schools, recruited athletes go through the normal admission process (where normal admission readers presumably treat the sport as another EC). For those not admitted normally, coaches need to then lobby for their recuits within a limited number of special athlete admissions spots. Obviously, it benefits a coach if a recruit gets admitted normally in order to reduce consumption of the limited number of special athlete admissions spots.
There are also some schools where the normal admission standards approximate the NCAA minimum academic standards (or may be even lower), so that there is no special lower admission standards for recruited athletes.
In a lot of schools , if not most, it’s not like those working there don’t know each other. They may be friends, dating, related, married. These are people in a university community so they do interact with each other. Some are alums themselves, they send their kids to that school. So a nod or word to Admissions can make a difference. It’s not going to get someone way out range accepted, but it can make a difference.
The system relies a lot on trust. We do depend upon the integrity of everyone. That each person taking the SAT is the person supposed to be taking it. That the proctors are doing their jobs. That people are not taking bribes. That students are not being passed off as who they are not. That the recs are written by the GC and teachers. That the kids are actually filling out the apps and writing the essays. That they are doing the ECs as listed.
Sadly, these developments have shown that not only are these assumptions not always true; but those who already have all the advantages in the world are the cheaters here.
There are folks jailed for using a relatives i address to get their kid in a better school district sometimes for important reasons, like safety. People who have little leeway in getting anything good. I have no sympathy for those involved in the college cheating incidents. I hope they all get jail time, fined heavily, with money going to those who are truly disadvantaged in the college shuffle and their kids expelled with no credit or refund, innocent or not. Yes, family and kids get hurt when family member commits a crime. Talk to those families taking the jail bus to visit a loved one incarcerated. With the kids in tow. Innocents hurt terribly because someone in their lives committed a crime.
Probably a poor example, as all athletic admits have to go thru admissions. Sure, a football (or sailing?) coach can lobby for some, but Admissions still makes the call. (And this is to the detriment of the football team's recuiting.)
For years, Stanford has offered a 5th year MA/MS to many undergrads -- not all departments offer it -- so that itself does not require an official grad application, just a form to be completed and approved by the Dept. Chair.
A star running back at Alabama likely only has to meet the NCAA minimum requirements for eligibility. A star hockey or lacrosse player at Harvard probably needs to show a 25 or 26 ACT. Given that the coach knows what the requirements are, the actual admissions process is perfunctory unless the kid is borderline on the requirements. So the details on how the application is processed doesn't make any substantive difference.
But (until now) the admissions folks would not be responsible for auditing the kid's playing ability. It is up to the coach to decide what players he wants on the roster and how to use his allocation of tips.
Which is what creates the opportunity for these frauds/bribes.
I know this because daughter submitted her own application. She ended up with two student numbers, the wrong merit scholarship (based on those old ACT scores and not higher scores) and basically a big mess.
Wisconsin hired a new football coach a few years ago. He didn't last long because he wanted a lot of junior college recruits who didn't have the academics for Wisconsin. Those athletes met NCAA requirements, just not Wisconsin requirements.
Here is an example of how a football team (Michigan) pays for itself, the other teams (basketball, hockey and lacrosse also brought in money), and other costs, including providing all the athletic scholarships. These are 2013 numbers and many costs (Harbaugh's salary) are twice that now Some of it is an accounting game as the team had no costs for medical, and yet I'm sure they provided medical care to the athletes; the cost for the trainers might just be rolled into 'staff' salaries.
The women's teams make no money, and in fact the sports with the greatest number of scholarships (gymnastics, rowing, volleyball) have the greatest losses since the athletic dept covers those scholarships.