Can We Talk About This College Bribery Scandal?
I have been obsessively reading every piece that has come out about the college bribery scandal. Not the petty ones combing through Felicity Huffman’s social media postings, but the ones from reputable news sources detailing the allegations. Oh my G-d.
I am stunned and not stunned at the same time. We know stuff like this happens. Maybe not always on this level, but we know that people make major donations to universities for the sole purpose of having their child considered for admission. So paying someone to change their child’s answers on the SAT… I can see that happening. And at the same time, oh my G-d!
I think I can’t stop reading about it because the whole situation fills me with fear. Not that we’ll lose our values and pay $500,000 to have our children pretend to be on the crew team, but because people who do this will be in the mix when we apply to college in a few years. [I know, we can pause for an aside for a few seconds. Remember when I started this blog and the twins were still drinking bottles? Yeah, now my hair is grey and they are applying to college in a few years.] Not literally these people because these people are involved in a major bribery scandal. But people like these people who are willing to spend enormous sums of money to get a coveted spot in a freshman class.
The admissions process (and life in general) is already NOT a level playing field. My kids have an advantage over another person’s kids because I am willing to buy them SAT prep books and encourage them to do them over the summer. That’s an advantage. Being in a strong school system, knowing how to navigate that system, reading every piece of literature that comes home from the school so I’m always informed — all advantages my kids have. I can list these all day as well as all the disadvantages my kids have in comparison to other kids in the area, but the point is that college admissions aren’t balanced and fair. Education isn’t balanced and fair. And then you hear about something like this…
What do you think?
12 comments
This is the price of suggesting that only work that requires a college degree is worth doing. Don’t get me wrong – education is vital. But some kids are not suited for post-secondary school, and yet they are virtually forced into attending because the market requires a degree. This has created a further idea that now kids who ARE suited for college/university need to have a top tier school degree in order to succeed. You can no longer just be proud of your state-school degree in engineering – it’s not from MIT, so it’s meaningless. It’s out of control.
I think we need to reevaluate college and career counseling for kids in high school, to start. It would not stop a wealthy, privileged kid from getting their way smoothed. But de-emphasizing chasing prestige and refocusing on suitability for careers might help.
I think my kids will be fine. They’ve got enough privilege that even if they get shut out of the top places by people with more money and fewer morals they’ll end up just fine. (And I am flabbergasted at all of the schennanigans just to get into USC of all places—I’d always thought you just had to be rich to get into USC.)
I am not at all surprised by this scandal. I’m also not at all worried for my kids.
The average American family, even one who can give their kid advantages, is basically priced out of many of the top-tier schools now (especially with twins going at the same time!) So unless something dramatically changes in the next 7 years, my kids will be encouraged (ahem, forced) to look at state schools, which are excellent anyways! Can’t see anyone bribing their way into our state schools though, not with the likes of Harvard and MIT a stone’s throw away.
My mom was a public school teacher and what she imparted to me is this: Education is what you make of it. You can go to an under-performing school and still walk away with a great education, if you want it. You can go to the best school and still come away with nothing.
So, while those rich kids are getting into schools on bribes, they’re going to walk away with less than my kids who will walk away from a less prestigious school but earned it, wanted it, and worked for it.
I guess at some level I’m not particularly surprised at all. In a lot of ways, this scandal has forced me to examine my own privilege and prejudices. Long story short, I have a traditional BA from a private, 4 year college, then later did an associate’s degree and a non-traditional bachelor’s. It’s the associate’s degree, acquired from community college, that allowed me into my career and my non-traditional bachelor’s degree that’s allowed me to advance. For quite awhile, I’ve sort of downplayed that part because it’s *community college* and my field isn’t exactly one of the “prestige” fields (it’s a solid middling field socially) and I’ve felt a sort of vague sense of shame around that (which, for the record is SUPER privileged and ridiculous, but there you go).
With this scandal breaking open, it’s made me realize that vague sense of “less than”? Yeah, it’s a real thing and these parents in the scam would, indeed, regard me, my career path, and what I do as a huge failure. Never mind that in a year, I will own my three degrees free and clear, my student loans were very minimal, I make good money, feel like I do meaningful work, and have the flexibility in hours to live life. What’s a failure in that? But it’s not particularly prestigious and that’s something I’ve had to calm down about considerably (again, yes, a very privileged way to think).
I really agree with a’s comment above about how this is the cost of pushing degrees for almost any job, prestige/importance factors when choosing colleges/careers, and how important reevaluating education priorities is going to become in the next few years.
* reevaluating educational priorities at a national level in the next few years is going to be, somehow a bit of that got deleted. Oops.
Separate from the issue of state schools etc. being good enough, this is appalling. And probably happens at lower prestige schools as well. My children have many privileges but fair should be fair (and should be equally fair for kids without my children’s privileges, I recognize that.) and I’m sure this happens with internships and on and on.
In other words, the fact that my kids will be “fine” doesn’t lessen my disgust or worry. It should not be allowed to continue. Someone who has the qualifications and desire to go to a certain school shouldn’t be denied bc of stuff like this, regardless of whether they’d be fine elsewhere.
Well, if you want to get into who will not be fine because they’re pushed out, it would be the lower SES kids (low SES kids and minority kids benefit from going to prestigious schools where as high SES kids have outcomes that are, on average, no different no matter where they go, according to a ton of research)… but I also doubt the lower SES folks are the ones who are getting pushed out. They’re probably still getting in so long as these folks are also paying full tuition. It’s probably the moderately privileged kids like mine who will have the SAT scores and probably grades but haven’t published a novel or won a top science prize etc. Colleges admit amazing lower SES kids that they can afford and the rich kids subsidize them. (Someone did a paper on this somewhere using cost of tuition– higher tuition is better because colleges use it to subsidize low income kids.) For them it doesn’t matter if it’s me that’s subsidizing vs Felicity Huffman. (Also the sports they were faking– crew, water polo, etc… not generally offered at low income high schools, so the athletes they displaced will likely also do just fine.)
I would also be really surprised to see MIT on those lists– with the exception of those who major in course 15 (business) nobody who slacked off during high school is going to survive college at MIT (unlike Harvard or Stanford with their rampant grade inflation). It’s not a fun place to be unless you’re really into STEM (and even then it’s not fun for a lot of kids).
Re: financial aid– Harvard is incredibly affordable. You can play with their online financial aid calculator to see how much it will cost you out of pocket. Unless you’re making 280K/year or have a lot of savings outside of your house and retirement accounts, you’ll be getting some aid. (Less so for USC/MIT etc.) It is an outlier (see also Princeton).
Going to these schools is a crapshoot for most of the kids who are qualified to go, and going to their second-choice places is not a big deal. I know people who got into Harvard but not Stanford and vice versa. I’m glad I was waitlisted at my top choice school because my second choice turned out to be amazing AND I got more financial aid because it was better endowed. I’m not saying these people should be allowed to get away with their cheating (they shouldn’t, that is not what I was implying), but I also do not think it will affect my kids much, fair or not.
So, I saw this come out in the news, and I have been reading all I can on it, and the one thing that stands out to me is that this is just such a perfect example of how much wealth and notoriety/fame perpetuate this sense of entitlement and the-rules-don’t-apply-to-me mentality. As you pointed out, yes people make donations expecting a kid to get into a particular school, but having someone get double the time on the SATs and/or getting answers changed, and somehow pretending to be an athlete and getting in for that reason is just beyond any of that and so wholly screwed up. And I am so over seeing these damn spoiled, entitled kids making names for themselves by putting their life online and acting so insipid and spoiled, and yeah it’s the parent’s fault for raising kids like this, but the one kid was online saying she didn’t care about school and was only there to party, and idk just WTF is happening to our world? How are the rich so damn out of touch with any form of reality? It just makes me so sick. Even if these kids didn’t take spots from anyone who was more deserving (and literally that would be anyone else at all) I still think this is just so screwed up. And I feel sorry for these kids who now have to know just how little their parents thought of them, that they couldn’t possibly get in on their own merit. Just WTF.
Reading from the other side of the ocean… I have always wondered about the whole education system in the USA. It seems so different from the Netherlands. I think here all universities cost the same, and all degrees have equal value (between different universities). We only have a dozen anyway.
Paying more to get into a university or being a good athlete are not even an option here, so cheating on that isn’t either.
I guess when the perceived stakes of getting into the ‘right’ school are so high it is not surprising money (and then fraud) get into play. Suzy only just turned 6 so I have not yet had to look at higher education, but (naively, for now) I hope she can make her choices based on what interests her and where she feels at home.
I wonder if getting into these elite universities is much like coveting the lives you see on Instagram. It looks so cool, so amazing, so I’ve Arrived. So many parents buy into it, when maybe they should know better.
I’m not arguing that rubbing elbows with other elites can help a person gain $$ and influence, but do those thing really make a person happy? Like with chasing Instagram moments, I think that is an illusion.
I confess that I didn’t find this news story as shocking as many apparently did. Much as I would like to believe that all admissions to highly ranked colleges and universities are based on merit, I know that this isn’t the case and that rich people can buy their children admission to these schools.
I say this as someone who grew up in a small town, in a lower middle class household, and whose sister is nonetheless a graduate of Yale. (Yes, she was admitted on merit. My parents wouldn’t have had the means to manipulate the system to buy her way in.)
I think the shocking bit is that they did it illegally when there are so many legal ways to buy your kid a slot (not for as little as $15K, but surely that $500K could have done something for the Full House/Target-t-shirt/instagram kid).
The more I hear about the full house example, the more it sounds like in that specific case a couple of ignorant nouveaux rich parents got scammed. Yes, they broke the law, but also they were taken advantage of. Neither of that kid’s parents went to college, and they basically forced their daughter to go, even though she was already running a successful business as an instagram influencer, because they regret not having gone. She likely could have gotten into USC or an equivalent school (like Pepperdine or Loyola Marymont or Pitzer or… so many LA-area schools) even without that $500K crime on the basis of her business acumen (and being willing to pay full tuition) alone.
That’s probably not true for all of the parents, most of whom seem to be rich business people who should know better instead of actors. But in that one instance, the whole situation is sad.
The people on the radio this morning were talking about how it doesn’t seem right that Lori Laughlin’s bail was set at 1 million, the same as Harvey Weinstein, whereas R. Kelly’s was only 100K (looking it up, Felicity Huffman’s was 250K, still more than R. Kelly). Who else is she going to hurt, and how much more of a flight risk is she, they asked.