Perhaps they should stop giving Cal Grants to students attending private universities altogether? That is state money going to high-tuition schools that could be meeting financial need for their students out of their own coffers than relying on taxpayer dollars.
Actually, most private universities in California are not money-laden like Stanford.
https://webutil.csac.ca.gov/calgrant_inst/calgrantinstsearch.aspx has lists of eligible and ineligible schools for Cal Grant use. Now, it is possible that many will want Cal Grant use at private schools cut back for other reasons, based on the school characteristics that are at the opposite end of the scale from well known ones like Stanford.
This scandal is certain revealing a lot more corruption in universities that goes beyond coaches – From the Yale Daily News:
"According to one of the former players, team members brought their concerns to the Department of Athletics as well as University President Peter Salovey. Salovey allegedly received an anonymous letter from a member of the team describing what Meredith asked his players to do. Yale’s Human Resources & Administration Department then conducted interviews with Meredith and a few members on the team, according to the same player. Both sources told the News that after conducting the investigation, the athletics administration, headed at the time by former Athletics Director Tom Beckett, took no action against Meredith despite numerous complaints from team members that one of the sources said spanned many years. Beckett retired from his position as director in 2018. He has since been replaced by the current Athletics Director Vicky Chun.
“I don’t know how it didn’t become more of an issue because to me it was a clear abuse of power,” one of the former players told the News.’ "
(responding to post #3421 by @ucbalumnus ) But I think the bottom line is why should taxpayer funds be used to subsidize students who choose to forego their public in-state options in favor of any sort of private education? This is a broad policy question – not something I have a strong personal opinion about – but I’d love to see a breakdown of where the money is going. Within the realm of “private”, there are 3 broad categories: non-sectarian, not-for-profit; religious-affiliated schools; and schools operated on a for-profit basis. Each would have somewhat different policy considerations.
Anyway, this is entirely off topic so I won’t post on this again – the rich parents who hired Singer wouldn’t qualify for Cal Grant anyway. (Cal Grant eligibility has income and asset ceilings that are fairly modest).
Just saying, observer12, that that tale is still in the Athletics arena. Not sure you can say it goes beyond coaches, if it’s about a coach and the AD.
But yes, too much swirling in athletics.
My reading is that the bill would prohibit any student from receiving Cal Grant money at an offending college. Not just children of alumni given preferences.
Florida not only allows students to use their Bright Futures at private colleges, it awards a Florida resident grant of 40% of the instate tuition rate at a public school to use at a private school. That’s currently about $3500.
The public schools would not have enough room for all the resident students. If students couldn’t use BF at the private schools, I think a lot more students would try to (or HAVE to) go to the public schools if the extra funding wasn’t there for private schools. They do benefit the states too.
I’ve long asked a similar question about Pell Grants…‘why should taxpayer funds be used to subsidize [Pell] students’ at Harvard, Stanford, et. al.? Clearly they have enough money to cover the grants of the lower income kids, if they really want them to matriculate.
The reason I found it interesting was that the article said that the Yale President was informed through an anonymous letter and after that “Yale’s Human Resources & Administration Department then conducted interviews with Meredith and a few members on the team, according to the same player.” That was the university itself getting involved. It’s possible that this article’s reporting is incorrect, but if not, it does appear that the administration knew of things that were improper (not illegal) and did not care to do anything except let the AD handle it. It wasn’t an illegal cover-up since it doesn’t appear anyone knew the tennis coach was taking bribes. But it does show that there was little oversight and no one seemed to care very much even when they learned of something improper.
Actually, is it technically illegal for a coach to take money to designate a kid as a recruit? If the money goes directly to him as a “gift” and the parent doesn’t take an illegal tax deduction, he is certainly a terrible employee who did something improper and should be fired, but did he commit a crime if the person isn’t getting an athletic scholarship but paying full tuition? Is it like a bouncer taking a bribe to let someone into an exclusive club?
Observer12, some aspect of that is against NCAA rules, I think.
And there are a lot of ethical expectations. Just as an adcom can’t.
Thing is, I believe too much authority has been given not just to coaches, but also athletics, as a whole. ANd as someone noted on a similar thread running now, when you subtract the vast number of athletes at some small colleges, it leaves little space for ordinary excellent kids.
Yes, in this case the university administration itself seemingly had been presented with information that this coach was doing improper things, and they didn’t do anything but let him continue to designate whoever he wanted as a recruit. If they had fired him for pressuring players to write his papers, he would not have had the chance to take bribes later. Can’t really blame just the Athletic Department there.
I will just weigh in on the perception (reality?) in my region that any method of special admissions is to be desired over the mainstream route. Thus, students who would otherwise play a different sport (or had) have now opted for squash, just because they “heard it was a hot ticket.” The problem is that now lots of other students are also joining the squash craze, for that specific purpose, and there are not an infinite number of spots for that.
Extending my reflection on the mood in my region (BEFORE the scandal broke), I’d say a very large percentage of parents local to me are extremely interested in back and side doors, including if their children are not athletes, and including if that involves some level of deviousness. It sickens me, actually. I give public/semi-public seminars on the admissions process (informational kind of stuff), and I’m to the point where I want to cancel the future ones. It’s positively nauseating how many parents want to lie, cheat, and steal (and tell their children to) to get into a perceived “good college,” including a well-ranked public. And these are not of the level of wealth or fame of Huffman, Loughlin. They’re professionals, but not with “money to throw around” for substantial bribes. I’m comfortable saying that if they did have such money, they would not hesitate to offer bribes. Everything they say would lead anyone to that conclusion.
I’ve always wondered why so many students get perfect SAT and ACT scores. Couldn’t they just make harder tests? Add some International Math Olympics problems to SAT and there won’t be so many perfect scores any more.
In Finland, a student can theoretically get 16 highest grades (Laudatur) in national high school matriculation exams. The all-time national record is “only” 12 Laudaturs. An typical result is 4-5 average Cum Laude grades. In practice, there is no such thing as a perfect score.
I’d say if one gets 7 Laudaturs, he/she is academically an Ivy/MIT caliber student. There were exactly 17 of these students with 7 Laudaturs last year in a country with 6 million people. These students were in the top 0.07 percent of all the graduates. 4 students got 8 Laudaturs. How many perfect SAT scores were there in CO or MA (that are of the same size) last year?
This Finnish system really differentiates applicants.
@finnmom There are good arguments for and against harder tests. But in this case, it would have made no difference since the test grades were fraudulent to begin with.
Imo it’s not so much whether or not people “can” get perfect scores as understanding how it fits in the curve of any particular country. You can set the grades wherever you want in theory, in practice it’s about the curve.
College Board and ACT compete with each other, so unless the colleges start demanding harder tests, there is no incentive for either company to do that. And it seems like standardized testing is going in the opposite direction, with more colleges going optional or near optional.
@PetraMC dont disagree. Now we will have a million threads on grade inflation and ap class prep advantages etc
Fair is rarely simple and simple is rarely fair.
I’ve posted on the concept of harder sat/act before…
Few years ago our high school counselor was discussing about a 20 year study concerning correlation of high school academic performance combined with SAT/ACT as having an extremely high predictor of how you will perform in college. The discussion then unfolded into a concern for having so many kids scoring super high SAT and ACT scores but still getting rejected from top notch schools.
Counselor then says that both the ACT and SAT had experimented and have long considered making exams much more difficult so that there would be more dispersion of test scores and far fewer kids obtaining the super high SAT/ACT test scores. College board thought that this would be a good idea and would help the elite schools to truly separate the most elite students so that it would make it easier for them to choose the right kids.
Apparently, there was a major push back from the top universities. The reason for not having an even better tool for selecting students was based on a concern that if you make the SAT tests harder…they were “concerned” that too asian kids will get the highest scores.
By having whole bunch of kids with hi SAT scores due to its current easiness, the pool of high scorers tend to be pretty diverse but if you make the test harder then asian of kids will dominate…ad com does not want to deal with that situation bc it does not give them a shield or cover for picking an inferior student. Instead, ad com prefers to say that we are all equally smart so let me choose kids with other variables.
Current form of SAT is like asking people on this board, WHAT IS 2+2? If we answer 4, we all have perfect 1600 sat scores so this would then justifiably allow the schools to weigh many other non academic variables and give them cover to say that the schools receive so many “academically” qualified kids that it had to consider non-academic tips.
Before 1995 there were very few perfect SAT scores. In the 1970s, 650 a section was 99th percentile and a typical Ivy-League score. The recentering of the curve in 1995 created the current situation of many perfect scores. This situation has been exacerbated by the elimination of harder question types such as the verbal analogies. This was a conscious decision by the College Board and the universities. The 2005-2015 SAT test was easier than the pre-2005 test, and the current redesigned 2016- test is easier than the 2005-2015. It looks to me to be a continuing trend to try to bring up the bottom and squash down the top. I greatly doubt this trend will be reversed unless universities call for a reversal.
@FinnMom My son had a perfect SAT score and he doesn’t know anybody else in his school who did this. It’s one of the best schools in CO with a number of very strong students. So I’d estimate no more than a dozen in the state, and likely fewer. However, I don’t think colleges really differentiate between a perfect score and one close to perfect.