The point is that the athletic recruiting system generally allows each coach to fill a few slots by recommending particular students for admission. In this case the cheating came from both ends – they bribed the coach to “recruit” the students and at the same time fixed the SAT/ACT scores to make the students look stronger academically. Plus of course they probably “fixed” the other intangibles – essays, LOR’s. These applicants didn’t appear to be “unqualified” --on the contrary the bribes were being paid at both the sending & receiving ends.
599 @chipperd I doubt this paltry money was shared with Admissions by the coaches ?. These unqualified applicants were admitted because they were made to look qualified. I think you are missing a chunk of the story. They had the ACT/SAT scores due to fraud. And, they obviously had the grades. The recruitment was the hook that enabled admissions after the pre read of the transcript. A coach doesn’t have the power to unilaterally admit a student. A coach could only recommend a student for admission based on his/her need for the athletic program. The decision to admit comes from the admissions office.
The thing that angers me the most is the standardized test cheating going on at private schools as explained in post #593. This should put an end to all the talk of test scores being the great equalizer, more representative of student ability than GPA etc. it should also put to bed the notion that kids from poor school districts just need to borrow that test book from the library or do Online practice tests (no excuses!) and the playing field is level.
This type of elitism is repulsive to me.
My Facebook feed is clogged with stories about this. I follow many US and Canadian news sites and it is incredible.
I would not be surprised if high school guidance counselors etc. were to be charged with altering student transcripts.
People who comment that the kids did not know are being extremely naive!!
What kid today does not know that it is even slightly (lol) competitive to get into Stanford, Yale and the like? These kids knew and should be removed from the schools. To think what my child(ren) go through to study for regular school and exams, getting up early and staying late for athletics etc while these kids and their parents bribe their way in disgusts me. These kids took spaces from all our kids who are out there doing the right thing. Sure our kids will be better for all their hard work but it is still Disgusting with a capital D!
Considering some of the kids believed that their high test scores were due to their own efforts, as evident in the complaint when a student tells the counselor that they should take the test again because they could get an even higher score, they could possibly believe that they got into competitive schools because they had competitive scores.
Some students knew and others did not. The US Attorney made that clear in his press conference.
Probably the kids thought Mom and Dad bought their way in the legal way.
I wonder if there might be a list one day that measures the importance a school places on character and integrity.
$500K in bribes to go to USC? I’m an alum (no bribes), but would find it hard to justify anything over $100K.
It is understandable that the kids are not charged in the indictment (some didn’t know, those that did were minors, it was not their money, they may have been coerced by parents). However, all of the students are at their respective universities after being admitted with a fraudulent application. I have compassion for the students but they all should be expelled if the universities are to regain any credibility.
@MWolf The comment was meant as a cynical joke on how liberal he was in interpreting ethics when it came to his own kid.
My assumption (long-held; not just since this news came out) is that there have always been parents and teachers/schools who “work together” to get a child’s grades up. So while it is not as blatant as changing a transcript, it’s turning B papers into A grades, allowing unlimited time to revise a paper or turn in late work, getting “excused” from a test.
@nypapa They could have cheated in colleges too, i.e., getting someone to write papers, taking easy classes, etc.
Some people I see commenting ( not here, on news stories and on FB) are really unclear on the concept. They wonder why the universities themselves are not in trouble. Let’s be clear, there can be no fraud on a private institution if the institution knew what was going on. The universities could accept “ bribes” to let kids in. The prosecutor made that clear. If the person accepting wasn’t a “ rogue” actor there’s no crime.
@maya54 - the universities have to avoid the appearance of quid-pro-quo, don’t they? Or else the donation won’t qualify as such under US tax laws. But it’s not usually a criminal matter in that case (most tax laws are civil laws).
If Feds want to change the college system, they need to change the criminal justice system where the celebrities and rich get off with a 10 day country club style stays or community services. 10 years in jail for parents, expulsion or retroactive rescission of degrees and life sentence for Singer guy should do the trick. Okay, maybe it was too harsh. One year in jail for parents.
I feel outraged. My middle son refused to open a study guide or take a prep class and went into the SAT cold, yet scored just 10 points below the score Felicity Huffman (my favorite Desperate HW) bought for her D.
I also wonder about the difference in potential criminal penalties between Huffman paying $15K for an improved SAT score and Louglin paying $500K for two crew recruit slots in different years. Louglin’s kids (assuming they actually enrolled at USC as crew team members) took spots from students who might actually be identifiable, while Huffman’s D’s new score just put her into the mix at schools a 1000 would not have gotten her a looksie at.
This goes back to what I have always said - I wish I had pushed my kids to do a little better on their standardized testing. S17 could have had $1K more a year in scholarship with a one point increase in his ACT composite (at a SUNY school, $1K is a nice amount). However, buying a score that is not commensurate with the child’s overall intellectual ability is a potential recipe for disaster. Will the child be able to keep up at a more difficult college?
This scandal is disgusting and disheartening.
I know I’m late to this whole thing, but don’t plots like these happens really often at colleges? I’m convinced that we’ve only uncovered a small portion of what has actually happened.
Fed and college should look into how private schools padded transcripts/ fake trip to Central American country/ ghost essay writers for college essays (btw they promote their service out in open!) as well. If parents are paying in the north of 40K do you think they are happy with Cs and Ds and sometime even Bs?