But the scandal involves kids who did not have an explainable role on the team. Nor, it seems, the academic stats. We don’t know more yet about their hs records, otherwise.
Since this movie is one of my favorites of all time, Rudy was a walk-on, had played football in HS, earned his spot on the scout team and eventually got in the GT game for 3 plays because of sheer desire.
Lauren Isackson NEVER played competitive soccer in HS, so her resume was not only light, but it was also a FRAUD. Isackson was NEVER the manager, NEVER practiced and NEVER played in a game at UCLA. Isackson was on the roster in name only for some odd reason.
UCLA recruited Pugh because she was the #1 player in America. There was always a chance she would turn professional and she did. It’s rare, but it happens. Not sure how her roster spot equates to Isackson’s other than neither one showed up on the UCLA soccer field.
Pugh was not a fraud. Isackson was a fraud.
BTW, the year that Isackson was “on the team,” UCLA lost to Stanford 2-3 in the national championship game.
UC statement says no donor admissions or considerations:
Pugh was not a fraud, but she didn’t help the team. They took a chance and lost. Happens every day in basketball with the ‘one and done’ guys but she didn’t even make it the one… I know players who did the same thing, committed to play but dropped out before the first practice. It is common. I don’t think one or two of these players dropping crew or tennis before ever playing would be a red flag. I’d be surprised if admissions even paid attention to what happens to athletes after admitted. They’d notice if they dropped out of the school because of retention numbers, but not if they weren’t having a good season or even if their names appeared on the roster.
Kinesiology has a become a popular choice for aspiring med school applicants. If they can’t get into med school (which has become near impossible and even if you win the admissions lottery then there’s a good chance you won’t be able to find a residency spot) they have a fall back and can become physio or athletic therapists.
I was surprised when DS19 started his university search to find how “practical” many students were being with regards to pursuing post-secondary education. When I attended university 30 some odd years ago it was understood to be for the purposes of getting an education. It signalled to employers that you were trainable and they were willing to hire you on that basis. You started at the bottom and you worked your way up. Today employers have gotten lazy and expect new hires to be able to hit the ground running. They don’t want to invest in training. They’d rather poach a competitor’s employee who’s already been trained by requiring 2-5 years relevant experience. They expect universities and colleges to produce not just employees who can be trained but employees that are fully trained for their specific needs. As a result they keep complaining about a “skills shortage”. It also doesn’t help that there is a recurring narrative in the mainstream media about the difficulties some students are having with underemployment. Millennials in particular are having a tough time with precarious employment (the gig economy) and finding affordable housing in the major centres. The up and coming Gen Z have internalized all this and are taking a more pragmatic approach with some taking it to the extreme. There is definitely a subset who feel that if you aren’t doing a practical degree in university that you are wasting your time and money and that more students should go to vocational college or learn a trade (but not them personally because they are going to do Engineering/Computer Science/Commerce and will get a job when they graduate earning 6 figures whereas all the liberal arts grads will be living in their parents’ basements and working at Starbucks as a barista). They often refer to traditional liberal arts degrees as “toilet paper” degrees. There’s definitely a level of snobbery and contempt towards education for the sake of education. Added to that however is an elitist view towards specific universities which is amusing because the majority of our institutions are public and most Canadian employers don’t rank students based on what school they attended (unless you are talking about the handful of truly elite programs like Waterloo or U of T Engineering/Comp Sci or Western, Queen’s, U of T, or York Commerce). Even then those programs still have many students who find 6 months after graduation that they are still unemployed because they don’t understand that it’s not so much the program or school that matters but the individual.
This is a typical viewpoint from a Canadian student forum
As for gaming the system, there are a number of private for profit “credit mills” offering on-line high school credits at which you can virtually pay for a high mark in a specific course. Often prospective STEM students wanting to get into the elite programs will try to boost their marks by going this route, especially for grade 12 English. There are periodically crackdowns on these businesses but they still exist. Other students try to boost marks by taking a tough course in summer school. Other students will do a victory lap (return for a 5th year of high school) to try and boost marks. Some universities have responded to this by penalizing or outright disallowing courses taken outside of regular school or repeat courses unless you have a compelling reason for doing so. There are also a proliferation of businesses promising to sell authentic English proficiency exam results for international students. On top of all that there is the rat race that is private tutoring. Private admissions consultants have become a thing as well recently, not just for university admissions but to get into the top private schools also. It’s all a symptom of how competitive the top programs have gotten to get into which is in large part due to economic uncertainty. Most of the top high demand programs have gone to holistic admissions as a result. Of the 6 programs that DS19 applied to 3 had supplemental applications (2 were mandatory and the other one was "highly recommended). His friends have similarly had multiple required supplemental applications. UBC in particular has gone to holistic admissions right across the board for admissions. Holistic admissions in any form lends itself to a greater chance of gaming and I’m sure there is more going on than I’m not aware of. There is some athletic recruiting but nowhere near the extent that it exists in the U.S. The reality is that if a Canadian family were going to cheat to get their kids into university it would probably be to attend a U.S. school like Sidoo did. Canadian universities, not even the top ones, simply don’t have the same cache as the Ivy League and other top U.S. schools.
Similar trends have been happening in the US with respect to the bachelor’s degree labor market, although there are some “generic bachelor’s degree” jobs that require a bachelor’s degree due to credential creep (even though they do not require the general or any major-related skills that a bachelor’s degree is supposed to indicate).
In a few industries/employers, school-prestige matters more than major, but those industries/employers and the universities prestigious enough (in their eyes) for that to be relevant make up only a very small percentage of all employees and students (although those industries/employers do pay well for those jobs).
New article detailing Donna Heinel’s reputation at USC before the indictments – she was known for being a by-the-rules person and in retrospect, some of her pushback on certain real athletes seems suspect to coaches trying to get their recruits admitted:
" Did ‘Rudy’ not deserve to be on the Notre Dame roster?
Since this movie is one of my favorites of all time, Rudy was a walk-on, had played football in HS, earned his spot on the scout team and eventually got in the GT game for 3 plays because of sheer desire.
Lauren Isackson NEVER played competitive soccer in HS, so her resume was not only light, but it was also a FRAUD. Isackson was NEVER the manager, NEVER practiced and NEVER played in a game at UCLA. Isackson was on the roster in name only for some odd reason.
UCLA recruited Pugh because she was the #1 player in America. There was always a chance she would turn professional and she did. It’s rare, but it happens. Not sure how her roster spot equates to Isackson’s other than neither one showed up on the UCLA soccer field.
Pugh was not a fraud. Isackson was a fraud. "
@sushiritto …agree with the above. Some parts of “Rudy” are a bit cheezy, but always watch it when it comes on…the end always brings a tear to my eye. Movies where one overcomes adversity and hardship are always some of my favorites to see!
I don’t know of anyone like that, but I’ve heard some students use their athletic skills to get into a great school and then quit. The differences here are that Isackson had no soccer skills, faked a soccer resume, never played a lick of soccer and her parents were indicted for giving $250,000 to Singer’s “charity” in order to get her into UCLA as a non-scholarship “recruited athlete.”
And the only UCLA employee indicted thus far is the men’s soccer coach?
Since we’re talking ND football, about 25 years ago they had a recruit named JW Jordan who was well below the normal type of player ND would normally recruit. His father happened to be on the Board of Trustees with a building in his name. So this sort of thing happens even in big name college football where it is virtually impossible to not detect this.
The funny thing about this was that the guy turned out to be a pretty valuable reserve on the FB team in his final year.
From the NY Times article on Heinel:
So it looks like the donations/bribes were not funnelled through development. Is it possible that Heinel managed the team accounts alone? All the development people I know are keenly curious about their donors. They would definitely notice these large donations from parents of applicants and deduce the motive. It’s hard to believe there was no complicity sideways and also higher up.
The director of admissions is reassuring the college counselors that a student is really an athlete? And the parents made a donation? And the student never played on the team? And the admissions director didn’t investigate further?
The key point in the article is that she had unfettered power and no oversight. Always a bad thing.
I have no inside info about any of the involved schools. But I did spend five years as a university administrator (I was associate director of the career center at Northwestern Law). I had frequent contact with my colleagues in admissions, student affairs, diversity services, etc. on important matters. It would never, ever have crossed my mind to double-check what my colleagues in other departments told me. It literally never occurred to me to think, “Hm, maybe Jim in admissions is taking bribes, and that’s why he’s telling me X.”
Maybe I was too trusting; maybe university staff across the board have been too trusting and need to change. But it’s totally plausible to me that university staff would take their colleagues at their word in good faith. That’s how I saw it work.
I found this article fascinating on who knew and who supposedly didn’t of the kids. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/college-admissions-scandal-what-every-kid-knew.html?That was interesting. I have to admit that I do feel for some of the kids. The process is overwhelming for many, and I’m guessing based on some of the comments that these kids may not have been hanging out with a lot of kids who were obsessing about the process. The more that I read about the Laughlin kid, the more I kind of feel sorry for her. “I don’t want to go. My career is going extremely well, and I’ve never liked school. Ok, so I got in to the local status/party school? Fine, more opportunities to schmooze for work. Wait, you paid to get me in, and now all my sponsors are dropping me???” Geez… And, if she had applied on her own merits to USC, she would probably have gotten in on “diversity”. 1.5 million followers, and she was on a boat with her best friend and his dad one of the trustees? She’s got to have something going on… utmsource=tw&utmmedium=s1&utm_campaign=nym
No, the number of YouTube followers isn’t a tip.
Dont know if this was linked (i see ref to other recent NYT articles written by others.) Plotinus, it gives an idea if other scandals at USC and the supposed efforts of the U to stem them.
Of course, as always, caveat emptor re the media.
https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/usc-college-cheating-scandal-bribes.amp.html?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F03%2F14%2Fus%2Fusc-college-cheating-scandal-bribes.html
I doubt the parents or coaches involved imagined they would face federal racketeering charges. They knew they were doing something shady, but bribery and kickbacks go on in business all the time, and it is rare for anyone to be prosecuted for it.
@Hanna It’s called collegiality - the nature of most work relationships on college campuses, and much more apparent in education than in business relationships in industry or other areas. There is the sense that people are there not for the money, but because they value education. Most people are like minded and it’s a very trusting environment.
The coaches involved not only violated that trust, but they took advantage of the lack of oversight.
Maybe the universities I know are unusual, but there wasn’t that much trust around money or admissions. In particular, it would have been impossible for any one person to receive and give out money without other people knowing what was going down.
I haven’t heard anything about how Georgetown is going to do with the students admitted fraudulently by the tennis coach. Evidently Georgetown was trying to cover this up. Does that mean it intended to let the students stay? Now that the whole fraud has been revealed, what is it going to do with these students? I am very disappointed in Georgetown.