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Rich Folks Get Their Not Qualified Kids Into College, But This Time, Illegally
One student's parents wanted their daughter to go to Yale so badly that they paid $1.2 million in bribes to get into a school that cost $55K a year in tuition. https://t.co/6o8HFVNGwO
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) March 12, 2019
A story broke this morning about a scheme involving some rich folks, including two actresses (Felicity Hoffman and Lori Loughlin) have used to get their kids who wouldn’t have otherwise been admitted into college.
Actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman are among the dozens of people charged in a nationwide college admissions scheme that included cheating on entrance exams and bribing school administrators and coaches to recruit students as athletes https://t.co/I0YvhtTuBU
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 12, 2019
My friend Salena Zito remarked,
What is wrong with parents? Why would you rob your child the ability to earn their achievements? Or rob them of the lessons of sitting on a bench or failing? No wonder we are buried in snowflakes. https://t.co/issDKRigl2
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) March 12, 2019
And Daniella Greenbaum Davis rightfully pointed out,
If I had parents who shortchanged me the way these parents did, I’d be subpar too. The sad thing is if these kids were encouraged to work hard rather than having things bought / cheated for them, they may have actually earned what they got.
— Daniella Greenbaum Davis (@DGreenbaum) March 12, 2019
With parents like these, I think I’m even better off having gone to Rutgers on my own merits, on my own dime.
Published in Education
I mentioned this a couple of times, but do you think a 25 million dollar fraud should be off the radar screen? And it’s really not a matter of misused resources. The Bureau’s resources are somewhat compartmentalized in that you’re not necessarily robbing Peter to pay Paul. I know there’s a good reason for justifiable skepticism about the FBI leadership, but not everything they do is a bad idea.
Good point. Maybe they need to redesign the compartments… but that would be too political. Or the wrong politics.
Quibble: Her daughter goes to USC. USC is a private university.
I think kids who do have the credentials to get into prestigious colleges (allegedly) losing their spots because other kids’ parents (allegedly) commit fraud is entirely within the purview of law enforcement.
Quibble: I agree with that. I’m just thinking that there are bigger, more dangerous fish to fry. Drug cartels, sex trafficking, terrorist cells, etc. Have they rounded everyone up on their 10 Most Wanted List?
Indeed, the problem is that honest people get screwed, regardless of their ethnicity or socio-economic background. The whole point of the SATs is supposed to be so people who work hard and play by the rules at least have something closer to an even chance at getting into college. When there’s a finite number of spots, every person who gets in through fraud means that someone else who played by the rules lost their chance.
Show me the public official that was bribed, I’ll condemn it. (None was listed in the articles)
But, like I mentioned above, the bribe was to the wrong level of college administrator, otherwise society is perfectly ok with endowing a chair or ponying up a building.
That may be the point here. There was a scam going on and the government, it’s employees and more importantly its politicians were not getting a taste. That just can not be allowed. Even the mob allows the politicians to wet their beak.
I see that as corrupt as well. Don’t you?
That said, in this case, the parents were paying for people to alter their children’s test scores. Yes, that seems even worse.
In a regime where virtually every university is dependent on taxpayer subsidies, all college administrators are de facto public officials.
This really is true. There are way too many things like this.
Yabbut, if one hopes to convince employers that one’s non-certified education is just as good (if not better) than a prestigious diploma, one is probably gonna need to make sure one’s tutors are as prestigious as possible. Of course, it depends on one’s field of study.
;-)
All they are is overpriced diploma mills. Or they don’t really give a damn if you graduate. The ones that aren’t diploma mills are overpriced.
Someone needs to raise Holy hell. There is no reason it has to be this way.
Bribery of a public official, sure. But in the private sector, what’s the difference between bribing and negotiating a price? They’re just words. I just had a bathroom remodeled. Paid the contractor quite a lot. Did I bribe him? Or did I just pay him to get him to do what I wanted? I was under the impression it was the latter, but maybe I need to watch out for the DOJ.
I know there’s a “libertarian” element here–it also seems to be cropping up on the other thread on this–but elements of fraud and deception have legal consequences. Presumably your bathroom guy didn’t take a sink and toilet from another citizen and give it to you.
The metaphorical sink and toilet here didn’t “belong” to another guy.
Yale, in the first instance, is entitled to award its admission slots on any basis it wants (with a few prohibited exceptions). It could certainly auction them off to the highest bidders if it wanted. It could draw names at random out of a hat, or throw darts at pages from the phone book, or only admit people who lived on the odd numbered sides of streets, or whatever. You and I might not think any of those are the best systems (I don’t) but they’re also not, and shouldn’t be, illegal.
Some of the allegations here – falsifying test scores for example – seem to involve an element of commercial fraud (depending on who knew and who didn’t) but even then prosecution should be a state matter. If (and I haven’t looked closely enough to know) people within the universities were taking money personally to alter admissions decisions, I certainly see why the universities would care and want to root out those people.
But I don’t see how any of this is a legitimate DOJ concern in any way. At bottom, just because we don’t like a practice doesn’t mean it should be illegal, and even if it should be illegal, in most cases it’s not a federal matter. For the DOJ to be mucking about in this just seems complete overreach and grandstanding.
If you pay the contractor a little extra under the table to do something illegal, that’s bribery.
You are one of the last people here with whom I want to be on the other side of a legal discussion, especially in an era of federal overreach. Buuut–Yale and the other schools are, in a sense, some of the victims here. They have been fraudulently deprived of the ability to award their admission slots as they would like.
Interstate transactions form the basis for federal jurisdiction in tons of cases, as I’m sure you’re aware. Here, the scheme (do I sound like a prosecutor?) could not have existed but for its interstate aspects. I suppose there is a very general discussion to be had about the Feds usurping state jurisdiction, but I don’t think that this is it.
Here a business entity (posing as a charity) collected and paid money to numerous people to 1) procure phony test scores, and 2)insure that some students were admitted under consideration given for certain sports when the students were not qualified for those sports. Presumably, others were deprived of those admissions who would otherwise have received them.
The market did not work.
I really haven’t looked closely at the allegations, so you might have a point about the illegality of some of the acts alleged (though it doesn’t seem to be all). There is no world, however, in which this is better handled as a federal matter. Yes, I know federal jurisdiction now covers everything, including my bathroom remodel. But it shouldn’t. And I reserve the right to object when it does.
Bribery does not require a public official to be illegal. Example, if a department store buyer accepts a kickback for causing the department store to buy certain products, that is a bribe and it is criminal.
Or not. Particularly if it violates no federal or state law.
This is what was happening.
People were falsifying their resume to improve their chances to get into a specific school. This appears to take three broad forms. Claim athletic ability and desire where there was none. Claim a learning disability. Acquire a better College Admissions test score then they could achieve on their own.
By claiming athletic ability and desire where they were none, they could take advantage of the college admissions process where the administration takes the word of the coach that the child is good at a sport and desires to play for the school. Colleges give coaches a number of slots each year to fill out their team. Some coaches put the slots entrusted to them by the school up for sale.
Claiming a learning disability enabled the student to take the college board exam in a 1:1 setting under the guise of a certified proctor (who had been bought and paid for by the charity). This enabled the proctor to permit a 3rd party to take the test instead, garnering a better score than the child could achieve on their own.
The charity was established to (well, I’ll let you read it since their website is still up – you will never find a more cynically accurate purpose statement in your life)
“Guidance, Encouragement and Opportunity” to get into the exact school mom wants you to go to.
“Disadvantaged students”, disadvantaged because their parents neglected their core job of parenting and decided they could purchase their way past their abdication of parental responsibility.
“Hundreds of students” Because those are all the people whose parents are willing to pay the bribes necessary to make it happen.
Here is another. (fisking was done in italics)
For those that are interested, this is Ann Coulter on the scam. Start at 3;30. She starts ranting about Mexicans in the middle of course, but then she gets back on track. This is very congruent with my view of things. The accreditation scam and the job signaling scam has to be wiped out by any means necessary.
I do not practice criminal law, but I understand that bribery in private transactions is typically prosecuted as a form of theft offense including fraud. In one of these cases, for example, a swimming coach solicited $450,000 to name a student as a recruit on a swim team to get her into the college. The coach either defrauded or attempted to defraud the college. Attempt is a crime even if the actual crime was not accomplished.
I wold not take the free dictionary as particularly authoritative.
Instu,
Of course, we normally would just call this fraud. However, after Elizabeth Warren committed exactly this kind of fraud she is still considered a viable Democratic Party candidate for the Presidency.
Gee, I wonder if something may have contributed to the social atmosphere that encouraged the current fraudsters? Nah! Just a coincidence.
Regards,
Jim
I am willing to bet the college got paid just the same (if not more) by this student’s parents. The only thing the coach did was highlight a market deficiency in the college acceptance process.
And the FBI failed to uncover that as well because they’re corrupt?
Precisely.
Further, the US Attorney pointed out that this was not the same as a parent donating a new building in exchange for “consideration” – unfortunately for him, it is exactly the same. The only difference is the level of the people conducting the transaction. The parents tried to buy their way in on the cheap.
Furthermore, you could substitute the words “affirmative action” for the word “fraud” throughout this exercise and have the same result. Better qualified students were rejected to allow these people to buy their way to the head of the line.
Ok how about these guys
https://bribery.uslegal.com/federal-laws-on-bribery/
Note the emphasis on public officials
14 states do not have laws that prohibit “Commercial Bribery“.
Affirmative action is racial bribery.