Other alternative would be the cut spending by 20%. Stanford spends about $73k in student-related expenses per undergraduate, more than six times what nearby San Jose State spends.
There’s a new article in Vanity Fair about Bill McGlashan and his involvement with Varsity Blues: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/bonos-investment-partner-busted-in-the-college-admissions-scandal?verso=true
Looks like McGlashan is toast. He says he is innocent, but come on.
He gave $50,000 from his charitable fund as a bribe to Key Worldwide to get his son into USC. Even if he thought Key Worldwide was a legitimate charity, this is still illegal, because he is forbidden from using money in his charitable fund to obtain a personal benefit for himself or his family; that is self-dealing, which is illegal.
His son travelled from Marin County north of San Francisco, down to Hollywood, to take his ACT over two days and have the answers corrected by Singer’s associate, who will testify that he changed the answers. McGlashan claims his son got extra time legitimately. Maybe so, but he didn’t get “answers corrected by someone who knows the answers” legitimately.
McGlashan conspired with Singer to fake an athletic profile for his son as a football player. The feds wiretapped the phone call.
Yeah, the feds have the receipts here.
@privatebanker "It’s also assumed that these really smart parents breed nothing but imbeciles? "
Hey, I’m not the one saying that we have to identify them specially in order to make sure they are admitted. I’m the one saying that if they are as smart as Jared Kushner, they should be put in the same pile as everyone else and only be admitted if their application stands out for reasons other than their parents’ bank account and generosity to the university. I don’t understand why people are afraid they won’t be admitted on their own merits : )
Admitting athletes is an entirely different issue although there is one parallel. For example, if a student who was a better fencer and stronger academically was hoping for the recruit slot given to a weaker fencer whose dad gave the fencing team $500,000. Some people might say that the student who was the superior fencer/student should get that spot, but others say why shouldn’t the entire fencing team benefit by admitting a super rich kid who fences but who would never get the spot if his dad’s money didn’t greatly enrich the fencing team (and even the fencing coach personally).
It’s a tough question and many people believe the fencer with the rich dad should go into a separate pile and as long as he is a “qualified” fencer, the university’s mission is better served by admitting him over a better fencer/student who doesn’t have a very generous dad.
It all depends on what the university’s mission is, and if maximizing donations is an important part of the mission, you would definitely want “qualified” students to receive a big admissions boost if their generous parents will make it worth the university’s while. And if the bottom line is that you have absolutely no faith that these “qualified” students would get in if measured against all students in the regular pile, you’d want that donation to play a role in admissions.
@observer12 Great post.
@privatebanker there was a book in 2006 that just happened to cover Jared Kushner cause his dad was famous “The Price of Admission”. officials by name went on record saying he didn’t deserve to get in and they were shocked when he did. HOwever, if you read I’m totally down with $ for admissions. I just think they should maximize $ per seat to pay for more other kids to attend, and have an open bidding process.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard
Kushner’s dad was a famous criminal.
@anon propublica is considered to be a potentially biased source.
Ok if we say it’s not, the article quotes one unnamed source from his high school supposedly and they said nothing. No details and nothing other than conjecture.
This is ok to trash a person because you don’t like his father in law.
On top of this, he did get a honors degree from Harvard. Why does everyone want to go there? It’s obviously not that difficult for a dummy like him to graduate.
It’s spin. And it’s convenient. And it’s an easy target in some circles.
Is it ok that Sasha Obama got in? Why not use her as your example. Or David Hogg. We know his scores and gpa were well below average. He couldn’t get into UC schools before his press tours.
Why are these admits ok?
Btw they all are ok. The school can choose a class that works for them.
@“Cardinal Fang” What does that have to do with the question at hand. No one can choose their parents.
And some kids , if also good students, are good catches for lots of schools. It’s not all about the money. I’m guessing some admissions people are salivating over snagging “insert kid of famous celebrity, politician, business leader, etc.” Of course, money may come at some point as well but there is definitely cachet involved with some of these kids choosing to attend their school.
Do you mind sharing the names Golden quoted as haing an opinion on Jared? Because I’m not seeing them in the article and not going to buy the book.
Oh, and which of the hs commenters saw his app, reviewed it for colleges.
And realize Golden didn’t write as a public service.
There are probably lots of kids of famous and/or wealthy parents that have good outcomes for college. Also not getting why Jared keeps getting singled out (and believe me, I’m no fan of the family). Some kids probably do get a second look if their parent is wealthy or famous or connected. That’s not news.
@privatebanker I don’t care what kind of kids get in, just the University should be transparent about it. The Obama’s got in cause their dad was a president (maybe URM status might have worked), Jared got in cause his dad donated $2.5 million, etc… The only reason not to be transparent is to hide things. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/12/college-admissions-scam-kushner-harvard-acceptance-under-scrutiny/3147027002/
@anon145 I agree 100 percent with that position.
It’s just there are varied representations of all of these cases.
“The Obama’s got in cause their dad was a president (maybe URM status might have worked)”
Oh for freak’s sake! Do you know this? Now the “source” is USA Today??
2.5 mil is chicken scratch.
PB, do you mean you agree Malia Obama didnt deserve to get in?
@lookingforward I meant Malia. Yes. Lol.
However. Please note. I never said she or anyone else didn’t deserve to get in there or anywhere. The schools have their reasons and I am not privy to their files.
It was an example of someone other than Jared Kushner.
Like him or not, it riles me that educated posters here on cc put it out there as a statement of fact that he was unqualified. The source being a paid agitator publishing an anonymous source.
We have to be more discerning than that.
And then it gets repeated over and over.
Not one person on this thread knows anything about his grades, Malia’s ecs etc.
I tend to agree that there must be some level of qualification. Why did Barbara Bush go to Yale and Jenna Bush go to UT Austin? Then I see Olivia Jade and I start to wonder.
There is no quid pro quo in our current system, no sure thing in the admissions process. When someone gets a ticket of admission in exchange for money is when things become newsworthy. Even the biggest donors (e.g., Bloomberg $1.8 billion, Phil Knight $400m for Stanford, Ken Griffin $150m for Harvard and $125m for Chicago) are not 100% guaranteed to get their progeny in, but it is hard to see an actual rejection if their kids and grandkids applied - there is a chance of rejection if something is really wrong with them but otherwise they are in. In that sense $2m or $6.5m is chicken feed.
But a lot of soft factors matter along with money. Being active as an alum, being a regular donor, knowing people on a first name basis in a development office and faculty administration, being put forward by a trustee - all these things will amplify a gift much smaller than $2m and push a candidate over the fence. Whether it’s a flag to the admissions office or something else, what matters is the applicant gets a second look, a third reader, the Dean’s own input, etc. The applicant is pulled out of a pile of 40,000 applicants for that special look. This turns a 5-10% chance at a tippy top school to a “probable” for a kid who has top quartile grades and EC’s and gives a significant boost to kids who are within range but not in the top quartile. Instead of Admissions asking “Why him/her?” they will ask “Why not him/her?” as if the burden of proof has shifted. It’s still never a sure thing, but it’s near enough to extraordinary treatment. And all this could be for much less than $2m. Even $200k might do it - which is still a lot of money to a lot of people!
The mystery around things like the Harvard Z-list https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/4/3/the-legend-of-the-z-list/ is that we can never tell who makes it and who doesn’t. We observe that “72 percent of the Z-listed students surveyed were the children of alumni. A follow-up story in 2010 confirmed that an exceptionally high proportion of students given deferred admission were legacies and nearly all came from affluent families.” This is what we know. But there is also a handful of donors, alums, development cases - all affluent families - that do not make the list. The point is, money alone cannot guarantee a spot.
I think being the child of a president gives the hook needed to take a qualified applicant into the ‘sure thing’ pile. And it should. Those kids have had experiences that no others have, traveling the world, meeting political dignitaries, attending ceremonies. They’ve also had to pay the price of lack of privacy.
We do know Malia and Sasha played a team sport (soccer? basketball?) and an individual sport (tennis, with lessons from the GT coach). We know Malia interned with Harvey Weinstein’s company and other Hollywood types. I’m sure she was well qualified for all the schools she applied to.
Obviously there are many ways to look at this large donor situation and the economics behind it. In my opinion auctioning off admission spots (explicitly or implicitly) is not a socially responsible solution. If that’s a significant source of their fundraising revenue, I think these institutions need to rethink their fundraising model. Educating our masses needs to based on loftier goals than that.
Why can’t we just insist that colleges respond to potential donors with a simple statement that “We’d love it if you were to make a donation, now or at some later date. Just so you’re aware, and as we inform all our potential donors, we cannot allow that fact to enter into our methodology for selecting students to offer acceptance to our college.”