Who knew that Ivy League colleges, those bastions of progressive thought, could be so easily bribed? I guess a lot of folks, including the colleges themselves.
Now not only will blacks have the stigma of the assumption that they got in because of affirmative action rather than their qualifications, but the kids of the ultra rich (think Jared Kushner) will have the stigma of the assumption that they got in because of their parent's donation rather than their own qualifications.
10
This op-ed tends towards the same level of oversimplification I've seen repeated in the coverage of these arrests. The story is becoming a lightening rod for everything wrong with college admissions.
There's a substantial difference between let's say attending a high school that has a crew team and excelling at it to the point you're recruited to do it in college, and being classified to admissions as an athletic recruit for a crew team when you don't row (or whatever they do on crew, because damned if I know, my high school didn't have any rivers near it). Outright cheating on the SAT or ACT as happened here is pretty distinguishable from doing a Kaplan prep course, as another example. There's a spectrum here, and ignoring it is disingenuous, outright cheating is outright cheating.
Being able to buy a dorm so your offspring can be admitted is pretty close in odiousness, but since college is a business (as much as professors and administrators pretend it is not) they're going to keep finding ways to do this. So maybe part of that's on the rest of us for not being able to separate the idea in our later professional assessments of folks that someone can attend an ivy league level school and not necessarily be that bright, especially when extreme wealth, insider connections, a compelling backstory, or an aristocratic name is involved. And part of it might be not allowing obvious conflict of interest donations.
15
“I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle”
I’ll see that bet, and raise it with my own bet that “more than a few of those charged” are proud conservatives, who have never shied away from an opportunity to wield their wealth as a weapon. They happily abscond with unearned privilege for themselves and their children...all the while lecturing hard-working poor and underrepresented minority students about debasing a fictive “meritocracy” (that conservatives don’t actually believe in) for availing themselves of what paltry opportunities affirmative action might provide to offset a lifetime of disadvantages.
The “meritocracy” is a cruel lie invented by conservatives to justify keeping the best of the American dream for themselves. We in the hoi polloi have to live within its confines; the wealthy just circumvent it with bribery and fraud.
27
Gaming the college entrance system has been going on for years. Pay to play is merely the latest revelation. Any means to determine college entrance other than academic merit is by definition corrupt. Everyone knows this. College has become a scam. It has been for many years. One need look no further than race based affirmative action programs which confer preferential treatment based membership in a protected class such as race, skin color. The good news is college for most has become irrelevant, not a measure of academic abilities. Instead, skill based STEM ability verified via credentialing is the future determinant for subject matter competence. This change is good, and long overdue..
21
One notable and possibly beneficial effect of this criminal case, and the attendant publicity, will be that every wealthy Ivy student or grad will now be asked "How much did it cost your parents to get you in to Harvard (Yale, USC, etc.)?
11
We've lost our way and have only ourselves to blame.
U$A! U$A! U$A! U$A!!!!!!!
7
Where are the Conservatives on FOX News demanding the Supreme Court strike down this Affirmative Action for Rich, White, Connected kids??
10
In light of the blatant unfairness revealed in this scandal, one has to ponder the ethical and cultural implications. It seems we are living in a morally bankrupt America. I heard about this story the same day I heard about the Wells Fargo fraud scandal. Individuals and institutions are both corrupt. As mentioned in the article, pay to play admissions are not a new thing. If a student gets into a top tier school undeservedly, what do they learn about the process? About fairness? People from these top schools often go on to powerful positions in the public or private sector. The moral lessons they have learned from this process likely play out in their professional life; lying and cheating becomes the norm and our institutions become infected by this culture of fraud.
8
To me, it's loathsome to see so many commenters painting all of the admissions to all of the tops schools with the same black brush, as if none of the admitted students earned their coveted slots and the truly deserving kids were left to scavenge among the crumbs.
Of course, let's punish the corrupt criminals and correct the systemic flaws. But please, learn to be fair.
8
Trump got into Penn and GW got into Yale.
Both of them are not very bright.
Indeed, I recall that GW got a 500 on the SAT.
We do not know Trump's score.
Both grew up in privileged environments.
Trump's father was not as bright as GW's father.
6
@bigdoc
Trump didn't "get in to" Penn. Daddy Trumpbucks Fred paid for Trump's admissions to both Fordham where he flunked out and was asked to leave, and then Wharton. Do not be fooled. AND 45 never attended classes either. His degree is the result of a nice big fat check. or two.
9
@bigdoc
GW got better grades at Yale than John Kerry. Kerry wouldn't release his Navy service records because they showed that his grades at Yale weren't that good.
How did they scam the test companies?
The idea that people are shocked by this scandal is laughable. Until we stop this global arms race that is a prestige degree from a few select schools then parents will do anything to get kids into these schools. This is where we are as a culture that the parents of kids who already have wealth, connections and resources want to vacuum up every advantage for themselves by adding that golden degree. They can't leave anything for the rest of us.
And the sad fact is it does confer a disproportionate benefit. Look at the companies that routinely recruit at a few top tier schools. Look at job applications that want the name of your university 20 years on. Look at the various alumni groups that provide networking opportunities for years and years based upon something you did when you were 19. And look at the people who write letters to the editor "criticizing" all of this, but start out by saying, "As a graduate of Harvard, I know first hand...."
9
"I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle."
That's one kind of hypocrisy. I'll bet another is present too: that at least some of these parents gave lip-service to honest, ethical values in their kids' presence. I also suppose that those kids are now really confused and disoriented and when they have time to think about it, will be deeply resentful.
4
The schools are making impossible distinctions between largely equally meritorious applicants. One solution is to pool all sufficiently qualified applicants and then pick by lottery from that pool. No individual can be considered outside the pool or not subject to lottery.
51
I can bet all the children of the holier than thou NYT columnists are Ivy League graduates, Ivy League scholars or Ivy League aspirants. What are the odds that all of them are qualified! The elite in this country, conservatives and liberals, like to throw stones at each other, but really, when it comes to protecting their privilege, they are more similar than they like to admit.
13
American school days should be a little longer, summer breaks a little shorter, and all work done on school premises including “homework” and testing. Athletics and the arts should be incorporated in to the school day.
The entire educational system needs an overhaul.
Oh. And outlaw private education.
6
Sorry, rich kids, but now you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way:
with $250/hr. SAT tutors; summers in Europe "volunteering"; internships in Mommy's or Daddy's law firm; reference letters from powerful alumni who have never met you; etc.
8
Let's also not forget the scam that operates from as young as kindergarten and endemic across this country's educational system.
Want to get your child into an academic magnet or selective charter school or at least into the mostly white honors and AP classes at your neighborhood school? Send them to a psych to be designated as gifted!
Want to allow extra time for your child to work through standardized tests (as happened in one of these cases) to rise in his/her class ranking? Send them to the psych to get accommodations!
It has never been a problem that "gifted" children can be as lazy as a sloth in the summer sun. This designation gives them a multiple use pass to skip on completing assignments and earn failing grades but continue to attend highly competitive magnet schools or continue in Honors / AP courses.
As an educator myself, I am not discounting that certain children are in fact "gifted and talented" and that accommodations are not necessary for some children to compete on a more level playing field. But we are burying our heads in the sand when we ignore why an outside evaluator more often than not comes to the conclusion that this evaluator is economically rewarded for -- to determine that your child is more gifted and talented than the rest!
Let's start to recognize hard work as a gift. Let's recognize resilience as a talent. Let's stop rewarding qualities children are born with and start incentivizing ones that ALL children can earn.
3
“Anyone who knows anything about the cutthroat competition for precious spots at top-tier schools realizes how ugly and unfair it can be...”
Out-of-control, cutthroat competition exists not only in the pursuit of select spots at elite undergraduate schools, but also in the pursuit of select spots at top law schools.
The pressure on pre-law undergraduate students can be immense (whether that pressure is self-induced or comes from parents is another question). I once had a very likable honors student in an Ethics course I was teaching. Not too long after posting final grades for the course, I received a certified formal letter from his father, who was a practicing attorney. Upshot: I was threatened with a lawsuit over the student’s final grade. The subtext of the letter was clear, even if unexpressed: My very capable and deserving son simply can NOT get in to the law school(s) of his choice with the grade you’ve given him!
I must confess that I harbored more than a modicum of anxiety due to this most unexpected turn of events. For the first time in my career, cutthroat competition for law-school admission had precipitated the threat of a lawsuit against me—over a damn grade. However, this particular anecdote has a rather happy ending: to my great relief, the university supported me all the way up the academic chain of command. The student’s grade remained untouched. And the student’s father stood down. Academic integrity ruled that particular day.
18
Sorry, changing students answers on tests and faking their involvement in athletics with photoshop isn't the same as donating to a university.
8
No. but neither are merit-based
5
How do you think Trump got into Penn. I'm sure that Daddy did not make a large donation.
2
I'm going to fill up my bathtub to the brim right now with some hot, bubbly schadenfreude and take a nice, long soak.
7
Not too surprising! Hearing about the universities that 'some people' went to-who has not 'wondered' about the entrance criteria of some schools.
2
Truth is, this scam is what virtually all "prep schools" are selling.
If Brett Kavanaugh made you sick, it was partially because you knew this is the system that he used to ride all the way to the Supreme Court. There he joined his buddy from the same prep school, Neil Gorsuch.
If this doesn't support the idea of reparations, I don't know what does. Reparations should be tailored specifically to level this playing field.
The federal government should find a way to induce states to fully and equitably fund public schools, both k12 and higher education.
5
The other thing that needs to go is the legacy student. Would/could George Bush got into Yale without this? In his dreams.
3
No more legacy admits. No more development admits. No more early action/decision programs. No more Z lists. AND NO MORE EARLY ADMISSIONS CYCLES (OR LOWER ACADEMIC STANDARDS) FOR ATHLETES! (See David Leonhardt's column, "The Admissions Scandal is Really A Sports Scandal").
Signed,
Ivy League alum and volunteer admissions interviewer for 30 years
8
Shucks. I wish I had super-rich super-arrogant privileged parental types!
Then -- since I've already graduated from college (via a scholarship I earned, and honest hard work) -- I'd get to ask them to bribe for something, say, like my own island!
" . . . I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle. In this case, they doomed them, imparting garbage values and mortifying them along the way. . . " quoted from your article, Mr. Bruni!
And I bet more than a few of these charged are proud conservatives who went out and corrupted the system for their kids.
Why Mr. Bruni are the "proud liberals" worthy of special condemnation, when "proud conservatives" who eschew equal opprtunity and level playing fields as "garbage values" characterize the collegiate admission system as totally corrupt, and unworthy of attempts to make it work? Why is the proud conservatives'"nihilism" more worthy to you Mr. Bruni? There is a problem exposed here beyond the fifty plus instances of collegiate admissions corruption. It is your automatic condemnation of progressives and automatic acceptance that conservatives were aware of the corrupt system/process and didn't deign to try to change it . . .
So who is at fault Mr. Bruni, the 'liberals' you berate, the 'conservatives' you absolve/ignore or the bias that you are promoting?
3
There are about 10 college polo teams. Not just any Rick, Suzy, or Sal can claim prior experience. Plus you have to bring your own horses and staff. Could be cheaper than other means of getting your kiddie into Yale.
"It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying — which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him — and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but how much of a difference is there, really?"
I think I can tell the difference. A bride is, typically in the tens of thousands and not even in the hundreds of thousands, at least in present case. So the difference is in the neighborhood of $2.4 millions.
There is an old Chinese saying that "if you steal a needle you will be executed but if you steal a country you will be king."
That's the difference.
9
If this story ends without the colleges being held to a higher standard then something is seriously wrong. It would not surprise me if this story gets redirected into another smear campaign against students who benefitted from affirmative action. And how come we don't hear the complaints about quota's when it comes to legacies but do when it comes to affirmative action? Does it serve a purpose other than to make sure those with access and ample resources continue to preserve that for another generation? We love this narrative of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps except when it comes to actually having to do so. When is enough..enough?
1
Is not that about money the old god of our country?
Anybody check on how young Jared did after he was accepted?
Or did Cohen phone Harvard, too.
6
Freeze all future admissions to the Ivy League schools until a thorough investigation is conducted and the guilty parties are removed from the school system. Robert Mueller should be available to run the investigation. From what I have heard, he is a thorough, professional lawman who gets the job done.
This "scandal" should make more people support imposing higher marginal tax rates on incomes over $500,000 and increasing estate taxes. This is what happens when people have more money than they know how to spend.
9
I suspect that the scandal is less about educational prospects and more likely marriage prospects.
4
So someone should investigate Trumps college entrance process to see if his father helped rig the process with money.
And also check out Jared Kushner’s process of “acceptance” into college.
I bet the results would be “educational”.
4
I’m baffled why some of the students and the institutions were not indicted.
If a student posed for a fake photo, they too were in on the scheme. Hard to 8magine a high school senior who would not be “in on this”.
Certainly these Division 1 universities have Athletic Directors who would be checking the progress of these students who were offered admission based on athletic resumes and making sure they complete the necessary NCAA recruitment policies.
At some point, the universities should be cross checking what their coaches are doing to ruin their reputations as selective admission status.
Seems to me there are more stories to hear and more trips to court.
3
perhaps there should be some regulation that makes it illegal to donate millions to a school and then have your child admitted. perhaps the schools should accept such gifts only after the donor's children are beyond college age. I know there are then still subsequent generations- but the obvious quid pro quo++ of the (for example) Kushner donation to Harvard should be outlawed.
1
Back in January of this year, a black high school honor student, Kamilah Campbell of Florida, was accused of cheating after increasing her SAT score the second time by 300 points after tutoring, took on line courses and reviewing a copy of the Princeton Review Prep Book to improve her scores.
It seems the Educational Testing Service didn't think a student, (especially a black student?), could improve a score after actually studying to do just that, so they invalidated her score thereby affecting what college or university she could attend.
And yet, we have parents actually paying others to take tests for their kid (s) amid this college scandal.
Too bad her parents aren't just rich enough to buy her into a good school.
Or that even if they were, they would actually encourage their child to cheat or take short cuts or that Kamilah would actually want to do so.
That scandals like this happened is telling but it has kind of always been like this, hasn't it.
87
@marriea, While I feel for Ms. Campbell, applaud her grit to raise her score, and don't know her situation, there may be reasons to flag people like her that are not based on her profile. Even Rick Singer, the crooked consultant in this case, seemed to think about 300 points raised on SAT was close to the cutoff that would not raise a flag. However, it's likely disparate treatment if black students are flagged for a 300 point increase more often when white students are not. Not just the rich and powerful cheat on college admissions - see the T.M. Landry College Prep case the NYT has covered extensively.
8
Not being mentioned at all is that these non-revenue generating sports preferences overwhelmingly go to rich, upper middle class kids, the only kids who can afford to play these upper-crust sports.
1
What we have is a complete collapse of ethics in this country. There is no longer anything that is off limits, no line Americans refuse to cross, no limit to our unethical, immoral, and dangerous behavior - all so someone can benefit, while someone else loses.
The late ethicist Rushworth Kidder said it best when he said "the world will not survive the 21st century with the ethics of the 20th". Here we are, not even twenty years into the 21st century, and what he said has been, and is, coming true.
6
Why are they spending all that money to get their kids into elite schools - so they can get a job?? With their influence and connections I'm sure that won't be a problem. Meanwhile what happens if the kids cannot pass their classes?
5
The sad - and unmentioned part here - is that this is happening at every level of education in this country, particularly as public education has been de-funded and charter schools promoted. This is what you get when you gut the public schools and introduce the profit motive to education, folks. It's really that simple. In Manhattan, it is an OUTRAGE that parents enrolling their kids in elementary school have to run around touring schools, filling out forms, and indicating their first, second and third choices. A complete disgrace. If a tenth of the resources we parents put in to this nonsense was instead put into the public schools each school would be adequate. It gets worse when one gets to the high schools. The whole system is being gamed by the rich. At my son's high school, one of these companies that helps kids "prep" to get into college was given 20 minutes to pitch parents. Pathetic. She bragged she has a 100% placement rate. Bo one is too stupid to figure out what's happening - she's pulling strings (for a "modest" fee of course) to get the kid in, only on a smaller scale than these celebrity parents were with their "fixer." Parents I know spend thousands to get their kids into prep programs so they too can brag about the college acceptance they'll later toast. We've truly created an insane and immoral system. And no one will stand up to do anything about it because - you got it - the rich have gamed our politics, too. America is so obviously in a downward spiral.
9
Look at almost every major government policy failure and you will find an Ivy League education behind it. Its not worth the paper its written on.
6
@Raymond Leonard
President Obama is a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School. He joins President George W. Bush (M.B.A. '75) and Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy as Harvard graduates chosen to serve as the nation's chief executive. Surely some of their policies were successful? I am detecting the faint odor of sour grapes in the room.
4
@Ledoc254
You have no way of knowing whether they would have or not have achieved what they did without a Harvard education. This is a self-selection process. Also, what exactly did George W. produce besides a horrific war that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people? I have tenure in one of the best med schools in the country and am surrounded by Ivy grads. I have tenure, they do not. I have lots of sour grapes because I own three waterfront houses and they do not. Their mommies and daddies could read very well, my daddy could not read and my mommy finished sixth grade.
2
@Raymond Leonard A grand and gross over-generalization, offered without a shred of proof. Or is it a handful of sour grapes, perhaps? (And no, I don't have an Ivy League pedigree.)
Yes, the children of rich parents have advantages in collge admissions compared to poorer kids because they can buy better high schools, prep classes and sports lessons. I would also argue that smart, talented middle class and poorer kids in cities like NYC have advantages compared to similar kids in rural areas because they can attend select public schools, providing all sorts of college-prep programs that are not available in small towns. Is that fair?
Mr, Bruni, you raise important points, and certainly no one should be able to bribe their way into college. But, can you expain how colleges can fairly evaluate students when the high school playing field is already uneven?
3
@Ellen
It doesn't matter where you come from. If you ace all the standardized tests you will get consideration even if you live in a culturally limited environment and also you will have an advantage over all out of state applicants because it is generally easier to be admitted to a state university if you are an in-state applicant.
What about the flip side? What happens to minority enrollment if we eliminate the advantage of athletic ability? The discussion so far is all about the privileged getting into elite colleges. And what about gender? How many of these student-athletes identify as men? Men are increasingly being under-represented in higher education - do we need new programs to ensure their participation if we don't use athletics?
2
I am glad that this corruption was brought to light, and am hopeful that people who engaged in criminal behavior will be prosecuted. I also agree that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy in almost every way.
However, as a school counselor and a Certified Educational Planner with a private practice, I take issue with painting everyone in college admissions with the same brush. I am a member of PACAC, NACAC, IECA, HECA, and AICEP, each of which has a code of ethics that all members must abide by. I provide guidance, assistance, and advice to my students and their families (who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences), and help them find schools that will have appropriate challenge and support, be affordable, and have many opportunities for them to engage with professors, research, and work experience.
As the Admissions Practices Chair of the Pennsylvania Association for College Admissions Counseling, I handle complaints about institutions and individuals who are not in compliance with our Code of Ethics. I'm proud to be part of an organization that holds its members accountable to a standard.
As professionals in the field it is incumbent upon us to take the lead in acting with integrity. I want my students to grow up to be successful adults who are doing good in the world as they do well for themselves. I'm proud of my students for their accomplishments and their character--and their acceptance into a wide variety of schools is well-earned.
2
I'm wondering what these privileged kids do once they get in. They still have to do the work to get the degrees. Something tells me this mess is bigger than any of us can fathom.
6
In the sciences, math, engineering, etc., the Ivy mystique isn't nearly as prevalent, especially for undergrad. It seems to be most important to those intending to pursue business or law degrees.
Private universities do their reputations a lot of harm by catering to their wealthy legacies, who usually do not distinguish themselves academically or professionally after graduation. Serious, motivated students don't need a test taker and a "side door" to get into a good school.
6
The whole system is rigged. Colleges have literally no sympathy for parents or students. Both of whom are going into massive debt for the sake of education. If I have to pay $200 to $300K for an education, and that has to be what NYU costs when you add up all the costs then who is it for apart from the Olson twins and their ilk.
3
Yes, the scam that the FBI revealed is appalling. Yes, it’s unfortunate that poor kids don’t have the opportunities that rich kids do. But what really ticked me off during decades of working at a state college was the smug satisfaction of the administration, which admitted almost any applicant in an effort to meet their self-imposed diversity standards—and then did absolutely nothing to help the students succeed. The result was an embarrassing dropout rate, but the diversity rate of each incoming class was fabulous, which was what counted. And that’s every bit as appalling, and nearly as criminal, as the admissions scam.
7
Wait, the very wealthy think the rules don't apply to them and they can buy whatever they want? The only surprising thing is that anyone might actually be surprised. This particular incident is shockingly bold, but, again, the more money people have to throw around, the more they think the world owes them.
It's a sad state of affairs, but this is much bigger than these 50 parents. (Oh, and don't tell me the kids didn't know--if they are that oblivious it's evidence enough that they don't have the intellectual rigor to be in a top-tier school). It's a pervasive sense that money can buy everything and success is just a scam most of us just don't have enough money to buy into. The horrible part is that maybe it's true.
2
"What else is new", you ask Mr. Bruni.
WE THE PEOPLE are finally learning how the 0.01% Robber Barons - led by the Koch brothers - have taken over academia and stilled their insatiably greedy model into every segment of OUR society.
What's new is that WE will no longer sit idly by and allow it. WE will demand a restoration of true democracy - social and financial equity for ALL Americans.
The supposed "elite" are being outed as the crooks they are. Next the schools who allowed this to happen must have all the wealthy they accumulated stripped and used to pay of student loans of the less fortunate.
5
This would make a really good dark comedy. Maybe William Macey and Felicity Huffman would be interested in reading the script?
6
If this is the tip of the iceberg, what about future ripple effects, when these underqualified students come to occupy positions of power and significance--businessmen, politicians, academics.
Is there any wonder the US is falling behind the Eastern Hemisphere and the Nordic nations in intellectual achievement and liveability?
6
Here's my advice to parents who haven't yet gone through the college process (I've been through it once, and have one more to go):
1) Don't talk to other parents about their experience. Just don't do it. This inevitably leads to Keeping Up With The Joneses syndrome.
2) Be honest with yourself about what you want for your kid and why. Is it for him or is it for you?
3) Get out of the habit of giving unsolicited advice. Let them do the work and guide the process. If they want your help, they'll ask. If they don't ask, get out of the way.
The lessons learned from applying to college are vast, if you let your child learn them.
15
I think the next step in this is digging into expensive private high schools and the misleading influences they can create on university/college applications.
Though not discussed openly in Canada, it's understood that parents have the ability to meet with these expensive private school administrators and 'discuss their child's grades' if they aren't happy with them. The idea that those conversations are even allowed to take place is appalling.
1
I worked at Stanford for 24 years and was highly regarded by colleagues and management. This January, at age 73, they pushed me out, giving me my final year on paid vacation in return for signing a release promising not to sue for age discrimination. Bribery here, bribery there, whatever it takes.
8
@Dick Winant
Bribery?
Who are you kidding?
They gave you eight extra years in a position that could have been occupied by a thirty something, forty something, fifty something.
What are you complaining about? You will have a comfortable pension to sustain your lifestyle.
Do some traveling. There are many things you can do to keep yourself busy, including contributing to the NYT.
Count yourself lucky.
6
Is this not another manifestation of the huge and growing wealth disparity in this country? The rich get richer, and attempt to pass that down the generations. The non-rich stay where they are, or worse.
3
Calling this wrong legally or morally is a given. Parents get desperate to help their children or perhaps believe they need to attend certain educational institutions whether they deserve to be there or not. The question that I would ask is who knew what was happening. College admission isn’t determined by a parent, an administrator or a coach. Silence on the part of many doesn’t excuse those who knew. Risking your own career to do what a person knows is right may take some courage but it shouldn’t be impossible. Ask Sally Yates how difficult it is.
2
It's very troubling that people don't see the moral difference between, for example, paying for a test prep class as opposed to paying someone to take the test or change the score. In a perfect world, everyone would have access to the same test preparation, and there may be solutions to that issue (such as colleges requiring applicants to disclose their prep classes and dinging them in their evaluation as a result). But these columns and comments lumping this scandal in with test prep, etc. as just another way that privileged students get a leg up are severely missing the ethical point, and I fear that the upshot is that this kind of cheating will be treated as something that of course rich people do as opposed to the reprehensible crime that it is.
9
As much as I accept that elite college admissions may not be as fair as we'd like, I cannot accept the morally relativistic premise that a legacy admission or transparent donation is anywhere near the same as a bribe that personally enriches the recipient, or that paid test preparation and coaching is anywhere near the same as the cheating that went on in this criminal enterprise. Let's hope Operation Varsity Blues encourages us to look harder at and resolve inequities of the admissions system. But let's also keep things crystal clear and recognize the alleged behavior for what it is: offensive and criminal, deserving our disgust and the government's prosecution.
7
@Ira
A "legacy admission or transparent donation" is not a bribe?
This attitude speaks volumes as to what is wrong with the college admission process
1
@The Jeffersonian
I don't absolutely defend legacy admissions or donations that grease the admissions wheels, but they may serve a legitimate purpose in some circumstances (which institutions can discuss or debate as a policy matter). They are certainly not bribes that personally enrich the recipient and, thus, are corrupt by definition.
2
I am a single mom, one of my sons went to a high school where 70 percent of his classmates were Hispanic. He had no college counselor and applied to college all on his own. I never read any of his applications. We did visit several elite colleges, and he was appalled at one of them to find that because he took a stretch class and received a B rather than an A, he wouldn't be considered for that school even though he was a national merit scholar.He also heard about the legacy system at this admissions session and felt that it was wrong and unfair, since neither of his parents had gone to this school. He did get into his first choice college and totally on his own. He was shocked when he moved to Boston the next year and met students from elite colleges that didn't know that New Mexico, where we live, is part of the U.S. Theses students also assumed that my son came from the "meth capital of the U.S." because the television show, "Breaking Bad" was at it's height of popularity. Other students were shocked that my son spoke English well and came from an " inner city" school with so many minorities, where they had gone to almost all white schools with a handful of minorities. this lead me to think that many of these students at so called elite schools are not so smart, knowing very little outside of their small circles of privilege and prep schools and that their parents money and helicopter parenting had prevented them from understanding the realities of life.
15
@rachel, hundred percent agree with your articulate comment and really "like" you and your son. However, the pity is that the lack "of understanding of the realities of life" will not hamper these spoiled rich kids one bit. This preferential coddling will go with them every step of the way in life, including when the inheritance tax-- designed to prevent dynasties that flourish today-- is eliminated altogether.
2
I have a hunch that the educational benefits of getting into an elite college for these kids were pretty much nil for most, if not all, of these parents who are alleged in this scheme. It's purely a matter of status and to hold "bragging rights" among their peers.
Indeed, I've casually spoken to many students going to elite universities whose parents are wealthy who have said they don't much need to study hard or even make good grades, only to show up to class to get a perfect score on attendance. That, they say, is what counts, and no professor is going to flunk them out even with a failing test grade (a scandal of a different sort). After graduation, no one is going to ask about their GPA, just see the elite college or university on their resume and LinkedIn page. Welcome to the club!
Where do you think these students got this privileged work ethic (or, rather, lack of)? Hint: Their status-seeking parents. Now, with their newly-minted elite degree, the kid will be able to continue to brag and leverage their wealth and privilege throughout their adult life, starting by waltzing among top corporate recruiters vying to snap them up the minute they toss their mortar boards in the air. (For the rest, it's lining up at a job fair.)
One imagines this vicious cycle among the privileged--without the bona fides of learning that would normally make parents proud and benefit society--continuing over the generations in what we now call "legacy" admissions.
5
Yep, you are right.
The system is rigged to favor those who can pay for it.
The present president of the United States is 'a victim' of this rigged system.
It is suspected that he got his degree because his father, like Kushner's, bought a ticket in, but even more so, one has to wonder based on his reactions to not wanting to divulge his transcript, seeing that he like to brag so much, that he possibly didn't do much to earn his grades either.
Must be nice.
3
Congrats, Yale and Stanford, and all the other holders of worthless paper documents. We decades-long line of children of blue collar citizens always have suspected that which has now been unveiled. I hope you all enjoy the papers on which your achievements have been recorded......comparable papers can be found in the toilet paper aisle at your super market.
6
Frank, if you didn't know this long ago, you need to get out more, e.g. USC and Stanford's football, Harvard's basketball, Yale's hockey.
3
OMG
Please - how is this new?
I went to high school with someone whose family had a GREAT deal of money.
The son was unqualified to attend anything beyond the local college but daddy wanted an ivy league college educated son.
The prestige was all.
So..... Did it happen? Oh, yeah!
And guess where he went?
An ivy League!!!
Daddy made an "donation" to his ivy league school of choice and the son was accepted.
Had my entire class in hysterics. There we were, working ourselves to death to get good grades, high SAT's and all sorts of academic accolades when all we really had to do was have our parents grease the palms of an ivy league school.
FYI - son failed out within one semester.
5
When the whole system is designed for corruption it will be corrupt and unjust.
It needs complete overhaul, not to allow this despicable state of affair.
How about being accepted to best colleges for the merit, and if the parents too rich they should have some social responsibility to donate for the schools to help unprivileged, poor people to get in.
Too much to ask, sound like a pipe dream...
I don't think so.
2
Parents would do better helping their kids acquire enough self-esteem that they don’t believe they need to get into a “top” college in order to lead worthwhile lives. Might the parents’ self-esteem be the real issue?
1
My brother, son of a lobsterman, on whose father's boat he worked summers, did get a scholarship to a private school when it showed his main interest was reading the World Book, A to Z. (Yes, this was a while ago.) There was a recommendation for a particular school by an esteemed man who knew the family. He took an entrance exam and was admitted. He did well there and his work included hauling huge pots of soup from kitchen to dining room but he also benefitted from participating in sports as much as a rigorous scholastic program. Mostly all the other students came from wealthy families. He and his roommate shared a similar background and could study together. He then went to Yale on a partial scholarship and then on to Yale Medical School, from which he graduated with honors.
He took out loans to get through medical school, which he then paid off when he was working as a physician.
During medical school, he became friends with a man from New York, who was also a student there. They kept in touch and my brother invited him (now married with a baby) to come down to the shore and go out on the lobster boat with him. He did do that (I know...I babysat), seemed so happy after the huge struggle he'd been through both at university as well as surviving his dangerous neighborhood. A short time later, my brother called me to tell me his friend had killed himself. Sometimes, an elite school will not save you.
My child just got rejected from a school here in California. His GPA is 4.6 (out of 4). His SAT is 1580 (out of 1600). What do I tell him?
2
@Olga
Sorry for your son, but those numbers do not signify.
They re-centered the SATs years ago, and apparently, your son's grades and scores are not unusual for college applicants.
The solution would be to make the SATs much tougher and the high school curriculum more rigorous. That way, admissions officer can develop a more meaningful evaluation of entrance-worthy candidates.
Of course, if they adopted these measures, all the parents would complain.
1
@Olga I hope he gets into another school, affordable, and goes on to study, achieve, and find a major and career that put a roof over his head and provide some satisfaction. Everybody gets rejections. It is what you do after that which counts. Onward.
Once he is in, I have a piece of advice. Do a double major. It will put you ahead for hiring. Add to that certifications (on line, not pricey) for specific skills.
This article is right on target. It also spotlights liberal hypocrisy (or rather limousine liberal hypocrisy) and double standards. The system is unfair, corrupt and must change. I hope those charged and found guilty get the sentences they deserve.
2
Former Stanford Dean of Admissions, Fred Hargadon once told the story about how a freshman asked why he admitted the freshman. Hargadon related how the new student noted the achievements of several students in the freshman’s dorm, such as an Olympic athelete, those that had perfect or nearly perfect SAT’s, and the list went on. The freshman then stated, “Did you admit me because you needed people to cheer on my classmates?”
Hargadon then explained he could simply choose those with a 4.0 averages and perfect SATs without looking at the qualities of each student. He then explained how each student he admitted had a constellation of achievements, not all of which put one at the top, but the composite of achievement showed a thirst for knowledge, a desire to engage in society and make a difference in the world.
If students want to stand out, getting stickers or stars is not enough, they need to participate in varied activities, without fear of being the best. Proving one is well round cannot be faked. Those misguided students or parents who used bribes failed to understand that standing out requires effort and commitment.
Moreover, many students that go to institutions of “lesser” prestige can achieve if they make the most out of what is offered.
The best institution will provide nothing if the student is unwilling to commit to excellence.
Eventually, after time, employers learn who can play well in the sandbox with their coworkers.
3
I don’t understand why these wealthy parents didn’t just start donating money to a number of elite schools when their kids were in elementary school. The results would have been the same. Also, if a love of learning and a sense of intellectual curiosity are not nutured in the child from an early age, by high school these entitled spawn are hopeless.
2
This scandal is not that different from how G.W. Bush got into Yale, except that his family donations were legal.
I'm glad there's some punishment, but the media hysteria is bizarre.
Last night on Fox News, without a trace of irony, Laura Ingraham, Dartmouth grad and Trump champion, complained about the "elites" that attend Ivy League schools and those that game the system to get into the schools apparently completely oblivious to Don Don's circuitous path to the undergrad Wharton School of Business at Penn paid for by his father's donation.
When will people wake up and see the duplicity of the Fox News talking heads?
4
The only comment I have is that this "game" is also played by proud conservatives, Republicans as well as Democrats or even Independents. Bruni should have pointed out that there are also "proud conservatives" who bribed college admission officers or athletics directors or donated large sums of money to ivy league colleges in order to get their kids into these colleges.
It seems to me this is NOT a liberal vs. conservative issue.
3
@GECAUS, thank you for stating this. I wondered why Frank attributed this problem more to liberals. It makes no sense. If measured in total, my guess is it would be the other way. but If I were writing a column on this disgusting topic, I would not make an assertion in either direction.
1
I think the only think that can break up the huge advantage that wealthy families have in the college admission process is to add some level of randomness.
Of course universities must maintain some standard for admission, but there are ways to make it less subjective and to give administrators less control over each individual applicant's fate (and thus less of an incentive to try to bribe the administrators, be it legally or not).
For example, all applicants that meet the universities admissions criteria can be placed in a pool from which the final number of admitted students is chosen completely randomly. E.g. 100,000 apply, this is whittled down to say 20,000 and then from that 2,000 are admitted randomly.
It is astounding how these schools are being let off the hook’.
It feels like what happens in industry when the CEO of an enterprise is found guilty of corruption and then is released with multi million dollar golden parachutes.
The administrations of these schools are deeply complicit and often stocked with people who do not gave the basic skills of their administrative function.
How is this not an issue being addressed internally within admission offices. This is their responsibility. It upsets them here because an employee is skimming the money they’d rather have.
It normally takes investigative reporting and public outrage for them to make a moral decision. Diverting from S. African diamonds, donations that come from Oil, Energy, Pharma, Finance all contribute to their managed, manicured trusts. Only until it came out that money from the Purdue Phama founder family had donated did they “see the light”.
They’re hypocrites and non-indicted vi-conspirators.
6
Why have no students been charged? Do they bear no responsibility at all? Surely many must have been aware or taken part to some degree. If we are prosecuting kids for underage drinking and minor drug offenses - why not this?
If you want to truly punish these people, let the student take their fair share of the blame.
3
What I find especially ironic is that kids from wealthy and well-connected families do not even need to go to a great college and get good grades to get a leg-up in their careers. As long as they get a degree from some decent enough place, mommy and daddy can still make a phone call to their network and get them that internship or first job - they will be fine.
I went to a good liberal arts university but not Ivy League. Many of the kids in my undergrad class and then later in grad school that did not exactly do very well got jobs with crazy salaries straight out of school in the most desirable firms and industries due to the connections their parents had. Conversely, I sit in cubicle land with many people with MBAs and PhDs from the most prestigious schools. We are comfortable enough and have financial stability, but no one is kidding ourselves that we are going to go much further up than the low-6 figure corporate job with the necessary network.
4
I'm glad none if these kids applied to medical school. But with the elite schools rampant grade inflation they could wind up if not in medical school certainly law.
2
And shockingly enough, president of the Unites States of America!
4
There is one way in which being an alumni of an Ivy or other "elite" school surpasses all others: networking.
Mr. Bruni, I’d like to hear how you would recommend colleges prevent this from happening. What concrete actions should they implement to stop it?
5
The disparity starts long before high school. My kids had two parents that value education. They learned at an early age that if they wanted a toy, the answer was no, but if they wanted a book, the answer was yes. Our vacations were spent, not at Disney, but in museums, historical sites and theatrical performances. No, we did not get the kids an SAT coach. No, we did not hire a consultant to get into the "best" schools. But we always impressed on them the fact that they had a leg-up on success many kids did not get, and, like Private Ryan, they needed to deserve this.
1
The corruption of the college admissions system is merely a reflection of the corruption of the Electoral College system by the Republican corporate elite “parents.” Is there anyone who actually believes that there is a moral, ethical difference between the two?
3
This is one of many reasons why I fail to understand why so many Americans obnoxiously often claim that the U.S. is “the greatest nation on earth”.
That children of the powerful and rich are undeservedly admitted to Ivy league universities is old news indeed. But what about all the star professors who work at those universities, why are they silent? Why are they comfortable working at such conspicuously corrupt institutions? Should their silence not be seen as complicity?
Where can I read an open protest letter signed by a score of Ivy league professors who demand an end to the corrupt admission process and an end to the fact that Ivy league universities have become more and more elite in the past decades (and vulgarly so!)?
I praise myself lucky to have been born in a civilized part of the world.
8
Two of our daughters went to Yale. They got in the other way -- high grades, good test scores, well-self-written essays (we saw neither of them prior to their submissions), and involvement in humanitarian work.
True, once there they suspected that some were accepted for lesser, or more questionable, reasons than their own qualities. In many cases they felt sorry for those students who were living other people's lives, searching for goals not their own. Many of such students faltered along the way.
But for the larger cadre of students for whom their achievements had been their own Yale was a place where they could explore and flourish, building on solid personal foundations.
The mirror-image of "bought" placements is the need-blind approach of a school like Yale where two children of a modest household like outs could receive an education of such quality without bankrupting their futures.
3
As long as listing certain schools on a resume -- Ivy League and others with platinum names -- can open doors to successful careers (which they do), people will vie for the limited spaces there. And rich people will continue to make the most of their advantage.
6
And just look at how America reaps the benefits of these wealthy Ivy League graduates. These are the same groups that crashed Wall Street with fraudulent money-making schemes so they could get rich while the great middle class who built this country got stiffed with the bill. White Wall Street thugs from Ivy League colleges.
7
Exactly, that is what is happening in the world of the lucky few. I would like you to do a piece on the manner second year law students decide about what articles are worthy of being published in the law journals whose pecking order is established by profit—USNews and other ranking magazines on the worthiness of the law journals and fate of the professionals submitting to them . The process is
rigged and invisible and, besides, all the law community struggle behind the scene on how to get published by the top top ones. The education system in its entirety need a serious cleaning.
3
Not a wiff of remorse. The perps are only sorry to be found out.
8
So, let's see....super rich entitled people use influence, money and power to get their kids into "Name Brand Ivy league" schools. Ok.
Then the top flight Law Firms, Financial Firms and top tier Tech companies (looking at you Google, Apple, Facebook) only hire from "Name Brand schools" - not the state schools, not the kids that went to JC and worked their way through and transferred into a state uni etc....) and we wonder why these companies have missed the plot and end up subverting our democracy in the name of the almighty $$$ .
I live in the Silicon Valley, I work in tech, I see this stuff all around me. I failed to donate $$$ or endow a building so that my hard working honor roll (but otherwise unremarkable) kid had to go to an out of state "public university" - not an Ivy. My other kid went to JC and transferred into a State Uni. I hope that they can forgive me for my failure to donate millions to guarantee their future.
9
But I'm sure they will have a bright and happy future devoid of the vanity and narcissism of those entitled brats.
2
@ Meangurl-you did the right thing-you taught your children independence and self respect-that is worth way more than an IVY after their name.
3
@MeanGurl, I hope our next democratic nominee for president (who wins, I hope) will make a point that his whitehouse, judicial appointments, cabinet, etc-- will be staffed by people from all geographic regions of our country, from all walks of life, and most important-- from all types of academic backgrounds. I'd like him to pick someone from the west with an outdoor passion for Interior, a public school grad and parent for Eduction etc. I'd like to hear that campaign promise today. I think this would be a good first step away from the poison this mess has put a fine point on.
1
This is so spot on. What could be done to avoid the institutional scam whereby a generous daddy alumnus can slide a check to the alma mater in his kids.application? It should be illegal to do that, universities should be regulated and controlled
48
A group of entitled, hypocritical bad actors knock an entitled, hypocritical leader off the front page for a day.
Sign of the times.
4
Is anyone shocked by this story? Wealthy people use their money and influence to get their kids into prestigious universities. This has been going on for years and won't change.
4
I'll tell you what's new, Frank: the cost.
My father and grandfather went to Yale, my mother to Smith and many other relatives went to Harvard.
They paid at the most a few thousand dollars, always affordable to most of the middle class for generations. The education was first class.
Do you not accept that basic fact? Let's discard the "playing field" metaphor, and take a look at what is NOT new: Vanity.
Before and since the time Solomon penned Ecclesiastes, all has been vanity. What is not new is that anyone with an ounce of wisdom understands this, yet with wisdom comes suffering.
1
Mr. Bruni states, "Our country’s best schools are supposed to be engines of social mobility and the gateways to dreams. Sometimes they’re just another sour deal." But most of the schools involved are elite private institutions, founded by the elite for the elite, meaning the financially elite. While I abhor the behavior of those involved in this story, we all need to admit that private universities were never intended to level the playing field. If we are truly interested in doing that, we need good public, i.e. tax payer funded, institutions. They are accountable to us, tax payers, voters; private institutions are not.
10
@Jim Manis, I present my evidence that this is the right way of the world: the University of California. Best public university system in the world, with many elite campuses in the group.
1
Yes some of them are no doubt "entitled liberals" that is for sure. But at least they're willing to support candidates that want healthcare for all. Which is better than the conservative alternative "I've got mine you go get your own."
These kids can often times be up to their eyeballs in this as well. Olivia Jade is a narcissistic self- promoter on a grand scale with millions of followers (and I totally don't get that). She absolutely had to go to USC because a smaller school would not have adequately reflected her grandness. I hope this little hiccup in her plans doesn't force her into any real self-reflection. That would be sad.
4
Are the schools going to kick the students out? They are obviously enrolled under false pretenses. It would open up slots for students who deserve it AND maybe it would teach them a much needed lesson for their future since they didn't learn it from their parents.
1
They should not be expelled or have action taken that represents a punitive mark on their record-unless they were complicit in this fraud-but they should be disenrolled at end of the current semeter. Ultimately it is also in their intetest to disassociate themselves from this scam.
2
Stop picking on water polo Frank!!!!
“Inner-city schools aren’t sending as many rowers or water polo players to the Ivy League as the storied boarding schools of New England.”
Ok this may sound good to you but it is totally factually WRONG. There are three Ivy League schiools that play water polo: Harvard, Princeton and Brown. Look at their rosters. The kids are almost exclusively from California or are international students. Yes, a few New England boarding schools have water polo, and their kids ain’t very good at it.
3
I had to bribe my way into California's esteemed Community College system. I paid them $15 per semester. They had the nerve then to make me pay for my own (frequently used ) books! Shocking!
1
"Motherhood has been an exercise in guilt." - Felicity Huffman
2
How else did Trump get into Wharton? He is the worst example of an entitled child who is now wreaking havoc with out country. He learned nothing there, except that dishonesty gets him rewards as long as he has money to pay.
What did these children learn?
4
You have to laugh at all the people who go into debt to attend these schools. You don't need an Ivy League education to be successful in this country. Lots of duds graduate from these schools and now we know why.
1
As Bruni notes, this has been going on forever. What I object to is dragging these two actresses out in front, simply because they're celebrities, to better sell the story - not just in NYT, but across the media spectrum. But let me be a complete hypocrite and say I loved Jared Kushner being dragged through the coals.
4
I went to an Ivy based on h.s. athletic performance in basketball and baseball, with B grades. Worked the dining hall and other work-study for four years, got some money for being NROTC. During those four years I became aware of how many
"legacy" boys had been admitted, and were upscale frat members. Alumni children, fund raising, etc. played a "pay to play" role. Was it fair? Has it changed?
2
I would be interested to learn if in any case the child-applicant had the moral courage if he were to find out about the scam before application results were released to contact the admissions office and tell them a) of the illegal attempt to sway the results b) to process the application without consideration of the fictitious information and c) to hold the information in confidence from the parents.
Any applicant doing the right thing would move to the top of the pile in my estimation even without sports.
@Douglas McNeill -- from what I've heard about the kids who have been identified, I'm not sure any of them have the self-awareness to realize that they are at schools that they simply don't have the credentials to attend. It would never occur to these privileged, pampered, sheltered young people that they can't do whatever they want.
After all, their parents have paved the way for them for everything up until this point. Why would "getting into" college be any different?
1
@JM
There's a small chance the parent would have told the child about the action taken on his behalf and an even smaller one the child would then act as I had suggested.
As long as colleges admit kids for reasons other than academic merit, there will be ways to game the system. Kids are admitted to colleges these days for all sorts of non academic reasons--athletics, race, geography, extracurricular activities, legacy, and of course donations (illicit or otherwise). At some elite colleges more than 50% of the students fall into one of these preference categories.
Of course, this is foreign to Universities in the rest of the world, in which exam scores are the only criterion.
In institutions of "higher learning" I fail to see how any of these preferences improve education or learning. By definition, all of the kids in these categories are less academically qualified. Its time to switch to a sex and race blind admission system in which only academic accomplishments are recognized. The only way to game that system would be to study harder.
5
Yes it's all a game. Life is a game. Law school was a game. It took me a whole year as an older student to figure out that all the young ones with older siblings and connections were getting old exams. Duh. Here I thought they were smarter.
Back in my university days, you got in based on your scores and grades. That was it.
How embarrassing for these kids. How humiliating.
4
Imagine what happened to these kids before the time came for college. The underlying assumption the parents have is that the kid is Not Good Enough, so everything he did or said for 17-18 years is corrected, scoffed at, ridiculed, you name it. Not a lot of self-esteem support, just pushing for parents' idea of "perfect kid." Kids would be better off if parents would just love them for who they are. Note to parents: your precious kid has a soul, mind, ambition, and joy of his/her own. Respect and nurture them, and you'll produce a happy and productive adult. No college required.
4
@Judy -- my guess is that what happened to these kids before college is exactly the opposite of what you imagined.
Their parents ENSURED that the kids appeared perfect. Every bump in the road was smoothed before it was reached, there was no need to correct, scoff, ridicule, etc.
I can't imagine that most of these kids ever heard anything but how wonderful they were. And they likely had really only the vaguest notion of what their parents were doing to ensure that there were no cracks in that façade.
1
What does this scandal tell us about the crazy emphasis modern society places on having attended an elite college?
The quality of the formal education at these schools is not materially superior to hundreds of other universities.
Have employers lost the ability to judge graduates on their own merits, focusing instead on an applicant’s educational pedigree?
Does the “quality” of social connections developed as an undergraduate matter that much? Should it?
Is it too difficult for graduates to develop their own sense of self-worth, apart from the stature of the college they attended?
This scandal arose in an unhealthy social context. Crimes must be punished. Distasteful admission practices questioned. But we also ought to ask ourselves why we care so much about the status of the university we attend.
2
I only wish that commentators like this one would actually look at who/what is to blame. Unfortunately, we will see a continuation of the Republican attack on education and, especially, Higher Education which began with Ronald Reagan, and which has played a huge role in making Higher Education too expensive for many. And, even at the level of the Colleges/Universities, a careful eye might notice that it is largely through the Athletic Departments and Programs and/or the immorality of the parents--not the Universities as a whole. That leaves the "legacy" tradition which, while most of the rest of us aren't happy about it, can, at least, be defended, eh? But could we please get over the Republican/Fox News broad attack on Universities.
1
Another generation, another concern about admissions scandal.
Readers who harbored a naive belief our society is above such scandal are to be pitied. Look no further than your president.
And it isn't just college admissions. The rich get what they want. In the Vietnam war period it was deferment from being drafted. The rich got what they wanted, be it outright medical deferments, long stays in colleges, or reserve units in you pick the branch of the service. When I left for Vietnam in March, 1969 20 of the men in my training company went home to reserve units. That was happening nationwide. The rich, influential (a redundant term used with "rich") and powerful get what they want.
Look no further than your president.
5
This scandal highlights the pervasive, persistent, and entrenched inequity of access and opportunity, particularly when it comes to higher education. Children born to wealthier, college-educated parents already benefit from college expectations plus the cultural and social capital their parents earned during their educational journeys. As Mr. Bruni has highlighted in this column, first-generation and lower-income college students face many non-academic (as well as academic) challenges in their pathways to college. Scandals like this only reveal the need to work that much harder to address the more latent and malicious attempts to further advantage the system in favor of the wealthy and elite.
We must recommit to ensuring that opportunities are equitably distributed so that all young people have the option to pursue their college and career dreams, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. The "I Have A Dream" Foundation exists to combat these inequities by providing all young people with a pathway to college and post-secondary pursuits.
1
I don't hear much mention of whether the students DID know what was going on. In the case of the fake "student athletes", surely the student knew that they couldn't play water polo and the like - how could they not know that something funny was going on?
7
I can understand the problem with bribing someone to get into a public university, but why is any of this a problem for a private university? Can't a private university admit anyone they want to? What crime has been committed?
@Toasted
No crime is technically commited. In my book of ethics though, a crime of perpetuating injustice is commited though.
Continental Europe including Russia have produced most of the western canon of science, mathematics, literature and engineering without resorting to private universities. I will take Einstein, Scroedinger, Calvino and Mann any day over most of our private university graduates.
2
Leave it to you to call this "liberal hypocrisy" when most of the wealth in the world is "conservative" wealth -- and well conserved. And no, when "Americans seethe at 'the elite'", they are in fact actually talking about ALL the, actually, yes even the "earned", elite. Whether mere wealth or so-called merit, all the so-called elites are only lucky, and not "deserving" (another meaningless term). Striving for anything at all, is foolish and eventually empty. Neither is there life after this one, children.
I expect the made for TV Lifetime movie script starring Lori Loughlin and John Stamos as the parents and Loughlin's daughter Olivia Jade as the unwitting college applicant is already being written. Ending will of course have OJ doing a post to her followers about learning the importance of real work accomplishment on her way to class. Felicity Huffman and William Macy could probably have roles too.
A scandal right out in the open that is rarely discussed: legacy preference admissions. You mother or dad went to a top school, you get extra special consideration for admissions.
Why? If the big name schools stop this practice, as they should, they would lose millions, probably hundreds of millions, in donations. Knowing that their kids stand a better chance of admission than the ordinary rabble means mommy and daddy are much more likely to fork over cash to help the billionaire schools keep ruining.
Scandals that are open don't receive 1/10th the attention of those that are hidden, those that lead to criminal indictments. Still, they are scandals nonetheless.
Even the Harvard student newspaper came out editorial against this unfair practice.
2
Bruni's right. The rich are different than you and me. There is nothing unusual about this at all. It's been going on since the beginning of time. And no amount of marching for "social justice" is going to change it.
5
@George
Wow. What defeatism.
Most of the civilized world has public colleges, paid by their tax payers proportionate to their income and wealth.
They have produced, Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Perelman, Thomas Mann, Louis Pasteur, Jacques Monod, Simone and Andre Weil, Sartre, Mendeleev and Lev Landau.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Bernie will fix it soon.
@Blunt. This story is NOT about public universities of which we have plenty. It's about the elite schools. Stay on topic please. BTW despite what you think I am a big Bernie fan. But a realistic one.
1
Branding -- whether it is a shoe or a drink or a human or an organization or a school -- is damaging our society. We should be pushing back against becoming merely consumers or manipulators of brands.
Is it possible to make college tuition more affordable without making every educational experience follow the same model? (I don't know). As a society, don't we need common ground but also variety? Can't we help our young people find their way into adult participation by supporting instead of denigrating that variety -- equally valuing large public research university education, schools for medicine and partially-private-funded lab work, small liberal arts colleges educating the next generation of artists and sociologists and linguists, medium-sized institutions breaking ground in technology or legal studies, etc.
Many private colleges use their resources to offer need-blind admissions. We have as a society invested resources in a lot of talented people with Ph.Ds who have knowledge and research and enthusiasm to share with the next generation. Ethics -- through the study of history, philosophy, and science -- is one thing that even the most damaged wealthy students can learn at university. Another is critical thinking.
Higher education used to ensure social mobility. The elite colleges ensure social Nobility for those who graduate whether or not they truly earned their admission.
As we are unable to differentiate between the two character types, we need only assume that they all cheated.
My experience working for over 40 years with Ivy Leaguers and others proved, for me, on direct comparison, there was no cause for envy.
3
I am delighted to say that not only did my parents not assist me in any way in getting into Dartmouth, they took it one step further and actively sabotaged. My father told me not to bother going to the interview. I had to borrow my friend's car to get to the interview, because I was not permitted to use one of theirs. These entitled parents are getting what they richly deserve.
5
The big house, hopefully.
1
@Thumper
I'm glad this did not mess you up. I do not recommend this strategy though. Lots of kids would not have forgiven their parents. I know I would not have.
Not getting actively involved is good enough. To being utterly unhelpful is mean.
1
What these parents did is certainly troubling and whatever the law allows should be their punishment.
There is however an outrage on this thread which is a touch nauseating. Who is really shocked that wealthy and famous people get an advantage? Who for example thinks the Trump kids received preferential treatment? The same can be said Obama’s daughter. Does anyone doubt she entered Harvard through a special door? I mean no malice or disrespect but let’s face realities here.
2
What do you know about the qualifications of Obama’s daughter? Are you presuming that she didn’t have good grades and test scores, and if so, upon what information does this assumption rely?
1
And Mayor Diblasio wants to get rid of objective testing for the NYC standardized schools e.g. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science just because most of the accepted students with highest scores happen to be 1st generation hard working poor Chinese and Indian children living in Flushing Queens?
I am sorry many NYT readers don't want to read this but thank you Donald Trump for allowing the case against Harvard for their discrimination against Asians go to trial ...there needs to be more than lip service against discrimination, not only when it meets political needs.
3
Frank I think you are being a little harsh on the top tier colleges, who are spending millions in financial aid and legal fees to preserve their right to admit economically and racially diverse classes. As is typical, these efforts create outrage among the rich and privileged, who think that their children, buoyed by hundreds of hours of SAT prep courses and "the best' secondary schools, are entitled to a seat at the table.
Having graduated from Harvard, and shepherded my daughter through the process of evaluating and ultimately selecting a small Midwest liberal arts college, I can assure you with complete confidence that she received a much better college education than I did.
8
They rig the system to favor themselves and these are the folks who consider themselves our moral and intellectual superiors.
2
What happens when these ill-prepared kids get to the school and get overwhelmed? I wonder if they can research how those kids did in school once their parents got them in.
At MIT (where there are no legacy admissions or honorary degrees) they used to talk about how other schools have a “happy bottom quarter” of each class - kids who are not there to excel and are just glad to be there. At MIT, every kid who gets in was at or near the top of their class in high school and thus no one is happy to be at the lower end of the academic performance spectrum - the tech schools have what is known as a “miserable bottom quarter.”
4
The solution to this problem is to stop revering the Ivy League schools and hiring a more diverse workforce--racially, gender and University wise. I read Pedigree and the efforts top companies go to recruit Ivy League is crazy.
4
Besides the horrifying message this sends to their children, these are wannabe parents who can't afford to donate a library but are wealthy enough to grease the palms of those who can open the side door.
1
"...for once the colleges’ administrators were in the dark about them."
Hmm, really? How many fake sports stars never added to a team does it take to cause an administrator to get curious?
Lot's of $$ coming in to those programs probably helps them to look the other way and stay "in the dark."
This scandal is about our society's obsession with sports, which manifests itself in putting athletes above academics. Schools keep getting bigger endowments from sports-obsessed alumni when the school wins championships. Coaches are the top earners at colleges, and that says it all.
Do we want better educated students or do we want to win the big game? Until we face up to what we have become, this tragedy is just one more layer of shame that has been piled on.
3
"There are many takeaways from this appalling story. One is how crassly hypocritical parents can be. I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle."
So have we come to a point where it's openly acknowledged that conservatives are not concerned with equal opportunity and an even playing field? If so, it makes sense that liberals taking part in cheating would be, as Bruni states, "hypocrites."
Obviously, conservatives can't be hypocrites if we assumed they never cared in the first place.
If so, at least Bruni, who leans conservative, is at least open about his implicit biases.
Ms. Huffman was arrested by 10 highly armed FBI agents pushing guns into her face. This is ridiculous, regardless how outrageous the corruption and bribery is. Did they honestly believe a middle aged woman woken up at 6am will start a gun battle with them?
Don't think so. So what are the reasons for such theatrical and testosteron driven grandstanding? In some other forum someone lays it out: it all adds to the officers pay. Dangerous arrest bonus. Overtime bonus for the hour of the day. 10 men are at least 6 who would have been off duty otherwise. etc. If one person dropped by with a note and asked them to come downtown to answer some questions, those agents would be the poorer for it. I can hear them cackling in the changing room already.
5
Didn't our President-- who got thrown out of middle school-- go to Wharton? Let's stop pretending too that this is new and more importantly, that this doesn't get someone's child somewhere in life.
6
I remember very well, when we took our daughter on a campus tour at Yale (among others), how one father in our group fairly sneered at us, saying something along the lines of "Oh, look...another girl from the Midwest who thinks she belongs in an Ivy league school." His tone and demeanor just dripped wealth and privilege, and I felt rage, shame and embarrassment all at once. Amazingly -- without paying anyone off or having our daughter's SAT scores doctored -- she got into Columbia and did very well, both in undergrad and law school. The sting of that boorish man's comments has never left me, though. It surprises me not to see this scandal emerge. The wealthy and powerful will always find a way to get whatever they want....always have, always will.
11
These kind of activities have been going on for generations. Some of the more recent activities may have different methods than before, but the immoral and unethical behaviors used to get privileged children into elite schools have long been the case. Let's start with the first family. It is common knowledge that our President Donald Trump didn't do well at Fordham University. Notwithstanding some bogus reports flowing on the internet, his failures there were known in NYC social circles. How he got into the University of Pennsylvania is a question isn't it since he couldn't hack Fordham. And Fordham is a very good school but most would agree it doesn't have quite the cachet of an IVY league school. Given recent disclosures by Michael Cohen, why can't the President show his grades from both schools as he thought Barack Obama should have done? What is a fact is that Trump did not graduate with "Honors" because that is a matter of public record. My guess he was just another rich kid, who like many of these kids, couldn't make the "honest" grade or gain acceptance. So Trump and Jared are the generational evidence of money buying the mask of privilege while displaying that actual class, integrity and honor still elude those not willing to work or having actual accomplishments based on their own merits. I applaud the work of the men and women at the FBI fighting for the truth and justice that our country deserves. Maybe that's why Trump and his complicit minions really hate them.
4
I went to a state university on a New Jersey state scholarship in the 1970's. I don't care if wealthy parents grease admissions. I 'd like to see more scholarships based on financial need. cstudents .
2
Money can buy you anything, including admission to Ivy league colleges. What is the surprise?
Never underestimate the power of Money. There is one money-proof way to do thing. It is called A.I.
or maybe not
3
I find the hypocritical parents point cuts both ways. Wealthy liberals will preach fairness and cheat the system. Wealthy conservatives will preach meritocracy and cheat the system. The thing these people all have in common is they're parents, they're all wealthy, and they're willing to cheat the system.
We can't do much about the first point. The other two though? I'm open to suggestions.
1
Nothing here about how widespread this cheating is. No question that it's disgusting and that it harms applicants who were qualified bit not accepted. But before we start condemning the college admissions system, we need to know what proportion of all applicants are admitted by these dishonest means. We also need to know which of these cases are egregious and which are legitimate attempts by colleges to admit diverse student bodies--as in the case of admitting of first family member to attend college. There's a difference between an endemic problem with widespread malefactions and one that is limited in scope. The remedies are not the same. In the current situation, how many families are there who have both the money and the desire to get their kids into college in this underhanded way as a proportion of college applicants in a given year? There's no doubt that there are well-to-do families with cultural resources that aid their children who don't cheat. Nothing wrong with that. Unless we know the scope and nature of the problem, the chicken-little handwringing is out of place.
1
I suspect a lot of these parents rationalized what they were doing as an alternative route to college admissions open to the wealthy and thus not really cheating. Like joining an expensive country club. It is hardly a surprise. But what one does have to wonder about is where were these universities. No one at the university wondered when Little Suzy didn't show up to play her supposed sport? Not these tightly run, highly competitive athletic programs? Shame on them.
1
This scandal will not stop the cheating. The wealth in white privilege is like water - it will find the tiniest crack to seep into and then the crack will, eventually, get wider.
3
@DA Mann -- the people most impacted by these policies are middle class white kids, who have the academic credentials to get into these schools, but whose parents aren't rich enough to buy buildings or bribe coaches. They also aren't poor enough to qualify for much (if any) financial assistance or admission to meet "diversity" objectives.
Keep blaming "white privilege" with no acknowledgement of the fact that the 0.01% is very different even from other white kids, and you'll end up with 4 more years of the orange man -- at best.
I was with the critique offered in this article, UNTIL, the author had to, just had to, enter the political when there was no need to and said " I bet..." that many were liberals--that were hypocrites. He did this however, with no evidence and he even forgets that he employs the Kushner example--whose family is certainly not of the liberal strip. Really, must this also be politicized with no evidence!
The clear inequities in the college admissions system, which according to mythology is supposed yo be based on merit, are just a reflection of the inequities in society as a whole The system is rigged to benefit rich and powerful people, especially rich and powerful white people.
1
Kids need their parents' blessing and belief in them - not a bribe to get them into Yale or Stanford or any school.
2
I told my grandson to change the first sentence of his college entrance essay. Does he owe me money?
2
People who are educated in rigged systems create rigged systems.
1
Just curious as to why Mr. Bruni focuses on so-call 'liberals' when this isn't scientifically indicated. Since when is the "Ivy League" system considered to be a "liberal" one?
1
Why insert, "Some may be liberals...," into the discussion? Entitled wealthy cheaters are just entitled wealthy cheaters. What I find hard to believe is how the "kids" had no idea that their parents were cutting corners. How can you not know your grades were underwhelming? Didn't these kids read their applications before they were sent to the schools? One parent supposedly paid $500,000! Amazing. I'm sure many parents with worthy kids would like to have a fifth of that to just pay for tuition at a good state university.
1
WHOA!!! How dare you make and publish the assumption that "more than a few parents charged are proud liberals."
Let me tell you this: I bet that the overwhelming majority are conservative republicans who seemingly know no bounds in doing what it takes to preserve their advantage and privilege.
1
Maybe they’ll try to use the “affluence” defense.
The rich get richer and the poor take it in the neck......where's the story here?
Other than the systematized aspect of this latest manifestation of wealth getting what it wants, I'm at a loss to see the 'new' revelation.
Affirmative Action for the underprivileged as a result of too much wealth? Where is our sympathy and compassion, it must be so devastating.
So here's the thing: once you know that your fellow parents hire tutors to help their children get A's in AP classes and top SAT/ACT scores, and do things like get doctor's notes so their kids have more time to take exams and write papers, what should you as a parent do? Put your knives down in a knife fight (college admissions process) and hope it turns out okay for your child? The process rewards pressing every advantage you have, academically and athletically. How to change the process? Straight up score on a standardized test for which prep materials are unavailable? All college applicants given a number...no names, no gender, no nationality, no question about family history, no extracurriculars, no athletics, no financials, nothing on the application that could count as an advantage? See where this is heading?
2
It's interesting to me that that pundits all seem so unsurprised. Maybe because they went these elite schools?
I grew up in a working class neighborhood. Nobody's dad was a doctor or a lawyer or stock broker. Nobody's kid went to Yale or Stanford. I knew went to the local community college, and a few went on the state universities. I'm pretty shocked.
I always knew that people got into elite schools because their father went there. I always that if you were a big donor, your kid would get in one way or another. I knew that schools bent the rules for great athletes.
But I had no idea there were actual businesses set up to write essay and take tests and fake resumes for rich kids, and parents who'd pay $500k (!) to get their kid into the right school. And that the system was set up in a such a way that these people could deduct the money from their taxes. That takes it all to another level.
My reaction: we are so doomed. Our social and economic elites are thoroughly corrupt, and so are the institutions that train the students who go on to run our companies and our courts, our government and our economy. No wonder we have Trump, opioids, the largest budget deficit in history, climate change, etc.
5
My guess is that these parents have been greasing their children's wheels since preschool. For years I taught in what was once a nice little prekindergarten/elementary school in southern California. By the time I left five years ago the parent hysteria over test scores, grades, entrance essays, sports, community service--all to get to the best middle school!--was more than I could take.
5
The poster parent for this disgusting scandal of new gilded age corruption of privilege is not the actresses, it is the white shoe Wall Street lawyer named in the story, Gordon Caplan, who should be prosecuted, sent to prison, removed immediately by his law form Wilkie Farr, et. al., which in turn should immediately initiated disbarment proceedings against him and revoke his partnership.
He has not only ruined his life but the life of the kid he made into a cheat and a liar, who will be followed by this through an entire life. The man is a fool as well as a gangster with a law degree and why does he think he can do this? Because he is rich and represents the rich and values only one thing, money, money, money.
This is a scandal of privilege that speaks to a nation losing all sense of proportion and values.
Well, guess what, privileged classes, enough of us still have essential grounding and valued to be coming for you in every way we can, starting at the ballot box. It is time the laws take the people down.
3
Any university that receives federal funds for anything should be banned from giving an advantage to an unqualified student because his parents made a big donation. That is just openly cheating instead of hiding it the way these parents did.
1
Why is no one talking about the advantages that the children of faculty get? This happens at the level of admissions to undergraduate schools, but also highly competitive , government subsidized programs for PhDs and MD/PhDs.
I have never understood why affirmative action for the underprivileged has been villainized, and there is no outrage
when a medical school/law school class is full of the children of its faculty.
3
More and more we are learning of the injustice wealth plays in this country. Not just against minorities and women but also against the poor and middle class. Where one receives their educational degrees impacts entry to opportunities throughout their lives!
Colleges are institutions of learning.
Learning has to be defined to include languages, literature, natural sciences, social sciences, mathematics, philosophy, classics, engineering, computer science and the like.
Sports, fraternity activities, socializing, etc have little to do with learning of this type. Of course no one is saying that the categories in this paragraph are not important for human deveopment. They are but as secondary processes helping but not defining academic learning.
In the US, we have excellent learning institutions. Most of the student population in top schools these days focus on learning while not ignoring the extracurricular activities of their liking. But there is a big group of students, big enough to be problematic, whose focus is hardly academic. Interestingly, I always found that group tho have pretty close correlation with the problematic admissions: legacy, sports recruiting, children of big donors who are not even alumni.
What I propose is to take out sports for example out of the college experience. Students can participate in any sports around campus by joining community teams, facilities, competitions.
European academic institutions in the continent whose alumni produced most of the western canon (arts and sciences) follow that model.
You can not argue that Heidelberg, Vienna, École Politechnique, École Normale Superior (Ulm), Normale di Pisa are NOT at par with my family’s alma maters: Harvard, Yale and Columbia.
3
There is one hopeful takeaway from this scandal: At least the Justice Department isn't so hopelessly compromised that it didn't shy away from its pursuit of the wrongdoers, no matter how wealthy and influential.
1
I am glad I taught my kids that they should work hard and make their own way. They are both well educated college grads who are happy in life. I did not need to hover over them nor take test for them. They know they are loved and supported but that they own their mistakes and the consequences of those mistakes. In other words, they are adults.
3
Colleges are institutions of learning.
Learning has to be defined to include languages, literature, natural sciences, social sciences, mathematics, philosophy, classics, engineering, computer science and the like.
Sports, fraternity activities, socializing, etc have little to do with learning of this type. Of course no one is saying that the categories in this paragraph are not important for human deveopment. They are but as secondary processes helping but not defining academic learning.
In the US, we have excellent learning institutions. Most of the student population in top schools these days focus on learning while not ignoring the extracurricular activities of their liking. But there is a big group of students, big enough to be problematic, whose focus is hardly academic. Interestingly, I always found that group tho have pretty close correlation with the problematic admissions: legacy, sports recruiting, children of big donors who are not even alumni.
What I propose is to take out sports for example out of the college experience. Students can participate in any sports around campus by joining community teams, facilities, competitions.
European academic institutions in the continent whose alumni produced most of the western canon (arts and sciences) follow that model.
You can not argue that Heidelberg, Vienna, École Politechnique, École Normale Superior (Ulm), Normale di Pisa are at par with my families alma maters of Harvard, Yale and Columbia.
1
Just as we have the finest politicians money can buy, if you are wealthy your children can have the finest education that money can buy. Every person whose parents are wealthy/famous who is in one of the elite schools will now be eyed with suspicion as to how he or she gained admission, tarred with the same brush as those known to have gained admission through fraud. The children who were admitted because of the fraud that was perpetrated will bear the shame of this for the rest of their lives. The damage is now done.
This must go beyond just admission, because once admission has been assured, the student has to perform. Are passing classes and getting high grades part of the deal? Do parents hire stand-ins to take tests?
As others have pointed out Frank, I am surprised that you took a cheap shot at liberals. Double standards are an equal opportunity employer.
This has certainly damaged the reputation of these schools, and debased the achievement of gaining admission to one of them.
1
Oooops. One of these kids designed the boeing 737.
1
Ever look at the foreign student's integrity, bankrolling our Universities wholesale? Do you really think those grades and accomplishments are real? When was it not the money? What do the Trump idiots think goes on in the world? Our bourgeois aristocracy is like any other... "we got ours, pull up the ladder" and claim deserved not entitled or bought. In this country, everything is for sale and everyone. FAA? Boeing? Yale? Keep voting for Trump you 99%, and preserve the 1%. Tragedy is you would have gotten the same from Hillary.
1
The major difference between this story and what has routinely gone on for generations is that the colleges and universities didn't get the money. "Legacy" admissions and "Gentleman C's" have gone hand in hand since long before George W. Bush's tenure as a C student or the current White House occupant's time in college that was so marginal that he threatens to sue if his grades are released.
Anyone who got into an elite college on merit met someone who clearly was NOT there to study and learn. The "Gentlemen" were there to drink, chase girls, and find hardworking smart strivers who would run their businesses for them so they could keep drinking and chasing girls.
At least in Jared Kushner's case, the university benefited from the nepotism. In these cases, the money went directly to various people, mostly athletic coaches and admissions officers.
Yes, some (a lot?) of these "kids" are "innocent" "victims."
But let's be honest. They are not kids they are young adults, and should be fully aware of there college admissions process.
They are knowing beneficiaries of the growing problems income, and wealth, inequality in this country.
1
For all the wealth these 'stars' have, you'd think they would understand that their money would have been better spent on tutors and rowing coaches.
3
It's not shocking, its more business as usual. With the tremendous wealth that has been created for that top 1%, why is this surprising. What I so dislike is the scale of it, the many parents who push their kids to serve in city programs, or read to the blind, or other projects in order to serve their own desires, the busy-ness of the mothers mostly who find the tutors and other people who will fit the kid into the best way forward. And of course as in all athletic endeavors, the bribery to get the kids into admissions of being in a sport in which they may have never participated. So tutors, paid essay writers, college admissions, coaches and admissions offices all in on the scam, not to mention the parents.
1
My son attended a prestigious New England boarding school and his feeling was that he would have placed into an Ivy League school if he’d been top of his class at the local public high school rather than being at the upper middle of his class in his extremely competitive boarding school. The students at such top schools are competing for entrance into Ivy League and other top-tier schools with each other— not with all the students in the region or state. The top colleges have drastically limited their intake from top boarding and private schools in order to appear more fair. So, I’m fact, very smart kids from private schools are often at a disadvantage to public school kids who may not be as smart academically but for whom colleges are trying to level the playing field. Where the system runs afoul is when the boarding school kids who have very wealthy parents who can donate in the seven figures to colleges. Then they’re in, but test prep coaching isn’t what does it.
6
@Lural There's a false equivalency in your argument. The Ivies may have "drastically" cut back on admissions from elite private schools, but they started from such a large percentage these these students still have the advantage over students chosen from the vastly greater pool of public schools — not to mention the influence of gifts and "legacy" students. So pardon me if I don't feel too sorry for your son.
How about publishing the names of senators, congressmen, governors, and corporate big-shots whose kids are studying or have recently graduated from the Ivy League? America would be entranced to see how genius seems to descend from the politically-connected. I won't name names here because I want this comment published.
3
Shameful, disgusting and abhorrent, but it is the IVY league system. Money equals power and power equals the opportunity for a select few to molest and corrupt even the best intended systems. The worst part is that the cancer of monetary corruption and individual shamelessness has metastasized throughout every cell of what used to be the American Dream..
2
Great article!!!
(Somewhat surprised to see it published in the NYTimes).
1
So many of the wealthy young people I know don't have any responsibilities except to get to whatever sports they are playing. I wasn't part of the sports mania generation and I think it has become far too important. They don't clean their rooms, they have tutors for everything so that they do well. So what do they expect? Everything they've ever hoped for. Meanwhile, back at the ranch they are learning from their parents how to game the system. After all they have money. They get to have everything they want. Again, money is driving morality out of our system. And I guarantee these people are the bedrock of their communities. So the character is built on sand. That's what we got, folks. Moral corruption. But we have state of the art kitchens, three car garages, media rooms, swimming pools, 400 pair of shoes.
4
I taught at an Ivy for decades. The second-rarest creature in that world is a smart rich kid. The true oddity? A rich kid with ethics. I met one once--and by 30 he was private-jetting from Maine to Martinique with the rest of his ilk. The way to level the admissions playing field? Lock each applicant in a room. Hand over two essay questions. Start the clock. That's it. Intelligence will out.
13
@Erica. Wow! And I thought I was cynical.
@Sparky
I prefer 'realistic.' I worked at ETS too, years back. To the list of things you really don't want to see manufactured--laws, sausage--definitely add the standardized admission test.
1
@Erica -- amen. I'm not sure how else you would ever be sure that the person being admitted is actually the person who did the work to get in.
1
I seem to be missing something. Are these elite universities known for rigorous academic programs? Is it more difficult to graduate from Yale than it is from (for example) a state university?
If so, how come these under qualified kids didn't flunk out?
If not, how much of the so-called value of these universities is the simple prestige of exclusivity rather than the elite education that they are supposed to provide?
If the value of a degree from Yale, Harvard or Stanford is in the ability to get in rather than the ability to graduate, then I question the real value of the degree itself. Of course the ability to meet and interact with other future leaders is valuable in its own right. But if the institution is really providing a superior education, shouldn't under qualified students flunk out?
Meanwhile, the children of wealthy parents have another advantage that I remember from my days at a state university. They don't have to waste time and effort finding the money to pay for it. And now days, they don't have the added worry of graduating with crushing dept.
4
This just in: even at the very best schools, it’s always been posisble to find the easiest courses and slide through with Cs. That’s made a lot easier if you don’t have to worry about money, or social life, or figuring out how to just slide along. Then you got your sheepskin. Who care sif you’re an idiot? Worked for some Bushes, worked for the current Prez.
So thanks for attacking them lib’rul collitches, but...
By the way, does it ever occur that if you’re cheerleading for capitalism, this is exactly what capitalism produces?
4
I work for a college prep nonprofit that partners with low-income high schools. One of our services is heavily editing student essays. I often wonder how many admissions/scholarship essays are actually written by the students applying for them.
2
how many wrote their own essays? possibly none. but the ruse is quickly revealed in freshman English when it turns out even prep school grads can't write a laundry list by themselves. long ago, when I was in college, this presented me with a great opportunity. I never actually wrote another student's essays, but, for a modest fee, I would take them by the hand and lead them, word by excruciating word, phrase by agonizing phrase, from topic sentence to conclusion. somehow, by college, I thought everyone would be able to at least write. quelle suprise! so, I was monetizing the skills requred by the NY State Regents, as taught in the public NY City high school President Trump should have attended had he not be sent to rich kid reform school upstate. who knows how he would have turned out if he had just walked five minutes from his manse to regular school? perhaps he would have been shunted to the nearby trade school. or maybe he would have learned something.
Many University/College degrees do not prepare students for the real working world.
The biggest question in my mind is if so many clearly under qualified/ unqualified students are admitted into these very prestigious schools and are able to graduate from them, how can the quality of the education in these prestigious schools be any better than that of the other average schools that these same students would have got admission into on their own? The answer appears to be that surviving the academics in these prestigious schools is much easier than getting into them. So why all the hype about admitting very smart and accomplished students when your average student can also graduate easily. Suggest that these schools should save their monies on fake application evaluations and have a lottery system from which they randomly select the number of students. This should be done publicly. This will solve all the controversies surrounding a fair and equal admissions process.
3
This reminds me of the Brett Kavanaugh story:
A very average guy at Georgetown Prep whose diploma from there gave him far more credit than his actual transcript. His legacy status and Dad's contributions made a party-hard teen rise above more qualified candidates in the Admissions Office.
His days in New Haven proved to be a continuation of his GP days with his fraternity.
He is the poster boy for a huge number of very average people whose on-paper "qualifications" of prep school, the Ivy League, and connectedness are far greater than the person himself.
7
Here is an idea: Take the SAT off the table, it's archaic, unnecessary, faulty, catering to certain style of learning and test-taking skills. It doesn't measure creativity, empathy, and social skills. Furthermore, guarantee all seniors a spot in a state college.
2
My kids grew up mostly in international schools in Asia.
Great schools, for the most part, but hyper-competitive re: college admissions and resume building. Plenty of helicopter parents.
When the kids told me that they were the only ones in their honors classes without private tutors I was surprised. When they mentioned that most of their classmates took test prep classes on Saturdays and in the summer, I wondered why any parent would lock their kid in a class room during so many non school hours.
When my older daughter told me that one of her close friends (the one who had told her about super scoring) had taken the SAT 13 times, I didn't know what to say. When the kids told us that some of their friends suspected that we might be "bad parents" because we refused to enroll the kids in test prep courses, required them to play a sport or do the play, and laughed at the prospect of hiring private college guidance advisors, I laughed.
When college admissions results came out, there were an extraordinary number of kids accepted to elite schools. Many of the kids were extremely hard working and bright, and II worried about some becoming excellent sheep.
But there was also a far too great percentage of kids whose achievements didn't merit anything close to admission at Harvard, Yale or Stanford. My kids and their friends knew the score: wealthy parents, some legacies but most not, sending megabucks to elite U.
2
The young adults, do know their parents cheat and lie.
Some object, but many just play the game.
The gamers and their progeny are losers.
IMHO
1
I think pretty much everyone agrees that what these parents did was wrong.
But is it wrong to send your child to tutors or test-prep courses? To give your kids spending money so they can participate in extra-curricular activities instead of getting a paying job? To sign them up for travelling sports teams or extra training?
How do we stop society from rewarding things that are easily attained by a few, gotten through sacrifice by more and simply out of reach of many?
Do we start backward from graduation -- encouraging graduate programs and employers to stop favoring those with degrees from these elite institutions? Do we change the admission process to a more personal one, so that it's less easy for test scores and essays and grades and extra-curriculars to count, with more emphasis placed on what that student is actually like? To make it more important that someone can talk about their experiences than write about them in an essay that might have been edited or even ghost-written?
I'm reading many complaints about this process, but precious few ideas on how to make it more fair.
2
Simple, actually. Take the names off the applications; bar communications with admissions offices; legally disconnect coaches, endowment officers, etc., from the process.
Voila.
Except, never going to happen.
2
@Robert -- take the names off, but you still wouldn't know who was taking the tests, who completed the coursework ...
There is also the completely legal post-graduate or "pg year" at a private prep school. If the scion's grades aren't up to snuff they go for essentially grade 13 to get them into, usually, a less desirable major at the the preferred Ivy.
Also interesting that in most news accounts Felicity Huffman is the parent mentioned, what about her husband well known actor Bill Macy? Seems he was involved too.
2
There is a lot of blame to go around, however, it is clear that colleges are for-profit businesses and should be taxed as such.
2
My first reaction to this was to wonder why this has been portrayed by the media as a "cheating parent" issue. It doesn't make it right, but I'm not shocked by the notion that parents will use their privilege unfairly on behalf of their children. The old quote attributed to Leo Durocher, "If you ain't cheating you ain't trying comes to mind," comes to mind. That said, the media buried the lead. Prestigious institutions of higher learning are allowing this to happen. That is your story here.
2
Hey the weather changed the other day, what else is new.
The Times has done it again. They scooped the National Enquirer. A scandal with a celebrity in the mix, an Emmy award winner no less! And its the old story of the rich manipulating the system. That's always a smash hit. And dust off the American song of social mobility, no aristocracy, no birth right nobility. What do you win, if you win in America? A boring country that is egocentric and believes it's founders who were slave owners were really great people. Look at Donald Trump. If we believe his claim, he's a self made man. Has success improved him? Is he a person with whom you would entrust your daughter? He's killing people with drone strikes all the time. He refuses to lift sanctions on North Korea so he's keeping food out of the mouths and bellies of children and why? Because North Korea wants to have nuclear weapons. I wonder where they got the idea of nuclear weapons? Perhaps from the only country to ever use them to kill people, the U.S. of A. Why does Iran want nuclear weapons? Why do they hate Americans? Is it total nonsense? It turns out they are humans too and don't like it when a foreign country installs a Shah to direct their country not for the benefit of the people who are governed but for the interests of a few people in a foreign country ten thousand miles away. Stanford and Yale and so on produce American war criminals who celebrate their deeds and who believe the hype.
3
@Robert I'm guessing you are calling me a Stalinist and saying I condone violence in the service of an ideal or murder of any kind for whatever reason. I think I made it clear that I am against killing others or forcing starvation whatever one's justification. I feel this way because I do not want to be killed myself or to kill anyone else. I believe everyone should adopt this position and stand up for it. If someone says let's kill everyone with freckles or everyone who is Armenian, I'm always going to ask why? If Stalin said let's kill everyone who uses handshakes or napkins or has different ideas than mine, I would not consider that justifiable. If God told me to kill my son, I would break ties with Her or Him or It. The real issue here is that you think we should develop our lives based on political philosophies which are just untested ideas whose merit comes from their proponents ability to confuse a large amount of people. When you saw war criminal and American in the same sentence you resorted to, well, that cannot be true. The suggestion that North Korea's poverty might result from sanctions imposed by the U.S does not make me a gulag cheerleader either. Does North Korea's leadership have a role in the countries poverty? Of course, but other countries' policies can affect it too. I am not opposed to communism or capitalism or whatever. I am against killing people whatever the reason. I think that is a good foundation on which to build a society.
“Garbage values,” is exactly right.
Why on earth are you taking a swipe at liberals here? What does that have to do with cheating parents? You assume they are liberals and that makes the bigger hypocrites? If they had been conservatives it would not be so bad?
There’s a difference between FELONY FRAUD and influence peddling. Why the Times is straining so hard to erase the line is baffling. Life ain’t fair, but there are rules.
If Russian oligarchs, Chinese leaders and African dictators can buy university admissions for their kids, why not America's 1%? I seem to recalled that the State Department even had to beg UCLA not to fail the daughters of the president of the Central African Republic in the interests of "international relations."And he was a bloodthirsty tyrant.
1
In some way these kids must be horrified. Knowing you’re a cheat your whole life. At some point no one can fix or compensate the lack of knowledge and ability for them anymore. Wealth may shield them for some time but not forever.
Let’s make sure the (multiple) Cheater in Chief at the White House is the only and last one who lied, bribed and schemed his way to this position.
25
@Susan I think knowing that they will never have a material want in their lives go unfulfilled will go a long way toward easing their pain.
4
@Susan Either they feel cheated, or entitled to the extent they become narcissists.
@Susan
I doubt most of these kids are in any way horrified; they have learned the lessons their parents' intended them to learn--that everything and everyone has a price and can be bought and sold.
Take a look at the YouTube videos of Loughlin's daughter who was bribed into USC. She seems vacuous and empty other than as a human commodity since from an early age she was trained to sell herself by becoming an "online influencer" boasting about how she is only going to school for the parties and to extend her "brand". She talks about how she furnished her dorm room with stuff from Amazon and other sellers who pay her to make such recommendations. Horrified!?-- these kids seem excited to have a whole new market to sell themselves to at college.
These young people should be ashamed, but they haven't the moral grounding to realize this.
4
Again, for the 1000th time, it's not "poor minorities, with mediocre test scores with the help of affirmative action" that are keeping your kids out of these schools.
10
True; thank God the Supreme Court has not allowed that.
1
I have never before agreed with anything that the author has written, but this time I do. Indeed, donations to universities should not play a role in admissions, and if they do, universities should be required to disclose that.
1
Here's a radical way to level the playing field: admit everyone and let the real cream rise to the top by going completely online. This would lower dramatically lower costs, and provide, arguably, higher and more consistent quality than even the "best" universities offer. Top professors could provide canned lectures supported by chat rooms for questions and discussions, and advanced technology, like retina and fingerprint scanning, could ensure it's the student completing the tests and writing the papers, rather than Mommy and Daddy.
2
Except for the minor technical detail that, generally speaking, online classes are garbage. And easier to scam.
3
@Robert
I completely disagree. I've taken Harvard College courses (often with fellow undergrads as teaching assistant -- no worries, they've assured us they can always google questions they can't answer) and online classes and, in general, I've found the online ones far better and learned far more.
And regarding scamming, please don't be fooled: mommy and daddy "help" along with paid services, to use for writing papers and such, continue throughout college.
1
Please don't limit "garbage values" to the "elite" you criticize. One need only look at the millions who support - financially and voting - a leader with no values. They are as unprincipled as the elites they excoriate.
6
Once again, image over substance casts a large privilege-shadow over the US of A. I guess a good analogy here would be to intervene in Darwin's theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Save and protect the weak, the cheaters, the liars and kill the strong. The future will reveal the resultant mess this corrupt and self-serving fraudulent game of dress-up bears.
As the corruption by money of nearly every American institution becomes more apparent, the rage of the Bolsheviks begins to be understood from a different perspective.
When lives and futures, my countryfolk, are secretly bought and sold on black markets, it is time to grab our lanterns and sticks.
2
Trump University was not part of this scam, it was a fraud all by itself. Just remember who owned it.
can't imagine anything more honest than a pout and a lip curl - i know many of these young men snowmen and they were the first to select where they truly belong, which schools, which residences, which frat or sororities - all the basic s that must be borne in mind and without any observed anxiety - after all, nous and girls, our better labelled Girls and Boys, Girls to Tease and Boys to Sleeze,. I noticed a decisive lack of bebe, once accepted, and a dead-and-dozy appearance that covered for sophistication when the real deal was flay-out misery.
And then there is the elephant in the room, which not even the NY Times has the courage of mentioning: why should anyone be accepted because of prowess in sports? What exactly about the ability of kicking a ball in a field makes a student academically excellent? Athletically talented, academically mediocre students steal slots from hard-working students. The only reason is that sports are an incredible cash cow for universities. Not to speak of the shameful cover-up of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in soccer players: American universities behave just as immorally as tobacco companies. Truly shameful. You Americans should ask your university presidents: "How could you? You knew it all along, and yet you pursued your greed over your students' health".
4
College admissions, the criminal justice system, the tax code, etc. Is there any doubt that every single aspect of American society is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful? And to think that there are people still foolish enough to think that we are a meritocracy.
3
I earned my way friend. If you did not earn your way, perhaps your assessment of your talent and it’s market value is belied by the market. No? Capitalism rewards success. The successful are rewarded with wealth. If the system worked as you suggest, we would be Venezuela. We are not Venezuela; we are the envy of the world and the greatest society ever known to exist. Because we reward success. Always and in all ways.
I think this news is among the best arguments for reparations that I have seen yet.
The students admitted through the deception and duplicity of their parents were most likely aware of what was going on and saw no wrongdoing as long as they were admitted to their preferred colleges. These shameless parents have made their own children complicit in the fraud. What a valuable life lesson they have imparted to their offspring! It's okay to scam the system at all costs not just now but in the future when they enter the workforce after college.
1
Not even thru the article and suspect my favorite phrase may be "leeching merit from the equation". emphasis on the leech.
The message to these kids is not “you can’t do this by yourself”. The message is what they’ve been getting all of their lives...that they are above the law. Meanwhile, as this scheme is uncovered, a lawsuit against Harvard to stop it from considering a candidate’s race among many other factors when admitting students continues. Disadvantaged students from far inferior schools, who somehow manage to stay focused and show tremendous promise against tremendous odds and without SAT prep classes, etc...are aggressively maligned and the impetus for lawsuits across the country.
I love how they throw in that some of these students posed as other ethnicities to take advantage of affirmative action. Well, I hope the false racial designation remains for their entire lives so they can reap all of the benefits that come from being a minority rather than a member of the wealthy elite.
I wonder if Clarence Thomas would still keep his law degree from Yale in a box in his basement had he been the beneficiary of wealth and privilege vs poverty and affirmative action.
1
So trump should certainly be in jail. He ran a school that was a fraud but got away with a fine.
1
Now this bribery to elite colleges have become the front page news , you are right what else is new ?
Now could we go back to trump`s right have man Jared Kushner, who got into Harvard by bribery done by his corrupt father is an open secret.
This person is putting our Country in danger by his unethical behavior and is using out hard earned tax payers dollar ?
Time for Bobby Mueller to charge the whole corrupt family !
2
"I bet that more than a few...are (hypocritical) proud liberals." I bet? Is that a citation? What difference does it make if some involved were or were not "proud liberals?"
1
Maybe this is the program that replaces the "unfair" affirmative action?
1
The swamp keeps getting deeper and wider.
1
The "What's New" in the title says it all. There has always been affirmative action for the wealthy.
1
Is affirmative action, with the exception of being legal, any different?... other experiences provide perspectives, a good friend I know, applied to Medical School at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, this is a public university, there is one test, taken by all, on the same day, and nothing that you have done before, and I mean, literally nothing, essays, high school grades, who your parents are, donations, skin color, sex, literally nothing else matters, one test, one score, one rank and if you make it (odds not very good), you have your medical education paid for... my friend told me that there were poor Venezuelan immigrants/refuges with questionable legal status taking the test and if they made the rank they were be on par with anyone else... this is extreme, but maybe all this garbage about "extra curricular activities," "who you know," "interviews," etc., are irrelevant at best, and possibly (maybe probably) a source of immense corruption and unfairness at their worst... just ask your "average lower socioeconomic" Asian student with 1600 on the SAT and applying to Harvard...
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"Our country’s best schools are supposed to be engines of social mobility and the gateways to dreams. Sometimes they’re just another sour deal."
Our country's best schools are, in fact, engines of white affirmative action.
3
The major problem is that athletics takes precedence over academics for why the coaches could be bribed. Why should athletes be admitted based solely on their prowess in sports?
A principal’s son, no less, who gets into Harvard for soccer but has to cheat to pass and is caught up in that scandal can still graduate to make six figures. And that is lying and cheating USA. And does the jock play anymore? That was his sole ticket in and how did that help anyone except Harvard’s soccer team and alumnae support? The whole admission process is a scam.
4
This article is an ironic follow-up to Frank Bruni's previous column, "In Defense of the Gerontocracy."
Once we acknowledge that the economic engine of this country in its infancy was slavery, then we can crush the mythology of merit as the American paradigm based on all being created equal and all having the same opportunity deriving from said equal creation. Total...you know what. The best thing that can be said of America, I am beginning to realize, that i. comparison to other bad options it was a better one...unless you were a slave. Then, ignore everything I just wrote.
This whole affair is disgusting. I'm struck how ubiquitous are the photos of the two actresses involved while there are no photos, and no mention in Mr. Bruni's column, of high powered executives like Gordon Kaplan, Willkie Farr...law firm; Douglas Hodge, former CEO of PIMCO; or William McGlashan, Jr, of TPG, a giant private equity firm.
3
To me the really appalling one is the Giannulli child who really isn't interested in college and bragged on her blog about how she really wouldn't be attending because that academic stuff didn't really interest her and was off to Fiji for some reason as college was supposed to start. In the age of the Kardashians and all the awful stuff that family stands for we now have teenagers who are "influencers" because of the wealthy and socially prominent start they get in life. No wonder this country seems to be going down the tubes.
6
. It’s easy to preach fairness when you or your children are exempt from that fairness. While the elites sale white privileged to the masses the only real privilege is that they poses.
2
There is a pattern. It isn't subtle. It isn't meant to be. So-called "white collar crime" (nothing filthier) is the rot eating this country from the inside out. The FBI reported that those criminals cost this nation $300 BILLION in lost tax revenue a year. And yet...they're the only criminals who are treated with kid gloves.
Pity the young black man in Watts who steals a thing or has a single joint on him. The system comes down like the proverbial ton of bricks, bricks built into walls that don't budge. A white, female Hollywood star? She's heir to open air and free movement.
And ...let's be brutally honest...why not? Citizens watch and listen and know. We listen as a judge blathers about a "blameless life" about the man who CONFESSED to eight federal crimes and get a slap on the wrist and think...maybe a few months in prison is worth it if I get to keep the hundreds of millions I made playing dirty. We know that one single person went to prison over the 2007 meltdown (and blow me down, if it wasn't the only person of color) a crime spree that cost trillions of dollars, millions of homes, and the lives of those who committed suicide when ruined. We watch a "president" commit crime after crime without paying a price. Indeed, his crimes bought him a title.
So the only question that matters is this: When do we, the people get to the blow the whistle on this fixed game? Empty our prisons of those there because of the color of their skin and put the people who harm us away.
2
I am shocked, just shocked. Now you will tell me rich people also buy elections, rig the legal system and marry each other to keep the money in house. This is a plot to defame capitalism.
3
Why is anyone surprised by this story? Except for a brief period from about 1940 to 1975, the rich have run roughshod over everyone else. Time for a change—vote Democratic Socialist at every opportunity.
2
When you learn that dim bulb George W. went to Yale...what else do you need to know about the importance/value of an Ivy League education? Now W's daughter gets a spot as a "news" talker on NBC. Probably just a coincidence. At age 67, is it too late for me to become a "social media influencer"?
1
How do you think W got into Yale and Harvard?
Or Kushner into Harvard?
Or Trump onto Wharton?
2
And how did Donald Trump gain admission the the colleges he went to?
2
I’d characterize it as a perverse form of child abuse on top of the fraud and bribery. With parents like these who needs bogeypersons like drug dealers to mess kids up?
There’s favoritism, nepotism and who you know.
For once I am anxious to know what our dear leader thinks. Has any one read a tweet from Trump about this scandal? It would seem he would have some unique personal insight on the subject that would help us all understand it better.
1
Will the FBI hard work be for nothing and the parents will be "punished" with just a fine?
Any lawyer opinion?
the Justice Department announced the indictments of dozens of wealthy parents, including the Emmy-winning actress Felicity Huffman, for employing various forms of bribery and fraud to get their kids into highly selective schools. Some of them allegedly paid college coaches, including at Yale and Stanford, to lie and say that their children were special recruits for sports that the kids didn’t even play. Others allegedly paid exam administrators to let someone smarter take tests for their children. Millions of dollars changed hands.
http://www.jobz.pk/legal-employment/
I cannot be the only person who laughed uproariously when I heard about this story. Really? You are all "shocked, shocked!" to find that the wealthy bribe their children's way into elite schools? As Bruni reports, this has been going on for years-the only difference is that the cynicism and greed is so widespread that it no longer seems out of the ordinary. What is truly funny is that the same pathetic, shallow, wealthy and ruthless rich are the ones who scream the loudest about preserving our "meritocracy".
1
Umpiring a Little League game us brutal. The parenting on both sides is horrible.
2
The original Affirmative Action program was lots of family money. W. bragged about being a C student. His family connections got him into Yale. He surely did not earn his position. Duke openly admits that they consider family money when they make offers to incoming freshman. Are we shocked that the most expensive colleges in the world accept money from rich, white privileged people?
2
Waiting for Trump to weigh in on this -- please.
Doesn't anyone smell something stinky about this? Haven't we always known that the wealthy - whatever the political affiliation - have done what they can to get their kids into the best schools? Why the sudden outrage? Why is this news now? Why the focus on Hollywood actors? I smell a rat trying to distract our attention. Don't you?
Next time someone blames “affirmative action” for his or her kid not getting in somewhere, mention this scandal.
Turns out fellow over-entitled people are the true culprits.
2
Crime only applies to poor rich, as the super rich can buy their way into top schools anyways (just need to donate a whole building).
When did USC become a elite school that needs bride to get in?
What would you expect from Hollywood? It’s a planet inhabited by academic challenged children of financially gifted parents. And yet, these sanctimonious bullies are raising social justice warriors!
2
Jared Kushner again! And yet...
Interesting but not surprising that all of the published violators are liberals yet Mr. Bruni found a way to mention only Jared Kushner who has nothing to do with this.
That $2,500,000 that Kushner paid is a witch hunt.
It's rigged in many other ways as well -- just ask those Asian students who were rejected by the morally sanctimonious bigots at Harvard.
If we cared about fairness, we would do what European countries do and limit admissions to academics.
That's all. Test for academic accomplishment, and test for aptitude (bring back the real, IQ-correlated SAT). No geographical, racial, ethnic, gender, athletic, legacy, donor, or class preferences.
2
@Josh Hill,
Yep.
In many ways, affirmative action for POC and the rural poor is the papier-mache that american unis use to try to cover up the corrupt underpinnings of the admissions process.
And, as many commenters have pointed out, that corruption manifests both legally and illegally.
1
As a parent of a high schooler who is working VERY hard to get into a high academic school on his own merits and on his own actual D1 athletic ability, I can't even tell you how infuriating this is! May the faces of these shameless parents be blasted across the media and may they receive appropriate punishment...
1
Wonder what Fred Trump shelled out for Donald to The Wharton School? He didn't get in for his grades as it turns out.
2
What's crazy is that the daughter of one of the cheating celeb Moms posted a video at one time that she was looking forward to college for the parties and gamedays and could care less about getting an education. Sad...Momma's gonna do the "perp walk" for something kid wasn't even interested in. SMH
1
Want your son to get a job with a union? Who do you know? Is this scandal any different or do we love it when the “elite “ are shown to be no better.
How about looking at the bribes our politicians are taking.
1
Shame on these parents!! But bravo to the men and women who exposed this injustice.
But these are ferociously liberal institutions with a student body whose parents heavily vote Democratic.
How can this be? Are the parents hypocrites?
1
Welcome to the world of Trumpland USA. Everyone and everything is for sale.
1
The real fraud here is the premise that "elite" universities provide a better education than many others. Having attended and taught at a variety of "elite" and "non-elite" universities, I am convinced there are hundreds of schools that can provide roughly equal opportunities for undergraduates to learn, if they seek out the best teachers, choose challenging courses, and put in the time and effort. It's mere snobbery to assume that a student who graduated from any Ivy League school is better educated or more otherwise qualified than a student who did not. But of course most people fall for labels, which "elite" institutions do nothing to discourage. It's high time for parents and their children to stop choosing schools for the bragging rights they confer, and also high time the rest of us to stop listening to them.
1
Buy a new wing for the school and you are a hero with a tax deduction, AND your not so bright kid gets into the school with a perfectly legal payoff.
But if you are merely rich and can’t afford a new wing, pay off the coach or the admissions counselor. If you get caught, you are a criminal.
Seems like real life. Sell billions of dollars worth of opioids, get museums named after you. Sell a bag of weed on the street, go to jail.
How these whorish “top ranked” schools maintain their academic brand is beyond me. They are nothing but institutionalized corruption and have been for a long time.
2
imagine yourself one of the rich kids whose parents used money and lies to get you into a prestigious college. how would you feel about yourself? how woud you feel knowing your parents were willing to lie and commit crimes to push you ahead, because they believed you were incapabe of satisfying their goals by yourself? inadequate? a disappointment? flattered? devastated? not only are these rich parents crooks, liars, and cheats, they are rotten parents (though they may convince themselves otherwise). another example of how having money in America makes you believe you are better than everyone else and deserving of special status, like an aristocrat. phooey!
You're spot-on Frank......must be a slow reporting day.....because the 1% manipulating 'the system' to their advantage sure ain't 'new news'.
It's probably true that some of the parents are Liberal, which should be pointed out, but it's also probably true that some of the parents are Conservative which Bruni doesn't point out. What's the difference? Liberals like to talk about equality and fairness and Conservatives don't generally bother. This is a PROBLEM.Our heritage as Liberals should be a proud one based on Labor Rights, Human Rights, Equality for All and Progressive Environmental Policy. Too many people who were radical or quasi-radical in the 60s are making big money and are so concerned about sending their kids to the "best" institutions. Hypocrisy is why we lose. When Speaker Pelosi says that trump is not good enough for impeachment this eerily sounds like a popular kid saying that an unpopular kid is not good enough to go to her party.We've got to get back to basics. We are people who work, not people who pay bribes to get into the "best" school.
"Our country’s best schools are supposed to be engines of social mobility and the gateways to dreams." Says who?
I don't think social mobility is in any of their mission statements. The myth of education as the great equalizer ignores the history of almost all of these institutions and the reality that many people do not share the belief that education is the holy grail. Most people in flyover country do not aspire to those "elite" private colleges. The state flagship is the goal.
Like it or not, college admissions is a zero-sum process. For every accepted applicant, another more deserving one is turned away. The current scandal of cheating and rank mendacity is a form of theft with real victims, and the perps deserve to be brought to account just like any other larcenist.
President Trump is right about one thing; the system is rigged, but it is rigged for people like him, his spawn and the über wealthy who wink, nod and support his vile presidency with the same tactics they use to leapfrog their kids by criminally crashing the admissions queue.
We can take solace in the knowledge that we have such ethically stellar role models in the highest reaches of our public life.
3
To all of the cynics here expressing that they're not surprised and that nothing will happen, I think you may be in for a surprise. This isn't a story with legs; it's an octopus of the Frank Norris variety, an institutional beast with a hundred tentacles, a hydra with a thousand heads.
This story has so many subcategories and enablers that it will keep lawyers and investigators busy for years. Consider...who were the students paid to take the tests? How were they groomed? Did their parents take cuts? Which proctors knew and let them get away with it? How?Who falsified the ID's? How were the coaches approached? How many heads of school or presidents of colleges knew? Which accountants were in on it? How many had some adult write their college essay? Which admissions counselors were in on it? How many others schools public and private are in on it? Which parents knew, didn't partake, but also didn't blow the whistle? How could the students, themselves, not have known if they knew they weren't physically taking the SAT? Should they now be yanked from their privileged classes?
This is the very tip of the iceberg. When the story is finally told, many will be implicated. There is only one way to ensure it never happens again. Lower the boom on the 1% and their filthy dirty games. Without accountability, we actively encourage criminal behavior. Enron wasn't enough? The collapse of 2007 didn't do it? A crime boss for a president? When is enough enough? Make those who play pay.
1
It is unsurprising to have another piece of evidence for the sad fact that the US is steadfastly developing into a corrupt banana republic. Economic inequality is the fuel on which this process runs. After making sure his schools are intimidated enough so they never release his transcripts our Dear Leader may want to make sure that the process how he got into Fordham and U Penn will likewise never be subject to disclosure.
3
My son had a very roller coaster high school back round. When it was time for college we didn't know what to do, we knew that our son was rebellious with a bright mind and difficult to place in a "case"We felt he didn't have any chance in an american college, so we were very surprise when he told us :I have a rv for an interview with a very good college , we drove him thinking it could be a good experience, saying nothing and expecting nothing. After the interview he didn't talk to us : ça va ça va!. Then he had a letter, he was accepted not on the ground of his high school performance, but his mind , his way of thinking, his openness to the world. he was not a traditional candidate the one you can put in case, the college board recognize his mind that all. Don't know if it was luck but he did it by himself we just drove him!!! That was 30 years ago other times
Frankly, while I supported my sons both financially as well as emotionally in their academic efforts, intervening in such a way as to connive their advancement on anything beyond their individual merit is a completely foreign concept. Is it no wonder now that we have a generation of children with the belief that are entitled to pretty much everything ?
How degrading for their children to learn through a federal indictment of the Parent’s actions. Unfathomable; provided, of course, that the child had no idea. But, is it reasonable when a child is a recruited athlete in a sport he or she didn’t play.....then, resigns the team after matriculating into the University? I don’t think so.
So, now, does the University ask any of these students to leave if still attending? I think the recruited athletes in this scam should be dealt with perhaps differently than some teenagers whose overprotective helicopter parents
paid this scamster money to fix the SAT/ACT exam scores......although, a C student suddenly performing in the highest percentiles of test takers probably knew in her heart something wasn’t quite right.
One would like to think the so-called “holistic” evaluation of applications works; really, that has become admissions officer code for discrimination of one kind or another. This episode with increasingly move admissions to a pure numbers game, GPA and test scores and, in that way, is a true tragedy for those of us who are late bloomers.
1
The so-called legacy admissions given to the children of rich alumni are an overt form of discrimination. Students whose academic credentials may be below average are admitted to top universities simply because their parents provided donations amounting to legal bribes.
In the meantime, Republicans cry foul over affirmative action claiming this is an unfair practice that dilutes the academic standards at colleges.
This episode has underscored the blatant hypocrisy of a double standard that has existed for decades.
2
Just wait- consider all of the lawsuits that will be brought about by students who were one or two positions away from gaining acceptance to these schools, especially those at the top of waitlists. This will get real nasty.
1
@Stan
I hope you're right
2
Regression towards the mean guarantees that rich kids, on average, are dumber than their parents.
The genetic recombination that occasionally produces genius is oblivious to socioeconomic privilege.
If this country is to maximize its human capital and thus maintain its pre-eminence, it must seek out the best and brightest.
For every college place taken by a half-wit trust-fund kid, some kid who could actually make a massive difference is left behind.
1
Great article, Frank, but is it possible that many of the hypocrites you write about could be proud conservatives, as well? Who pretend that we live in a meritocracy and that they are only participating in age-old practices because they have earned the right to do so and can afford to do so? Or is it possible that there is a class of people who are completely apolitical as long as their money can shield them from the "mess" of ordinary life and they can buy their way to anything?
"It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying — which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him — and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but how much of a difference is there, really?"
About $2 million actually. Which is relevant because this is a story of the 0.1% trying to keep up with the 0.01%.
The message it sends our children is a sad but true one you need to know to survive in this country. To succeed you need to know which rules you can break and which ones you can't. And access to breaking the right rules is usually lots of money. Rules only apply to poor people and if you make enough money before you get caught you might be able to avoid penalty. How many black and brown people are in jail for decades for drug offenses while the Sackler family made billions creating the biggest and deadliest drug crisis in history? Maybe like Kushner's Dad they'll spend a year or so in jail? But probably not. And even if they do, they'll still be able to keep all the money. And that's all that counts anymore, really.
1
Why is everyone so surprised? This is how it is around the rest of the world. The difference between other countries and the U.S. is that we're in denial about the inequities of the world, and think that we live in a true meritrocracy. When we finally accept that has never been the case, we won't be surprised at stories like this. We'll just think "it's about time".
1
The students for whom these crimes are done also suffer.
I attended a top school for graduate studies. I remember one friend whose family had donated a building the year before she was admitted—she would often break down in tears when out drinking, protesting that she really did deserve to go to that college. Of course, no one brought that up (we didn't know at first)—she herself knew the truth. And, to me, it was unfair of her family to work around the system to get their daughter into that school. The daughter was tortured by it, she knew the truth, and she felt like she was a fraud. Her family did that to her. Once in a while I look her up, and she seems to be doing fine with a modest life that is fulfilling—one that she could have had by attending probably any university in the USA. I think she was damaged by the efforts to lift her into a spot at a school that she knew she didn't deserve, and I wonder if she regrets it having been done in her name.
I'm guessing that most of the children in this scandal will also suffer, in most cases for things done by their families. While it is easy to see these young people as entitled and deserving of a comeuppance, I also do feel sorry for them—in their hearts they know they did not earn their spot and it can be very hard for them.
People: you can do fine at nearly any school. Show up, do the work, ask question, and make friends. That's it! Don't believe the hype!
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@Matt, somehow I don’t think Jered is shedding any tears.
35
@Matt. I don’t think they all suffer - not if they’ve been raised with the same sense of entitlement their parents seem to have. The daughter of a former colleague seems not to suffer at all - even though her mom re- wrote all of her high school papers, admission essays, and college papers. Privilege and entitlement seems to have been passed down from generation to generation in this case, and I suspect in many others.
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@Matt On the other hand, there is the story I heard about a student at one of the schools mentioned in this article, who after being accepted as a legacy and his parents donating millions to the school, paid fellow students to tutored him and write his reports for him. Dinner dates at expensive restaurants were also included in the deal!
22
Great (not) to know that the architect of middle east peace and a host of other important projects is (at best) a C student whose admittance to college was a fraud. Bruni is right. This is just a more sordid form of bribery.
1
Only charges have been filed. Just wait until the legal shenanigans begin to protect rich folks' reputations and spin the facts into oblivion. Not that I'm cynical or anything.
"I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle."
Why? I'm a proud liberal who let my own kids write their own essays, take their own tests, and choose their own school activities (or lack of school activities) without pressuring them. And I am fighting nepotism in my own workplace, where I am involved in hiring decisions. Why do you think I'm a hypocrite?
Good news for socialism. We’re almost to the tipping point of what working class people can endure in this corrupted oligarchy. Privilege and pedigree will be paying a very high price for these insults to hard work.
...and yet when I visit America I am regularly regaled with tales of how America has no class system...
There are none so blind as those that will not see.
These schemes are no different from the ones going inside the admissions office as they let in the wealthy, or diverse, or athletic kids ahead of just plain smart suburban kids.
The whole thing is a scam. Why are you surprised other scams exist around it.
And it’s a mess. Constantly meet kids from top schools who definitely not up to the standard of what you would expect.
Top school on resume means may be smart but you have to really verify.
Because may have just hooked their way in.
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Honesty Hats Off (HHO) Award this morning to Mr Bruni for this penetrating political point in his column:
"There are many takeaways from this appalling story. One is how crassly hypocritical parents can be. I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took..."
In fairness, HHO believes this this bet by Bruni is equally true for the stuffy right conservatives out there. Here's a couple of conundrums to ponder, irrespective of party-think:
1. There is no equal opportunity unless the needed skills are equal, irrespective of color. Competency must come first....think about that next time you have surgery.
2. Playing fields are already even. The outcome of the games played on it are dependent on skills and often some luck. It does neither team good to make it downhill. It's no longer fair play.
An appeal to Mr. Bruni---we need a top-notch exposé on the complicity of higher-education and the egregious putting its students in bondage. Government-secured limit-less loans make politicos equally complicit.
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The biggest problem with using legal or illegal ways of buying your child into an elite college is the damage you do by undermining the child's self-confidence and self-esteem.
1
How to put the 'boo' back in boola boola....
This makes my alma mater feel cheap, even as I got in honestly and worked like crazy to take advantage of that education...
There's a big difference between paying for tutors, coaches, or trainers to give your child an edge and for paying for people to fake test results, submit false claims, or falsify evidence of athletic ability - which is what these people did...And this irresponsible opinion piece only diminishes these serious revelations and the hard work done to expose this shameful criminal activity.This attempt to hijack the debate will only give these people cover...
Should NYT have published another article in place of this one by an author who couldn't master journalism for lack of opportunity because he had more economic disadvantages than Mr Bruni ?
Illegal and criminal stuff should be prosecuted and condemned.
However where to draw the boundary on influence of money in life is another issue. Whether its is education, sports, legal and justice system- people with more money will and always have an advantage. That is the whole point of having more money- more optionality and choice advantages.
Important thing is for the society to figure out how to blunt this advantage to somewhat more equitable extent as much as possible.
I think college education should be free. The system should rely more on actual scores. You can get a kid coach and tutor but it still requires hard work. People with lower economic background should be given some leeway by the college admissions- not at the expense of middle class kid who did well but at the expense of "backdoor and side door" entrants.
You can't remove influence of money in education system when the whole society is based on idea of success and money.
@Harjot Kahlon,
Frank attended a public ivy on a merit-based scholarship.
This is not a victimless crime. When the likes of Jared Kushner and Donald Trump are given a pass to be rulers of the universe without earning it, billions of people suffer.
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The parents who gamed the system should also be, first and foremost, charged with child abuse. Any minor child living with these parents should be removed from the home and the college aged child should be provided with professional counseling. Pray for these children as they are not privileged in any sense of the word.
Felicity Huffman's husband is the equally famous William H. Macy.
Let's put the Scarlet A for Admissions on both the male and female parents please.
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Good article, but you had to ruin it with this:
“I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle”
And what about the proud conservatives who talk ad nauseum about merit?
Or is it just accepted now that conservatives are hypocrites?
Beyond the cheating, this whole thing shows how misguided our nation is and how we place status over substance. The cutthroat mentality and the dual faces you invariably have to live must play a role in the suicide rate of our young children and adults. These kids are never gonna unlock any of humanity’s most pressing problems— they were never even given the chance since their parents didn’t have any confidence in them to forge their own path. Very depressing and I hope they are the minority in terms of how kids are being raised in the US today.
Remember the Thornton Mellon School of Business?
It got Rodney Dangerfield into college - Movie: Back to School.
Sometimes the truth hurts. Got money? No problem.
No money = No bueno
If some parents want to pay millions to get their children into an elite school, I say go right ahead. Knock yourselves out.
The crime here was that this perpetrated by individuals at these schools and the admission "coaches" who were doing this on the sly for their own enrichment. The millions did not go to the schools.
As for the parents, rich folks can be crazy too.
(Corrected; sorry, 2AM!) The leg up enjoyed by the affluent is even more pervasive, sinister and cynical than many imagine, even within the tutoring industry (now several $ billion per year) deemed legitimate by most. Several years ago I worked at a C2 franchise (a competitor of Kaplan and Princeton Review on test prep, but also Sylvan and Huntington; students would commonly enroll for much of their high school careers, culminating with college applications and AP's), where parents would pay tens of thousands of dollars.
Part of the pitch directed to parents was special assistance in the college application process. Special indeed: Each student was granted a certain number of free essay "edits," that were administered thus: Upon writing a draft, the essay would be transmitted to an Atlanta facility, where professional writers would (in C2 language) "edit for clarity." The returned product would read like Montaigne meets the Atlantic Monthly, but ever so slightly dumbed down for plausibility.
The official instruction given for tutors at the franchise locations: "You will, inevitably, be doing some writing on these essays. But, as in a Clint Eastwood western, 'Suggest before you edit. Edit, before you write.'" The college essay program director, who issued this advice, justified ghostwriting by saying (as best as I can recall the specific language), "admissions officers appreciate the polished writing, because the clearer prose helps them to know the applicant better."
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The news articles keeps talking about being accepted, but are the children also receiving monetary prizes? Typically when one is recruited it comes with some type of reward?
"What a message it sends to the children: You’re not good enough to do this on your own. You needn’t be. Your parents and your counselors know the rules, and when and how to break them. Just sit back and let entitlement run its course."
The illegality of the various actions by the parents and the embarrassment it will cause their children down the road is a no brainer. But that simple sentence, "You’re not good enough to do this on your own." haunts me the most. These parents are telling their own children, in essence, that they are not good enough nor smart enough and the parents demand better, even if they have to pay for it big time. What a lousy and hurtful thing to do to one's own kid.
Of course I can't help but wonder if these illegal actions wouldn't have only gotten worse the longer the kid was in college. Were additional people going to be hired to take other exams or write other papers or do other homework? Where would it end? Would the only physical act their kid ever perform be walking across the stage at graduation for the diploma?
I think what these parents did is more harmful than merely trying to get their kid into a prestigious school. I think the emotional and psychological damage, the doubting and mistrust from the parents and the overall embarrassment will haunt these kids for a long time. This is so bad on so many levels.
My question to Mr. Bruni is did you really write this article or is there a ghostwriter under your bed? (just kidding).
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Were any of the children adults (18 or older), as their parents engaged in this criminality? Are the children blameless, and should they be in court - charged as well? I say yes, as they were co-conspirators. You pay tuition in school, and I believe "tuition" in life as well for hard lessons learned. Address ALL the rot.
A appalled as I am I wonder how - for the parents - this is a crime at all? We have to see if any will get charged. It probably depends on how it was presented to them by the fixer.
The fixer and those accepting the bribes of course are clearly acting criminally and deserve severe punishment - making them poor ordinary saps via forfeiture would be better than jail imho.
$ 400,000 bribe for a soccer coach? I find that a person even has that kind of cash laying around to hand out as a tip sickening.
Will the students admitted via this illegal assistance be expelled, having been fraudulently admitted in the first place?
Democracy is a colossal joke in the United States. When the most important positions in government and private enterprise are generally limited to Ivy League graduates, it is impossible to deny the existence of an underground aristocracy calling all the shots to the detriment of the masses.
The same could be said of France's 'Grandes Ecoles' as well, involving a premature weeding-out process through the byzantine preparatory school system requiring insiders' information to properly succeed. Fortunately the French are starting to awaken from this social warfare nightmare as illustrated by the seemingly endless weekly demonstrations in the city streets….
This was done by affluent people who either aren’t rich enough or were too cheap to donate sufficient money to get a building named after them. And lacking morals too.
Why bother sending your kids to expensive private schools and hiring SAT and admissions coaches? Just take all that money and donate it to your school of choice.
Voila! Your kid gets in.
America should be all about freedom & meritocracy … which payment-for-admission is not.
The interesting thing here will be whether the parents openly engaged their children into a conspiracy to commit fraud. Will the children’s defense be that they were enticed/required to participate in the fraud, pitting students against parents? Will the students’ defense be that they were under 18 and thus compelled to do as their parents commanded – commit fraud? Will the students be expelled for cheating?
The lesson here is what? ?? If you’re gonna pay for admission, it needs to be in plain sight, like buying a building? Or you can just be the children of a US president?
If you’re a current student at an ivy league school and the child of a parent indicted, your record is already besmirched before you’ve even finished college. Imagine explaining “my wealthy parents went to prison for fraud in my admission to college”. … If some parents go to prison for just 30 days, will kids take time out of class to visit parents in prison?
Another lesson here … we set the example for our children in our deeds.
Mr. Bruni calls out the hypocrisy of those "proud liberals" who, he is sure, must be among the parents who participated in these nefarious schemes while calling for fairness in the admissions process. And he is quite right doing so. I wonder, however, if he is also willing to bring attention to the hypocrisy of any proud conservative parents who, I am equally sure, are involved in these schemes while they talk grandly about the importance of meritocracy and whine loudly about the unfairness of programs, like affirmative action, that TRY to provide, openly and honestly, a means of leveling the playing field -- just a little bit.
I don't have any particular opinions about Jared Kushner one way or another, but your singling him out over a more general and pervasive problem is pretty mean spirited and undercuts your impartiality on the subject matter.
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The subtext of this behavior conveys 'you can't achieve what I think is of value. What you are able to achieve on your own is substandard. You need my help. Anything we do is justified if it results in us getting what we want' to the children.
Whatever they do will be corrupted for the rest of their lives by the reality that they couldn't do it and they need to keep rigging their outcomes.
Sorry Frank, unlike most of your readers, on this one we disagree.
There's a HUGE difference between legally donating your hard earned money to a university to assist your child in gaining entry, and using money to bribe individual athletic personnel or to pay to obtain help in cheating.
There are hundreds of private institutions that rely on donations to grow and thrive, and if parents can afford it, good for them.
Most, if not all, of those universities use those funds to provide scholarships to low income applicants, and there are hundreds of thousands of recipients of those funds. Thank goodness for that.
I've worked my butt off for thirty five years and pay a fortune for my son to go to a private university. I don't receive a nickel of help from the university or the government, and couldn't be happier that my child will get a great education, while others will be able to attend his school because of large donors who contribute, for whatever reason, to the university.
Donating money to help your child, which helps others, is not a crime.
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Mark, I think Frank Bruni is simply saying that your using your hard earned money (nobody else had it harder, I know) to push your son ahead of the line of candidates is unfair to other less wealthy students who must rely on their actual accomplishments. But entitlement hides the obvious sometimes.
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@Mark,
Most elite U's have endowments in the billions. Your effort to buy your son an advantage in the admissions process does not mean that poor applicants who couldn't otherwise attend a private school are now able to matriculate - the endowments are country-GDP-size; any Ivy or Stanford or MIT can happily afford to educate double its current percentage of poor kids.
What your action really does is it helps the elite U's admissions departments become profit centers. This is not something in which you should take pride.
Work hard to be able to afford a private school, sure. But let the kid get accepted or not on his own merit.
Simple solution: retract any diplomas and name the students publicly, they were complicit after all...oh, and refund their money of course, wouldn't want to seem vengeful, would we now....
Every wealthy guy I know made it on their own. Prep schools are littered with the ghosts of these kids who were little babies. And grow up to be little babies. I deal with them every day. I admire those who make it on their own. I dislike the little babies that til their 50's still live off of their parents. I see it in my business every day. Since when do grandparents have the obligation to pay for their grandchildren's education. So who then pays for their grandkids? And so on and so on. Someone dropped the ball. I know a 58 year old mommas boy who's mother still makes him lunch and packages it nicely in a cooler with labels. He went to Duke. Ah, It comes out in the wash as another little trust fund baby used to say. Well, his fund dried up and now he is done, toasted.
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@one percenter,
Interestingly, Duke is the school that Golden most explicitly skewers for corruption in "The Price of Admission."
Last night, my loquacious Lyft driver, who is originally from Equitorial Guinea, was telling me what he loved about the United States. “This is a country of fairness. If I decided right now to drive through this red light, a policeman would rightly give me a ticket. If this happened in my country, and the police stopped me, I could hand him a few bills and be on my way.”
“Poor misguided fool”, I thought. Didn’t he read the news today?
I want to know how Jared Kushner and all the other "cheater kids" did after they got into Harvard & other places. If they did "just fine" [in Harvard's case, usually graduating with honors], what does that say about admissions "standards"?
Let colleges adopt the old mythical system of throwing applications down the stairs and picking the ones on certain steps for admission.
Jared Kushner's father donated $2.5 million to get his son into Harvard? So Jared got an undeserved admission, but Harvard got enough dough to offer a full free ride to 10 (ten) deserving underprivileged applicants. But did Harvard convert that dough to opportunities, or did they pad their already enormous endowment?
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My brother, who happens to be a wealthy attorney, has a close friend who is a financial advisor. Both families move in circles of wealthy families who send their kids to elite (aka expensive) k-12 schools, elite summer camps, and pricey universities. Once when in the company of this financial advisor and his son (who was a college junior), the father asked his son whether he had finished writing his resume (because “Dad” needed to send it to his contact at a NYC Financial Institution) and the kid said, “no.” Dad responded by saying, “Just get a resume from one of your friends and put your own name on it.” I was appalled and disgusted. But it was clearly “de rigueur” for them. To me his behavior differed little from that of the parents who use their influence to open college doors for their kids. They have money. But they have neither honor nor integrity.
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Thank you Frank. And thank you also for pointing out, although not strongly enough, that it is often, rich liberal who play this crooked game. The hypocrisy is appalling but hardly surprising.
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On most college applications they ask if your parents/grandparents had gone to the school. If s/h had this, it helps the person to get into the school. This perpetuates the higher class become alumni of the same school with the same privileges of the parent. Again colleges are slanted to the rich.
For every student admitted through diversity / affirmative action, a more talented student was rejected.
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And in an under-funded public school in your own community are low-income kids who will never get a chance at anything despite having robust brains, creative minds and a desire to succeed. Few news stories have ever made me as angry as this one has.
Unfairness begins at graduation, not admissions.
Another avenue of investigation for the NYT to consider would be the admissions game for entry into private primary and secondary schools. This racket begins long before college admission season. The competition is fierce for prep school applicants whose parents have big bank accounts, and ever fiercer for coveted spots at these schools, leading to big checks from mom and dad. Take a look at Pasadena, CA for some compelling case studies.
It’s so damaging to the children of these criminals to realize that their parents thought they couldn’t do it on their own merit. They will carry this humiliation and degradation all their lives.
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These types of people, born with a silver spoon in their mouth and given numerous advantages in life, often go into well-paid careers after college, whereupon they attribute their success to their own brilliance, advocate lower taxes for themselves as a consequence and argue for limited state support for the poor, whom they regard as feckless and undeserving. I meet them all the time ... unbelievable
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At the core of these bribes is the conviction of certain rich people that education, talent, and hard work do not matter. What matters is that your wealth and the power it conveys can overcome the hard work and talent of any person with less money to gain admission to any school you want. At school, you can continue to bribe your way to get good grades and later in life you can hire publicists to extoll your virtues and brilliance, or like our president, you can be your own publicist.
I agree with virtually every word of this piece but why the gratuitous cheap shot a “liberals”?
Is the Kushner family liberal? The Bush family? Jared and George W didn’t get into Harvard and Yale on academic merit, just as Donald Trump didn’t earn his acceptance to Wharton. What are the politics of the CEOs who were indicted yesterday? Parents may be hypocritical when it comes to their own kids, politics notwithstanding.
This scandal is about bad parenting, the privilege that has always accompanied great wealth, and an academia corrupted by money. It has nothing to do with the parents’ politics.
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Mr. Bruni - I've been meaning to thank you for your book which I picked up when I went to hear you speak a couple years ago at Harvard Westlake in LA. I went to a state school then an ivy league grad school and felt I got something valuable out of both in life. Added to that, your book allowed me relax about the college admissions process even though it was quite stressful in the thick of it. I can see how these parents got carried away but am also horrified that they did what they did. I kept thinking today if I had not read your book - could I have done something that nuts? God I hope not. Anyway, my son is now a freshman at IU and could not be happier! Maybe some kid whose parents cheated deprived my kid of a "spot" at G'town - I could not care less. Thanks again!
Has the bar been so lowered in our society that deceit is the new normal? If the answer is just a shrug and moving on, then we deserve the likes of Madoff, Trump and Co.
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deserve? we have thrown open the door and invited them in, offering them canapés and prosecco as we kowtow to their wealthy superiority. that said, this is nothing new, and the lede here is mainly the celebrity staus of the conniving rich parents.
This is an inside look at the system that gave us the current "president". It's a club, always has been, and probably always will be. Once in a great while, less frequently of late, a patrician comes along who has a heart, a functioning brain, and a conscience. FDR, TR, JFK, RK. Just as Billie Holliday sang, "Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says, and it still is true. But God bless the child that's got his own."
As a side note, dimes to dollars, this was the same method the trumps got the donald into Wharton. Fits in very nicely to the overt methods used to hide and destroy all his grades.
Sadly, this saga is very outrageous for all of America's future college students. They are defeated before they begin by the color of their skin or the color of their money. To succeed in America your family needs money and the system to use it wisely.
It’s slightly appalling that you have trouble differentiating between legal and illegal. While it is true that life is unfair, I do not want to equate things we don’t like with breaking the law. If we proceed with our lives and confuse legal and illegal in every facet of life, our society of liberal values is at risk.
It’s absolutely true that fraud to get into college is terrible and should be punished severely, as is all fraud.
Makes me sad to think of the poorer - or more honest - students who didn't get in because rich families bought their rich children a placement. How many of the current administration bought their kids' way in? Shame on them. It denigrates their children by downplaying their abilities.
I got into USC grad school (film) all on my own -- lots of night classes, writing skill, and the love of movies got me there. Don't think I was ever desperate enough to ask my family to cheat on my behalf.
So what happens when these unqualified kids find themselves at elite universities? Don’t they face a crisis when they cannot even keep up with the required reading, much less produce the writing that is required at a place like Yale? Are these parents not setting them up for mental health crises?
"part of an infrastructure of perks and packaging that isn’t uniformly accessible" : driven on I-95 in Baltimore or south of DC or the DC Beltway lately? You can now buy your way out of traffic jams. Five miles can cost you $20, 15 miles can be $60 or more (demand pricing). Been to an amusement park or special show? You can buy your way out of waiting in line, and sneer at the riffraff as you and your kids express your lordly privilege. Your expensive plane ticket buys a special SECURITY line (boarding, tickets, etc. - fine, you paid for it, but plane security is about as democratic as anything can be). America has long casually accepted gross discrimination - think race or gender - but our society of the 1960s, for all its faults, would never have believed that we would accept, as a society, the principle that you could buy your way out of a traffic jam on a public highway. College admissions fraud and corruption here merely reflect a far broader social malaise.
My best advice for getting into that "reach" school, is, 'Grow up in North Dakota, or Wyoming.' Being an excellent student athlete in the Northeast or California is just not going to cut it.
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Some of these privileged elitists become judges, form which heights they look down on those who were not so fortunate.
It would be interesting to see how much Fred Trump had to pay the University of Pennsylvania to get them to let Donald transfer from Fordham. Oh, I forgot. Donald had Michael Cohen threaten them if they released any information. And they’re scared. Or embarrassed. Can’t some talented news sleuth find this out? Or at least dig up his grades? Inquiring mind would like to know.
Good thing I got my bachelor's degree the old fashioned way. Served three combat tours in Iraq. Gave my blood, sweat, and tears so I could use my Post 9/11 G.I. Bill to further my education. How many these kids or parents of these kids are willing to make such a sacrifice?
We often hear of racial privelege in our society & economy, but rarely the privelege of class or wealth. Deafining silence, maybe becuase many of those reporting, producing & editing are from the top 1 or 2% by income.
Down here among the rabble in flyover country it has long been obvious that the system is rigged. Look at Hollywood and see how many of today's stars are relatives of people who already have connections to the business. Would that reflect excpetional talent by genetics or is there is a club that offers a fast lane to the business?
America says it honors and reveres its veterans, but usually picks the Presidential candidate who didn't serve over the guy who did. Al Gore volunteered to go to Vietnam but they chose or appointed the guy who got into a special Guard unit for the kids of the well connected. Same for John Kerry- another Vietnam vet. Same for John McCain. Same for Michael Dukakis. Same for Bob Dole- who was passed over for "I loathe the Army" Bill Clinton. Then there is the whole way that Veterans uncared for by the VA live on the street and are committing suicide as the rest of the country just rolls on.
How many of our so-called "National Security" experts and advisors ever served a day in uniform? They are happy to send your kids to war, but they never served and their kids will not, either. How exactly do you get to be an expert on something you have never done?
Then there are the banksters. Stole us blind, got bailed out- and we got the bill.
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The universities in this scam should lose all of their federal and state support, all research contracts, etc.
This appalls me beyond reason and my rage is red hot. I have 4 kids who are smart, decent, hard working young men and women. They got or will get into college on their own - no fancy donations, no bribe, no sports recruiting for us. Two went to the Naval Academy which has a process of weeding out that is not for faint of heart, my third is waiting to hear from college and my fourth is still in high school. These allegations make me look at every Ivy League admission with a grain of salt - are you there cuz of Mom and Dad or on your own? I do feel some sadness for the kids but not much. They are not stupid, they know what they submitted is not their own, they all know how they do on the AcT or SAT, they know their grades and they know their own writing. It will catch up someday.
Note to sausage lovers: Enjoy it, and try to forget how it's made.
And the NCAA kid from the inner city or rural country will have his or her life ruined if they accept a sandwich from a recruiter.
Pathetic.
The thing that kills me is that these parents can afford the BEST pre schools, elementary, middle and high schools - even an extra year of prep school AND the best tutors for every step of the way. I’m sorry but the kid who actually should have gotten in without any of that advantage and didn’t is the real tragedy.
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I'm wondering how Brett Kavanaugh got into Yale.
We do know that in Georgetown Preperatory School, he excelled in beer drinking, so he did have that going for him, in addition to the family wealth.
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@Jim Remington
His grandpa was an alum, even though Brett claimed "no legacy."
Hey, Frank. Over the years, how many Times interns and entry level edit employees got a leg up because of connections? How many Times Ivies, which there are a few, got a leg up because of family connections?
How many Ivy grads give extra credit to other Ivy grads when making hiring decisions.
A lot.
Privilege runs deep.
And George W Bush went to Yale because he was so very smart and not because daddy did and had millions. This has gone on for a long time, all political parties well represented here. The only difference here was that instead of just contributing a few million bucks right when Jr. was applying, or offering to underwrite a building or a professorship, these parents and their paid for lackeys took it a step further into outright fabrication and cheating.
Am I surprised by this? Not at all. I never even had the slightest notion that college admissions to any of the elite schools was a level playing field.
So we now have wealthy connected parents buying their kids a place at these schools, deserving Asian students being denied a place due to being just another " smart boring Asian" and black and Hispanic minorities being courted to add diversity even if they under perform those denied entry. Maybe it would be best to just enter everyone who meets the entry criteria into an anonymous lottery and go with that.
Check out what parents in NYC do to get their kid into a G&T kindergarten! From one website - "Don't leave your kid's test score to chance." For money, parents hire coaches and get "games" similar to items on the IQ tests and "practice" with their 4 year olds. I know. I test the kids.
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The faux outrage is nauseating. The business of education is all around us. I’m really surprised people are angry about this.
And many conservatives argue about Blacks and some other non-whites getting unfair advantages in college admissions! Well, well, well.
1
This is why the Democrats lost the last presidential election. Hillary's team was packed with Harvard and Yale graduates. She didn't even have any MIT graduates (because MIT does not have legacy admissions?) When you combine that with her remark about young adults living in their parents' basements, it came across that no matter how smart you are or how hard you work, you can't make up for not going to an ivy league college and are doomed for the rest of your life to be excluded from the best opportunities. That's a real turn off.
The U.S. has reached a level of decadence reminiscent of ancient Rome. Justice has removed her blindfold. Colleges offer reading and writing remedial classes. Colleges! Education certificates can be purchased. Corporate executives are the new nobles with all the privileges inherent in the royal order. Pornography has no limits. Civility has died out long ago. Our everyday language has been corrupted by vulgarity.
Where does it end? Rome anyone??
Although you mentioned Jared Kushner in the article, did you really intend to exclude all the Democrats and their progeny?? Full disclosure: I'm a registered Democrat and native New Yorker - let's get real here. It's not all about Trump - it's about human nature, privilege - no matter what political affiliation - and entitlement.
This is a very cynical column. There's a difference between unfair- rich people having advantages, and outright cheating.
I'm waiting for an article on the most powerful institution in the country: Harvard College Admissions.
Will the cheaters be expelled? I do mean regardless of what a court of law finds.
This is the kind of thing that happens when people with extreme wealth have lost touch with reality, think the rules don’t apply to them and their offspring and feel entitled to even more advantages than they already have over the poor and the middle class.
Perhaps at one time this was the greatest country on earth, but I fear we have lost our soul in the search of wealth and privilege. There was a time when accumulation of wealth for its own sake was frowned upon and it was only when great wealth resulted in philanthropic acts of kindness and generosity that it was admired. Those days are long gone. The rich control everything and even yet, it’s not enough! They are willing to buy their childrens’ admittance into premiere universities....because they can and yet we despise the “working poor” and malign those who need help.
What a heartless, wasteful, unkind country we have become and everyday it’s reinforced; from doing nothing of substance after the slaughter of 5 and 6 year olds at Sandy Hook and every subsequent senseless mass shooting since, thinking its ok to separate kids from their mothers and keep them in cages, accepting lie after lie from the incompetent man occupying the WH, treating our allies despicably, withdrawing from treaties and denying climate change and on and on and on......
It keeps me up nights.
1
America's seamy underbelly has turned off and is there for all to see.
But those who were trapped under it (minorities) have been seeing it for centuries.
I suppose some people will be shocked, SHOCKED (!!!) that such a thing could happen.
What school did President Trump graduate from???? Even though the "scandal" is focused on California, let us not be naive. It's no more rare than a president who hires his daughter for a role she is totally unqualified for, as are his cronies who want to turn civilization back 60 years.
I'd be depressed if I wasn't awakened to this inequality 60 years so.
As a Yale grad, I am utterly ashamed by this and all the other nonsense at my alma mater. Remember napping while black? There will be plenty who say it's just the way of the world. Enough! This is more proof as if any were needed that state college tuition should be FREE. Not only would that offer some kind of justice in this stacked society, but it would actually improve life for *everyone*. The Ivie's behavior is just institutional white privilege. Rip off the scab.
As the article states:
What else is new?
We all knew this for years.
Those of us who did not play this game were considered idiots.
When I interview an applicant to our school, I barely glance over the application, just to get an idea about the background. I base my judgment solely on the interview.
In fact, a polished essay that looks artificial to me is a negative. If the applicant can't live up to it, with word choices and appropriately structured sentences, then I know that s/he didn't write it. Not good. Authenticity counts.
The story doesn't end here. After the rich kid trots off to the college of his/her parents' choice, the advantage remains, and not only in the cars they drive or the gadgets they own. If they honestly flunk a class on their own lack of merit, the professor is likely to get a call from some important administrator asking if you can't see your way to passing Dumbo because Mom or Dad is a big donor. Sometimes Daddy Warbucks will call you personally and scream at you on the phone, or better yet, waste the time of your department chairman. It is about privilege, but not only that: these parents are often deluded about their childrens' brilliance. The modern university is not an ivory tower, if it ever was. It is a microcosm of the society that produced it.
Forget Trump's tax returns. Let's see his grades.
This scam has been going on since Universities first came into being. Kushner is only a drop in the bucket of how everyone tries to buck the system. I wonder how many Dems, GOP, and WH aides were given an unfair advantage? Nothing new here people--as Trump so aptly says--"The system is rigged!" He should know--his own daddy did it for his education and draft dodging "bone spurs" excuses.
Hey, this is how Trump got in to UPenn and how Kushner got in to Harvard. Only they did it the old fashioned way; their dads gave the universities gifts of millions. It always worked! What's new?
What's new? What's new is that the wealthy and powerful also buy accommodations for fake learning disabilities so that their offspring get extra time on assignments, procuring yet another advantage over every one else. Piling advantage on top of advantage. It is sickening. The result? Professors grow weary of the ever-increasing number of students with such accommodations because we begin to think we can spot the ones who don't deserve them. Pity the ones who do - they're left behind three-fold.
All true. How else would "W" have been accepted to Yale?
Why do you think that Donald Trump had his lawyer threatening any entity that holds his scholastic records? To say nothing about his daddy buying him a case of bone spurs to keep him out of Viet Nam.
1
Isn't it a shame that Yahoo only hires "elite" school graduates. Rigging the system from day one.
@Laurie,
Sadly, not just Yahoo. Many investment banking and consulting firms limit interviews to a few elite schools (and exceptional applicants from non elite schools).
The SCOTUS apparently has a similar scheme.
Odd, that so much is dependent upon one's achievements as a teenager. I think what happens afterwards is much more important.
Thanks to the FBI for providing sunshine/disinfectant.
If you aint cheating then you are not trying hard enough.
The cure to lack of opportunity is attrition.
I recall an episode of “The Simpsons” where Charles Montgomery Burns, owner of The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant tried to get his not-so-bright son Larry admitted to Yale.
The following conversation ensued:
Male Admissions Officer: Well, frankly, test scores like Larry's would call for a very generous contribution.
For example, a score of 400 would require a donation of new football uniforms, 300, a new dormitory, and in Larry's case, we would need an international airport
Female Admissions Officer: Yale could use an international airport, Mr. Burns.
Burns: Are you mad? I'm not made of airports!
Sadly, that episode ended without Yale ever getting an international airport.
But the opportunity is still there, and there is no time like the present.
And oh by the way, when are we finally gonna see Trump’s SAT scores.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cknU_6coybo
Being caught. That's what's new.
1
Liberal Democrats ruined our education system. Unions destroyed all sensibilities about good teachers versus bad teachers.
We have to stop putting “elite” colleges on a pedestal. It’s a scam - the hard part is getting in - in part because it usually takes a ton of money. The status is based on marketing. Enough with the winner take all nonsense including in education. If people and parents want kill them selves over it and/or to bribe their way in, they’re twisted. It’s their problem. Let’s not make it everyone’s by making it a prerequisite for the presidency, Supreme Court, top jobs. That’s a scam and it’s own form of nepotism.
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Mr. Bruni states: “I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle. In this case, they doomed them, imparting garbage values and mortifying them along the way.” In fact, many of these parents, like the Giannullis, are proud, hard-core Republicans. What a surprise.
1
It seems to me that part of the problem here is all the privilege and advantage that attaches to having graduated from one of these elite schools. How many of us have run into Harvard or Yale grads who plainly are simple-minded children of the well-to-do? There are so many equal or greater minds coming out of the not-so-elite schools who do not get the advantage and respect these spoiled simpletons get
1
all this seems hypocritical on so many levels. perhaps the most glaring hypocrisy is that a most incompetent person seats in the highest office in the land itself. he has essentially gamed his way into it, through racism, aided and abated by the majority of white people in the country, in spite of his clear incompetency. and we don't know what his grades look like. so, really, its just hypocritical to punish some for similar acts, when the highest office in the land itself is occupied by a person who's similarly incompetent. not only that, even one of his main advisors essentially paid to get into one such school, as this article points out! the hypocrisy abounds. not only that, Trump literally appointed his own children and an in-law as "advisors etc. and then, he appointed a couple of billionaire friends to posts. this is only a partial list. so, it really doesn't make sense to claim that these parents have cheated. its just not consistent to say they've done anything wrong! it seems like everybody in the top offices in the land is a product of precisely this kind of thing.
For some parents, this scheme must offer the inspirational moment of "I never even thought of this... how could I be so dumb?".
The tiger, helicopter and other intervening, well-meaning-but, parents all think the big name schools will turn their children into something they aren't.
The spectrum of tilted scales through such famous universities underlines the abysmal corruption and incompetence of their more famous grads now on display through public and corporate corridors.
The children must be humiliated finding out how unqualified they are to be in the universities they were purchased a seat in the classrooms. And, if the children aren’t humiliated that is disturbing.
Please read the book “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism”. What these actresses and athletes and politicians did is at the heart of what is destroying this country. Fraudsters all.
It's hilarious how many of the comments here are basically brags about the commenters being admitted to these and other schools strictly on "merit."
Until we have a fairer distribution of wealth, those who have more will continue to use their extreme wealth advantage for their family interests. the poor or less well-off must learn to live with it.
Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba
Yale and Harvard....The best education money can buy...Wow. Now that I say this after reading this article, it has a whole, new different meaning.
Frank, since you took the time to call out the 'liberals' who broke the law in the scheme, why not mention the Trump family? There's a very good reason our criminal president threatened to sue his schools if they released any of his test scores - he would have been exposed for the academic fraud he is.
1
People like my wife and I have really worked hard to send our children to Ivy League school on their merits and paid for them. despite being a physicians we remained "middle class" as we funded their education through schools like Columbia, Stanford, Wharton etc. We as a family are very proud and happy. Its really disheartening and annoying to see white rich privileged abusing our system. NYT please follow this story and let the parents like us know what is our system doing with these incompetent kids and the rogue parents. At least it will be a minor comfort to all the parents like me and my wife.
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Oh, lots to think about here.
1. Don't feel sorry for the children of these wealthy cheaters -- these kids are complicit in all of it. Apples don't fall far from trees, and all that.
2. The reason these parents need their kids to get into the "right" school is not so they get an education -- the kids are set for life, anyway, and will get jobs working at daddy's hedge fund -- but it's so they can meet the "right" people and make the "right" contacts. G-d forbid they meet anyone -- by which I mean "date anyone" -- from the inner city, from the small towns, from anywhere other than their circle.
3. Face it, the girls who are getting into these schools are doing it to get their M.R.S. and be the starter wife for one of these hedge-fund scions. The boys? So they can sow their wild oats, Kavanaugh-style, without fear of being held responsible for any of it.
Two the last 3 US presidents were /are no-nothings with very rich parents who made it into these elite schools. . So was there ever any doubt? It’s on display.
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My fear is that in the GOP will squawk about the need for a level playing field in college admissions, and will use it as ammunition to shoot down Affirmative Action, which has long been in their sights.
1
As an alumnus of Princeton University, I am a volunteer on their Admissions program, interviewing potential candidates.
One of my territories in 'little Armenia', which lacks the glamour of super athletics! As a result, outstanding candidates, regularly lose out to US/European and some Asiatic countries where school athletics plays a big role.
This 30% advantage given to athletic applicants is a travesty, just as the obscenity of colleges paying their coaches huge salaries, and choosing athletes over scholars, just to bring in millions of dollars!
The parents who did this were not doing their children any favors. I was a (scholarship) student at a very good university in the Midwest, glad to get away from the East coast for the first time in my life.
When I was a freshman, there was a guy in one of my classes that I got to know slightly. He told me he was a legacy, that his father had gone to the school, and he was only there because of his legacy status. I helped him with his homework once, and he asked me if I could do this on a regular basis. I said I was swamped with my own work and didn't think I could make helping him a regular part of my schedule. He said he understood, but he then told me something like, "I don't belong here. I should be at a state school." I remember that he seemed to feel really terrible about everything -- like he had let his father down, he was afraid he looked stupid to his classmates, etc.
Our children are not trophies for us to show around. They need to find the right niches for themselves, and parents should help them do that.
Felicity Huffman can now think about the fact that her obituary will mention Desperate Housewives and her participation in this scandal. What a legacy indeed.
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@scrim1 And why does the press seem to be leaving Felicity Huffman's husband out of this? Bill Macy is well known actor and has commented in the press how tough college admissions are. Surely he had a part in this too.
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The irony here is that the big time sports schools admit athletes who don't have to go to class while coaches arrange to admit non-athletes who don't have to go to practice.
1
Elite colleges do not produce graduates with more intelligence or more wisdom than any other category of college. But they do produce people who know how to game the system. Perhaps that is what employers are looking for.
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at an elite college, students get to meet the children of the elite, and frequently their parents, too. for those already at the top of the heap, this is an advantage in finding a potential mate of "the right sort". for those who come from more modest backgrounds, these college relationships are potentially the biggest boost up the ladder they will ever get. what you do academically is almost beside the point if your roommate's father is Chairman of the Board of Megacorp. the whole enterprise can be seen as a scam.
Why, in many cases, is only one parent being charged? Are we to presume that William H. Macy (to give one example) was utterly in the dark about his wife’s alleged scheming? There must be a legitimate reason for this but it seems vaguely sexist.
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@Josh Siegel
Today's article suggests that there may be less evidence on Macy. The only conversation where his participation was documented was for another child for whom they did not (yet) purchase a college admission. In other cases, both parents are charged.
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@Josh Siegel I never thought of that angle but I think their careers or at least her career as an actress has taken a hit. And her daughter is not in such a good place either. Would you want to stay in a school where your parents committed a crime to get you there? I do not think the schools should let these kids stay anyway and they should offer entry to someone who did not make the cut.
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@Josh Siegel Actual evidence that she was the one dealing with the issue?
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I had classmates in law school who graduated from the Ivys. It was hard to miss the advantages of their college pedigrees. Some from money and some were scholarship students as undergrads. They all had networks of connections to firms and businesses that were simply part of the package, included in their education. Many had earned fellowships for post-grad study available only to their university's graduates.
The advantage is real. I'm not surprised some people would cheat to get it.
1
The elite colleges sell only one thing...contacts. A student is more likely to make contacts with the rich & powerful (future & current) at an elite college than at a second or third tier school. Is the education superior? Doesn’t matter. As the old saying goes,”It’s not what you but who you know that counts”.
1
Just another episode of Game of Thrones.
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Chelsea Clinton attended Stanford, Barbara Bush and Malia Obama attended Harvard, John Kennedy jr and Amy Carter attended Brown, Caroline Kennedy Radcliffe. Were they given special consideration?
Political influence is as bad as financial bribes
How dare these small timers tried to game the system with such fraudulent scheme when they were reserved for the Bushes and Kushners!
As long as these kids find the right doctors to discover their bone spurs, the right cops to warn them about driving drunk, the right lawyers to cross-examine their rape victims, they will be fine.
Might even end up on the Supreme Court or in the White House.
Another example of rich white folks getting over. These kids have had the best education money can buy but that isn’t enough for these Trump families, getting over is a must for them. God forbid their previous darling actually open a book they all can’t be stupid. However they are embarrassing dense which is why the parents would pay to get th into colleges
Real parents have three and four jobs and there children work to get into these elite schools. They study and hope against negativity that they receive a letter saying “you have been accepted “ we know now how impossible the odds are to go to the school of their choice. Thank you rich people. It’s all about your needs.
How sickening it is that the country is just one big con and dollar sign. Why brother for working Americans we can’t move forward because between Trump and the elites we are forever behind the right ball. When Bernie and Warren address the issues about the lack of oppprtortinitied facing regular people the media won’t cover real issues.
Well the latest scam is in the open and we realize how for decades this racism and being rich has destroyed America.
As long as your white it doesn’t matter that you cheated your way into and thru college. Look at Jared his daddy got him into Harvard with a big endowment and now he’s been working with the murdeous Saudi ‘s. Bringing about peace in the Middle East.
Ivy League Universities have be poisoning the country with their sociopathic grads for decades. If Harvard didn't exist, I'd argue we'd have avoided the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. We need a broadly educated electorate, not an elite cadre of Ivy trained sociopaths.
The fallacy of a meritocracy is again disproved. Unlike Clarence Thomas, I am a proud beneficiary of affirmative action in the late 1970s and revelations like this scandal support the use of affirmative action. If you think the playing field is or has ever been fair for blacks and poor people, you are obviously delusional. The wealthy have used money to buy their way into elite universities forever. The last 2 Republican occupants of the White House are obvious poof of this reality. Trump’s limited 6 grade vocabulary evidenced daily on Twitter and W’s inability to pronounce such complex words as”nuclear” are proof that neither were qualified to attend Yale or the University of Penn— Ivy League schools. You know Trump’s daddy bought his transfer from an average College like Fordham to the U Penn, where he clearly did not learn much. I have had enough of white people complaining about reverse discrimination and ignoring the corruption of our education system that existed in the past and is a thriving multimillion dollar enterprise today.
3
Affirmative action has always been in play.
1
I wonder how many children killed themselves because they "failed" to get into a school.
It is not just "elites" helping their kids. There are unscrupulous teachers who do similar things for their own edification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Public_Schools_cheating_scandal
Honesty is just so yesterday...
Now I don't need to get Frank a Christmas present! His glee at this disgusting display of criminality, greed, stupidity, venality, arrogance and I don't know what else is the only thing dampening my enjoyment of a juicy scandal. I know college admissions has been a hobby horse of his for a while now but life's no more unfair than it ever was. It's better to be rich and famous than poor and anonymous. But you'd think these event's demonstration that these creeps were sufficiently miserable that they risked their freedom in this idiotic campaign would make Frank happier. But's he completely wrong that the schools and admissions personnel are blameless. Why didn't they figure out that these highly recruited athletes never showed up at the teams they were supposedly recruited for? Because they were paying full price tuition and they didn't give a rat.
Frank, surely you're smart enough to understand the difference between paying a tutor to help you get a higher SAT score and paying someone else to take the SAT for you.
This reminds me of medieval society. When a poor man robbed another poor man, it was called “banditry” and it was a crime. When a nobleman robbed a poor man, it is called a “tax” or “rent” and it was just. When the Church robbed a poor man, it was called a “tithe” and it was not only just but also holy.
If only these nouveau riche bums were willing to spend a few million more to get their kids in college like Old Money, then their “bribes” would be an “endowment.”
This country is, and has always been, a gigantic affirmative action program for the benefit of rich and/or white people. Affirmative Action is only a problem if some of the crumbs from that bountiful table fall into the mouths of “the Blacks.”
1
So why can't we see mr. trump's high school diploma and
report card, his college transcripts and sat scores?
2
If you look at the who donated money to liberal candidates from the democrats you can see the correct headline should be Rich Liberal Democrats Scam the System, this is another deceptive article from the liberal press
And if you wonder why so few rich kids amount to much, here is exhibit A. Rich parents can place their kids on third base, they always have but the only way to "touch em all" is with a home run, and it take hard work and lots of dedication to do it. Talent plus hard work equals greatness. And it takes one more thing, the ability to fail, the ability to get knocked down but keep on trying..and trying..never giving up in pursuit of a dream. Greatness is always a byproduct of the motivation to make it big and fulfill an inner drive. Standing on third base without ever having to take your place in batters box, is a hollow achievement.
3
What an interesting break from the constant war on the American President and on the best economy American workers have had in their lifetimes.
This makes me wonder if true believer progressives realized that the goofier the Democrats' verbal drooling became, the stronger Pres. Trump and the Starbucks guy grew, measurably.
Thanks, Iowa pollsters, for reminding the Democrats that babbling furious anger is no way to run a country. The Jew-haters and their fearful leaders had become passe.
The rich get everything. We the unwashed heathens get nothing and have to beg for a crumb. That is what humans have always wanted: one rises superior and everyone else inferior. In the cases now, it is all about wealth makes you powerful. Americans are so stupid, I guarantee they agree that the rich should get everything, I mean they always vote Republican who are basically just rich people out to game the system even more for themselves.
2
These miserable schools are there to produce the leaders of this miserable country. Cruelty, greed, exploitation are its basic values. Why then shouldn't this be accepted as part of that education.
2
So, your liberal readership is cheering tactics that include 6 FBI agents with guns drawn effect a pre-dawn, handcuffed arrest of a non-violent, middle aged mom?
Take a deep breath and think again.
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I'm shocked...SHOCKED. Omigod, who would have suspected?
1
Bribes?! How do you think a "legacy" school like Yale works, anyway? You admit my dumb spoiled brat and I'll donate a million bucks, or build you a new wing.
Bribery, affirmative action for rich people.
Yeah frank what’s all the lather about getting into Stanford? It’s not like all the lather you’ve worked up to be at the times, instead of podunk daily, is it?
It's the privileged version of affirmative action!
Bruni, Connecticut prep school to UNC to Columbia. He had it rough.
1
"There are many takeaways from this appalling story. One is how crassly hypocritical parents can be. I bet that more than a few of those charged are proud liberals who talked about the importance of equal opportunity and an even playing field, then went out and did whatever it took to push their kids into the winner’s circle."
Exactly how is Frank Bruni's "I bet" comment a "takeaway?" Sounds like like a plain old opinion to me - and a preconceived one at that. Yes, I get that it's an opinion piece, but I expect more of a NYT opinion writer. This is just sloppy. Also, why did he begin this paragraph with "many takeaways", continue with "One is", then attack liberals, then say nothing more? Where did "the second is" disappear in this not-even- remotely-intellectual inquiry? More sloppy anti-intellectualism, if you ask me, but that's just my opinion.
1
When you pay $10,000 to get an administrator to let your kid into the college, it’s called a “bribe.” When you pay $1,000,000 to the board of trustees to let your kid into college, it’s called an “endowment.”
As always, in America, the worst crime of all is that the crime was too small.
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@citybumpkin:
Here's the thing about the million dollar donations. That's where the money for financial aid comes from. AND it isn't a guaranteed admission. If parents donates that kind of money, their kid still has to have the academic chops to get in.
I would think that this is helpful to poorer students, that top colleges have a lot of money to give them the advantages those colleges offer. The money for that has to come from somewhere.
9
@citybumpkin There IS a difference. The money paid to the college as a quid pro quo for admittance benefits the college and its students/faculty. The money paid to an administrator benefits only that one person.
Both may seem equally unfair, but if a college and its students enjoy a new, modern science wing because it admitted one unqualified person, I'd say that the deal with the devil was worth it.
9
@citybumpkin Do you mean that Jared and Donald and George weren't geniuses? Wow I'm shocked,
22
No, sorry, it's not the same as Tycoon endowing library so junior can get in. That is a legitimate use of wealth and sometimes power, and I'm sure junior is aware he's lucky to be born into it. It's always been good to be a Rockefeller. A statesman's child, who has had the benefit of the ultimate "extracurriculars" does indeed bring something of value to the class at Harvard et. al. Sons and daughters of privilege and renown are the people X from the midwest who manages a superlative record - pure, unadulterated, unconnected merit -- hopes to mingle with when he gets there.
Raw bribes paid to "crooked proctors" and coaches willing to lie for money are a whole different animal, Mr. Bruni. It's sad in the case of Ms. Huffman, because surely her very celebrity and high caliber of artistry, plus her obvious ability to pay full freight, would have given plenty of "extra oomph" to her daughter's chances at lots of great schools.
Then there's the more general sports connection: Its far more important for folks to be physically active than spectators or fans. There's the commercial factor as well, with revenues flowing from broadcast rights - and then surcharges on cable bills to fund those payments. Ties back into the antitrust issue. Time to pull the entire edifice apart and return it to its roots.
Well, cheating - at all kinds of things, in all phases of life - has obviously become more and more acceptable in much of the world, especially if one does enough other things that others like. President Trump being the most galling example of this; for millions, winks and nods have become full fledged cultish acceptance. Even when it can be shown that some of the things you like are actually NOT happening, or are temporary at best.
We gull ourselves into accepting it, or even doing it, because we're all convinced now that everyone else is doing it. Trump becoming President is the ultimate proof that it must be true...and okay. Just don't get caught.
2
Oops. I spelled Stanford wrong in my supposed-to-be-funny-post, "Fraud, Bribes & Lies---the law firm that gets your rich, stupid, spoiled brat admitted to such schools as Yale, Stamford and Georgetown."
You can tell I'd never have gotten into Stanford without help from the water polo coach.
1
But wait. Where the test-doctoring is concerned, three things:
1) Why all the focus only on the cheating parents, who probably care mostly about the fact that they'll be able to boast that their son or daughter is at whatever school? I find it very hard to believe that the students involved did not smell something fishy. Wealthy and presumably sophisticated, in their hearts could those with mediocre grades have been so un-self aware as to think they really could get into such selective schools? Doubtful. Their parents knew it was risky, or they wouldn't have resorted to so much test-doctoring.
2) Given that, what kind of parents are they? In addition to everything else, they're setting their kids up not for success, but rather for failure! The Ivies and their equally demanding counterparts like Stanford or Penn are academically grinding. Can these students survive in that environment? How will the parents feel when the kids flunk out? Oh wait! They can keep paying to make sure that doesn't happen.
3) And how do the students feel about themselves when they figure all that out? Smug? Remorseful? Knowing that money probably bought them anything they wanted growing up, could they be truly naive to their parents' shenanigans? Doubtful.
It's Lent. Let's hope there's some moral awakening out there.
That $2.5 million donation may well be the ticket for tens, if not hundreds, of children to get tuition assistance allowing them to attend Harvard. In exchange, Harvard take one admission slot off the line. Sounds like a trade-off that gives more than it takes to me.
How much of a difference is there, really? No one lied in the Kushner case, and the donation was public knowledge. If the coach was not convinced what he did was wrong, why was it done in secret?
We might also consider how the parents achieved their success. I love the phrase "business is business" to justify all sorts of corruption.
It is disingenuous for people to express shock or surprise at the concept of the rich and wealthy buying access to college for their children. Colleges have "honored the legacy" concept for years, not to mention just accepting donations outright to allow children of privilege a guarantee of acceptance. Not to mention how these same parents bully teachers and administrators to place their children in AP or college prep courses in high school regardless of ability. This isn't news, this is history.
So, will we now wonder whether everyone from a wealthy family that attends an elite school is at least partly a fake?
4
I am 68. My parents paid for my college tuition and NEVER would've helped me fake any educational process. If I didn't know how to spell a particular word, I was told to "look it up in the dictionary".
If people wanted to change this, they could demand their government only award federal research dollars and aid dollars to schools that guarantee a purely merit-based admission process and that agree to periodic audits and certification. My impression is that schools would be scared to lose these federal funds, for obvious reasons.
As with so many things, it requires organizing a critical mass to make sustained efforts to drive change.
1
I graduated from a solid but middle of the pack state school and went to a top ten university to earn a PhD. I quickly learned that there was more variance of student body aptitude within each school than between them. Indeed, "the magic attributed" to some schools is "absurd."
4
While I am not shocked to read that the wealthy are gaming the college admissions process – hey, they seem to game so very much – I am outraged to learn of the extent to which these wonderful people will go in doing so.
I went to what was a top-5 public U as an undergrad in the late '60s and early '70s. Slogging through a combination of legitimate HS counseling, test re-takes and summer school make-up sessions got me in. Barely.
I am pretty sure there was no way to buy one's way in during those times but then again, my blue-collar family probably would not have know how, and definitely could not have afforded, such methods had they been available.
I am probably being naive about that but as I read today about the current depth of these methods, I became even more proud of what I accomplished on my own.
Of course the irony of the current situation is that the parents will buy their way out of jail time and the kids will learn their lessons about rank and privilege among the upper 10 percent: Just don't get caught.
1
Now this incident demonstrates how the real world works. The overwhelming majority of the indicted may plead guilty or be convicted but will never spend a day in prison.
3
The lesson that’s never taken away from scandal after scandal, across all topics, is that there are people trying to exploit and hack every system out there. Admissions, taxes, trading, politics, govt contracts, elite jobs, union jobs, personal data, social justice, etc.
We think too much of ourselves. People aren’t all that decent. They’re self motivated, and that’s what’s at the core of almost any human action, whether we’d deem it “decent” or not.
2
All true of course; buy a new gym and your kid is suddenly brilliant. But the really important fallout isn't just the kids who laze their way through college and go on to careers of finding creative ways to spend their inheritances. It's about the ones who believe, because of their gentlemen's C's, that they really are well educated, convince others of it and go on to positions of power and influence in business or government.
6
Not shocked. There a;ways is arrogance in academia, but in the US higher education system it is grotesque.
Coming to work at UCLA, I was amazed at the $$ spent on sports. I came from a university with the same number of students in Canada. The UCLA budget was about six times higher, although I came from best school in Canada.
It was working as a librarian, but it was almost impossible to develop friendly relations with faculty because they were too elevated and self aware of their importance.
This is not personal. It is systemic. In a school with "good" name, everybody is in danger of becoming too self inflated.
I am sure this is partly due to money. When tuition is so high, only rich people really may afford to send their children. Obviously, admission is a very complicated and expensive process. But as long as the cost of education is so high, when the legacy name is so important, there will be corruption.
Why are we shocked when rich people try to game the university admission system? We have a good example in the White House.
3
In the midst of this appalling, yet unsurprising series of revelations, it's also true that students from poor economic backgrounds with excellent academic records are highly sought after by elite colleges - a tribute to those institution's progressive admission policies. This story also tells us that the admissions offices are largely impenetrable. Despite many comments here, the good news is the admissions offices weren't part of the corruption. That's why these weak links were targeted, among a much larger group of coaches whose standards are as tough as the admission's offices. Singer will sing and more high-profile names will come out; however, diversity - and fairness - are alive and well, even though the sons and daughters of the rich and well-connected are at an advantage - as they always have been. It's the middle class who have the biggest challenge. This hits a nerve in any parent or student familiar with the college admissions process, which can seem like The Hunger Games when you're facing it. At USC, seemingly the hardest hit, the school accepted over 8,000 students for the fall of 2018, so a tiny fraction of the freshman class was impacted. The same appears to be true at schools like Yale and Georgetown. One is too many; however, widespread corruption of the process doesn't seem evident from this, however much anger this story rightly incites in all of us.
1
These scandals infuriate me. I am a first-generation college graduate. My family didn't know the difference between Harvard and community college. I dropped out of HS and received a GED.
Luckily, I was smart enough to realize I could do better. No one helped me with SAT prep or hired tutors to assist me in gaming the system. Instead I enrolled in a community college, eventually transferring to a "directional" school for a BA. From there I took the GRE's, without assistance or prep, andI attended graduate school at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University. I then took the LSAT on a whim - no test prep - and scored well enough to be accepted to two Ivy League law schools, although I opted for a scholarship to the law school at Chapel Hill.
The point being: hard work can get you there. Yet the self-entitled wealthy, cruising through life and throwing money at their problems, leave few eligible spaces for people like me. It's a shame, and it should be a crime.
6
When I worked retail as a young adult I would say to myself, when other co workers younger and the same age would call in “sick” or be late, that they are developing bad habits. Well, another example is happening and the entire world is a victim. Pay to get into Harvard and now thinks entitled to a national security clearance and a “job” in the White House. Everything circles back to the White House who is a collection of what is the worst in our society. Habits are hard to break. Teaching moments never stop. I hope this means a brighter future.
3
And now Kushner is Trump's personal ambassador to a dissector of his perceived enemies. So this apple is still sheltered by tree's leaves. Trump, too, owes his admission to academe to Daddy's largesse. Dubya was a legacy Eli who unashamedly noted that a "C" student could become President of the United States. I'm guessing earned his middling grade more or less on his own. Trump's grades? A function of money, plain and simple.
Did Kushner have any athletic boost? Is bridge a sport? How about shuffleboard? Chess, it is safe to say, was not Jared's booster chair.
To say the elite colleges have outsize influence on and in American government is to say hiking Mt. Everest in a day is hard to do. And year after year the stories of rigged admissions to these institution are exposed with earnest avowals that changes will be made. Seems the only real change is in the scams themselves.
America's community colleges and land-grant universities have been immeasurably more the engines that made and continue to make America the leader of the world in education.
5
I went to one of the most exclusive and selective private high schools in the country in the 1970s and it was generally agreed that there were three tuition schedules:
1) Full Tuition/No Scholarship (smart kids with rich parents)
2) School Scholarship (really smart kids but poor parents)
3) Dad Scholarship (dumb kids with really rich parents)
What I also discovered in the 1970s with private highly selective colleges/universities was that it was the exact same model. You either earn your way into Yale, Stanford, Wesleyan, Middlebury, etc. or you buy your way in, and it was the same way in the 1970s. Nothing new here to see.
4
As long as private colleges and universities must operate without government support in a capitalist economy, money will play a role in their admission decisions. The schools have a valuable commodity in the status conferred by holding their degree, so they will sell that commodity to those who offer them something they want. Usually it is money, sometimes it is athletic or creative talent, rarely it is a story of overcoming adversity that the schools can use in their self-promotion. But expecting private colleges and universities to be altruistic is ludicrous. The institutions are not now, nor have they ever been, dedicated to the public good.
4
I am a graduate student at one of these institutions. This is only the most egregious of an entire system where wealth and connections matter much more than "merit" (in itself a controversial term) or potential. Bribes aside, many students at these institutions have access to exclusive tutors/test prep, money to participate in expensive extra curricular activities, money to pay for their expenses while they voluntour somewhere referred to by a certain few with the suffix "-hole", connections to lawyers who can fix any small legal issues that would destroy others, attended high schools where they could rub shoulders with elites, etc. There's just a level of privilege (social, as much as wealthy) that is inaccessible to those outside it. This is also terrible for minorities. At my institution, I've yet to encounter another non-white student that didn't grow up with and still has immense economic and social privilege. I wonder if the statistics on the university's glitsy webpage on "diversity" are padded by these non-white, but certainly privileged few. Those of us from lower classes have truly fooled ourselves into believing it is merit and hard work alone that launches us to the top, and that the top is accessible to us.
2
Given all of the information coming out about these elite universities and their admission policies, it's surprising more people aren't concerned that their elite degrees will carry little value in the future. If I were a parent, I would steer my child towards a respectable public university. Who knows what a degree from Yale or Harvard will mean in the future. Possibly, not much.
Wouldn't that be an amusing irony after all of the money these people have spent helping their children "get ahead?"
What do you think those parents - and many others - want for grades? and for course content? And what do you think they get from these "innocent" administrators? How do you think that effects American higher education; and, eventually, all of American education?
When I taught at an elite school, Wash. U. in St. Louis, the answers to those questions became clear to me. Just read the letter from a student and his parents that were sent to the deans.
Those letters (with identifying details omitted, of course) are posted on my blog, inside-higher-ed.com . You can find the whole story there. It's titled "A Tale Out of School".
In that story you can read emails from deans and the math chair, expressing their concern that this course, mainly for engineers, not be too hard. As one dean wrote, "retention" is important. Education? Read the story and see.
2
This has been business as usual since the founding of these schools.
3
Without even having to read beyond the title of this article, it is a no-brainer to make this observation:
NO SURPRISE. As a careful observer, I've noticed that since the beginning of the Dotcom Era, MONEY has become THE substance of overriding and end-all importance in our society.
Once upon a time (long, long ago), universities and similar bastions of education actually had as their raison d'être the transfer of knowledge -- the Arts, Sciences, Humanities, etc. --- fervent intended to benefit society as a whole, be dint of our Higher Education graduates bringing their learning into chosen careers, for the sake of bettering the world around them.
Was money not involved in those halcyon days? Of course. But certainly not to the grotesque and toxic degree that is our "Modern" reality. What we have wrought upon ourselves is a sickening distortion, wherein Profit is THE end-all, over EVERY consideration.
Quite some time ago someone wrote in a sacred text, "the love of money is the root of all evil." Indeed.
(As our supposedly billionaire President is apt to say, "Sad. Bigly Sad.")
3
How so very wrong!
"Once upon a time (long, long ago), universities ... actually had as their raison d'être the transfer of knowledge -- the Arts, Sciences, Humanities, etc. --"
Uh, NO! They were there to transfer how to transmit the Word of God, and how to act like a proper rich gentleman. Even law schools ("Inns" in England) were different.
And money and power were the ONLY things! Then they went to knowledge. Now they are going from knowledge to furthering the cause of Leftism ... which is itself, of course, the self-annointed replacement for God. In other words, full circle.
There is nothing legally or morally wrong in selling places for cash. What's wrong is bribes to circumvent some other system.
Are these people's kids really "pushed into the winner's circle"? Getting into Yale is no guarantee of a happy life, especially if you're not really up to the challenge. I've known plenty of people with Ivy League degrees who have struggled to live up to the world's expectations. It ain't fun.
4
Wondering why the admissions offices didn't seem to follow up on any of the "athletic" recruits. A 10 second google search of any high school athlete's name and location will produce that athlete's results from their state's high school association, write-ups from the local newspaper, or results from games, matches competitions or tournaments from the professional association that governs the kid's chosen sport.
3
People are all up in arms because applicants to universities get in when their parents make large donations. Legal donations. How do they expect the universities to admit people who are not rich (for example who need financial aid) if they don’t take money from the rich people? And if it means admitting some kids because of those donations, so what? How many kids (percentage of freshmen) are admitted to "elite" schools because of a donation, that otherwise would not have qualified? I'd bet not many.
4
So the 37 Billion $$$ Harvard endowment isn’t enough? None of it is taxed because Harvard is a “non-profit” How much $$ does one need. And to those championing the capitalist claim of what private colleges do is of no concern because they’re not public universities taking public $$ - what about all that Federal grant $, govt backed student loans and the 608 Million that it receives for research?
And let’s not get into what the State and local government provides.
Despite their privilege and wealth the “elites” are Idiots all - the pitchforks have been sharpening since 2008 - the wealthy continued on like nothing happened- because for them - nothing did. Look around the tide is turning.
Well stated. You only missed the international programs to do the very same thing as the wealthy to get their kids into the Ivies... The fairly substantial percentage of slots that go to those children simply reduce the openings for kids in the US and ratchet up the stakes.
3
I have been reading and listening to stories that indicate in many cases, the son/daughter wasn’t aware of the fraud. Really? Please, they were complicit. The truly sad part of this sordid tale is the mindset it instills. Creates a victim mentality and they know that, when in a pinch, Mommy/Daddy will come to the rescue or when they older and are more “responsible adults”, access and influence of money will bail them out.
The colleges that these students are attending need to seriously ponder developing a policy that considers the evidence and decide If these “gamers” should no longer be part of the student body.
2
They are essentially buying titles. They are academic titles and not the titles of the old nobility, but in essence they are the same thing. A degree from Harvard doesn't mean that you are smarter or more capable than a person with a degree from a lowly state school, but it confers on the recipient a title of merit. Sadly, with policies that allow for legacy admissions and pay-offs in the form of donations, that title can be as much based on blood as the feudal titles that we threw off when we ratified our constitution over 200 years ago. Wealth is perverting our democracy and the college admissions process if just another example of the corruption that goes allow with concentration of wealth.
3
Where's the discussion of affirmative action in college admissions and how it similarly taints what should be a process based largely upon merit? Why should the color of someone's skin count for anything? Did the candidate have anything to do with some percentage of their ancestors being from a particular race? Talk about the ultimate legacy admissions policy!
6
The real victims are the kids who gain admission to a prestigious college or university because of these schemes, including those legacy admissions based on a large, well-timed "gift" to the institution. For a young person to know that they're at Harvard or Yale only because their daddy's money got them there may well haunt them all their life, undermining their self-confidence and, in some cases, prompting them to cut corners to gain promotion in their careers. I know of a young man who recently got admitted to Yale after his dad had made a large donation, only to discover two weeks after his arrival that competing at Yale was beyond his intellectual capacity. He had the intelligence to drop out.
Overlooked in the coverage of this I've seen so far is the fact that slots at Harvard, Yale et al. are "precious" because the possession of a diploma from one of these institutions is an enormous advantage in the employment market. This is due not just to brand value but to the fact that the old Harvardians, Yalies etc. clustered at the top of most professions tend to hire young ones. I'd love to see a study of the GRE, MCAT, LSAT and so forth scores of elite-school grads compared to those of the top performers at, say, Southern Methodist University or Rutgers of Illinois or any of a dozen others. I'll bet there wouldn't be a dime's worth of difference. The whole business is a scam.
2
The exposed college entrance scheme, laughable and disgusting in equal parts, will do some good. It will draw attention to the injustices about which Frank Bruni has written for years.
The universities are not the victims in this. The victims are the public high school kids in the nation’s inner cities, rural areas, working-class suburbs and factory towns.
1
My son will attend a college this fall that recently dropped the essay requirement for its admissions application. The stated reason was to remove some of the burden associated with the application process. I like to think the college just realized that as a whole the quality of essay was poorly correlated to the quality of the applicant.
1
This is the consequence of money and privilege with a big heap of helicopter parenting. And it starts years earlier, with parents doing the kids homework. When my daughter was in middle school she was required to make a toothpick bridge strong enough to hold up a milk bottle. No rules or concepts to go by, just trial and error. I watched my daughter struggle for hours. her final product was a mess. The next day we discovered most of her classmates had their parents do it for them. If your dad was an engineer, you got an A. What is the point of such an exercise? How will these kids function in the real world without dad to do their work for them?
5
@JSL:
While I agree with the majority and core thrust of your comment, in my view one acutely critical defect of the entire process jumps out:
"No rules or concepts to go by."
This is the antithesis of education, at any level (except for perhaps a class in Abstract Art) . . .
1
Elite University admission scandals in America?
It's obvious after all of the years of human history and buildup of human knowledge and formation of Universities that not only the core but virtually the entirety of the lessons taught have been derived from humans in the past who were not so much taught by others to be what they were but were outstanding genetic specimens of creative genius.
Yet to this day the counter fiction is maintained that intellectual and creative genius can be taught, that systems can be set up in which the wealthy/power at a particular time can be perpetually elevated beyond actual capacity, that even mediocre offspring of the wealthy can somehow be refashioned, or if society is determined to be more fair-minded, achieve equality, fair representation, it can pick and choose from here and there (social class, race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) among students and fashion an elite body of humans.
But of course all this is sad folly, as anyone knows from the common sense that occurs in the field of sports. Any coach in sports and fan knows the higher the level of excellence desired the more one seeks out raw talent and develops it. The higher the level of excellence desired the less you can make just anyone into it. Which means America is at a make or break point, a very serious question: Do we have the courage to actually make working elite Universities, pursue true talent search and meritocracy, or will we prop up mediocrity as excellence?
1
Naviance is a service that creates a scatter plot of the admissions results of all the kids from your kid’s high school to a particular college. The axises are SAT aggregate score and GPA.
Anomalies on the scatterplot — acceptances of kids with unusually low SAT scores or grades— provides a clear roadmap to just how prevalent this corruption is.
The other bookend to this scandal is just how hard it is to flunk out of an Ivy League school.
1
A "college admissions scandal" is trivial compared to our disgraceful political scandals.
When Elizabeth Warren dishonestly claimed to be a Native American to advance her law and political career, she demonstrated that "the ends justify the means".
Her Presidential candidacy is "another sour deal" for Americans.
Warren, and all other dishonest and self-serving politicians, serve as models for "wrongdoing".
3
@jck
We'll let this speak for itself as a guide to your value judgment.
@jck:
While rather off-topic, your closing sentence rings true.
Mr. Bruni, while I agree with your analysis generally, it is extraordinarily irresponsible of you to single out liberals whose political beliefs support policies and programs that strive to achieve a more equal playing field while leaving entirely off the hook conservatives who favor the opposite. First of all, scanning the descriptions of those charged, I’d bet an overwhelming percentage are Republicans. Lots of CEOs and entrepreneurs and private equity and hedge fund and real estate development executives not known for their liberal views. So why single out the handful of liberals for scorn? Because they generally believe in equality but succumbed to their worst instincts with their own kids? Why is it not more abhorrent to view yourself as entitled and superior generally, AND to exercise your privilege in this way as well? And why is it that our standard for liberals is perfection in all realms, and almost none for conservatives. This kind of scorn does more to foster a system that is rigged in so many profound ways — access to healthcare, criminal justice, gerrymandering and voter suppression, etc — than the actions of a tiny percentage of liberals contributes to the conversation.
5
Were any of the colleges really going to reject these kids anyway? The children of wealthy celebrities? I really don't get why Felicity Huffman and William Macy were worried about their kids not getting into a good school. Surely one of the Ivies would have recognized their names and accepted the kids?
1
@Julie:
Absolutely.
They didn't want their children to eventually wind up on public assistance because of an inadequate education limiting lifetime advancement or have to depend on parents later for financial support.
I wonder what political stance defendants have taken on the affirmative action controversy ?
Ivy League schools help families who control money continue to control money, in return for which the schools receive heaps of money. The schools are not “engines of social mobility” any more than Lotto is - they are profit driven businesses. Maintaining the appearance of a meritocracy is very difficult under these circumstances.
3
Gee there is gambling going on at a casino? So this blows the myth that rich kids are just smarter than poor kids. The problem with those named yesterday is that they got caught. Not only were their offspring not up to the challenge they were not wise enough not to get caught. Money has greased the way for years so this isn't a shock that well heeled parents are using wealth to gain an upper hand. The acceptable way to maintain the class system in higher education is the Legacy admits.
2
I graduated valedictorian from my medical school on my own merit. I then moved to the UK and then had to pass the PLAB a very difficult test, which included a tricky English language test, designed to fail candidates who did not grow up with English as a native language. I worked in a series of ordinary house officer and senior house officer jobs till I was able to secure a residency in medicine in an ordinary hospital in the US. After finishing the residency I was appointed Chief Resident in the same program. Then I secured a attending physician position in one of the largest health systems in Long Island, NY.
At no stage above did any institution or employer in the UK or US ask me for my 'valedictorian' certificate. All I was required to provide was proof of completion of medical school and internship etc. No-one, rather disappointingly, asked to see my merit certificates. And yet soon after securing the above attending physician position, I was promoted to the post of Associate Chief of my division.
When you go see patients, they don't care of you graduated from Yale; they just want you to be a competent caring physician who will cure their illness...
Here's my point, it's not necessary to unfairly and or illegally game the system to propel one's kids. It's a great disservice to them and to society. After completion of education by kids, it's ALL about what they truly are worth. Kids will grow into their own roles and positions in life based on their own true merit.
3
@Shahbaby:
OUTSTANDING comment. Should be a "NY Times Pick."
Overall, this affects a small portion of society. Ninety-nine percent of university admissions processes are honest. I fear that FOX News will blow this story out of the water with its fear tactics and make most of America scared of the evidenced-based research that produces informed policy. Let's not add to the fear.
2
The gap between haves and have nots are getting wider and wider in every aspect. Are we taking capitalism to the extreme?
@MK:
I would rephrase your question only slightly, to "are we taking the love of money to the extreme?"
The answer, prima facie, is "OH YEAH . . . "
If you believe in equal opportunity or that intellect, talent, hard work and integrity should be encouraged then you should be outraged that elite universities are trading on their gatekeeper role for the benefit of their wealthy or merely rich benefactors, and thus, of course, themselves. Got to keep those megadonations and bequests flowing. The deeper point here is that our so-called "meritocratic" system is not so meritocratic. The admissions game is but one aspect of this. Why do elite I-banks and law firms hire Ivy grads? Partly because clients will essentially require the "brand" but also because it's a way of purchasing the new hire's social, familial and business connections. It's no coincidence that the rise of deepening economic inequality has been accompanied by the rise of the argument that America has become an increasingly meritocratic country when in fact economic mobility has been dropping like a stone.
1
I just imagine how the kids who were waitlisted at those schools feel as they read this.
3
When I first read this story I was overwhelmed with vicarious shame and humiliation for these parents - but then quickly remembered that we live in a society where this, too, will be normalized. Parents are awful - petty, competitive, greedy, and desperate to work out their insecurities through their children's success. I have seen it for 18+ years now. I have one child in college and another in high school - the high schooler plays 3 sports, dances, and is on the honor role. Works incredibly hard. The college kid scored over 1400 on his SAT. I never read my son's essay (on his insistence) and he put himself out there for all the world to see. A solid B+ student from an extremely rigorous high school. He was rejected by some of his top choices, waitlisted, and deferred from others. We looked at each other and said "who got in???" Here's your answer. No matter what gets said, and no matter how long it takes - the truth gets out. At the end of the day, all we ever have is our integrity. Whether or not that matters to a person, well that's up to them.
8
There’s so much shame to spread among the parents and college athletic coaches involved in this scandal but little focus, as far as I can tell, on the College Board which has such lax controls that special testing locations could be set up, proctors bribed and substitutes recruited to take tests for students. C’mon SAT, this is your business! Take responsibility and stamp out opportunities for cheating. The special accommodations for students with learning disabilities is being exploited by every parent who can scrape together a thin justification. This scandal is a call to action.
5
Shocking - rich people with connections get special treatment - I am shocked! And they think the system should apply to them - shocked!
My brother in law was not pleased (actually his daughter) was not pleased with school's dorm selection for her - when told he was willing to make a "contribution" to school if dorm problem "corrected" she ended up in the dorm she wanted.
4
The solution is reasonably simple: after weeding out applicants who are by any standard below par, put all the other applications in 2 barrels, one for male and one for female. The blindfolded admissions officer can then pull applications randomly from the barrels until the class is full. Problem solved (and reductions in admissions staff employment accomplished)!
1
@TWM
Won't work. Nowadays you'd need several more barrels to take into account all of those professing to be both sexes or neither sex or whatever.......
The adult children who are the product of these buy-ins will be haunted by a sense of unworthiness for the remainder of their lives. Thanks, mom and dad ....
3
Oh please, dream on. They'll be exactly as haunted as are students who got in in order to fulfill a diversity quota.
While on the whole I agree with what you say, I do think there are some distinctions to be made: bribing a coach or having someone take an exam is clearly immoral on two levels - corruption and misrepresentation; moreover the money does not go to the college. If a qualified (and I do mean qualified) applicant's parents offer millions to secure a place, the money goes to the college and (certainly at Yale or Stanford) will be used to give scholarships to the fully deserving but poor applicants who would otherwise not be able to attend because of high fees.
6
In Manhattan and SF and many other places there is a clear pecking order based upon the tier of school someone went to. Of course there are exceptions, but you are virtually locked out of the upper tiers of Finance, Tech and the Law unless your degree is an Ivy, MIT or Stamford. There is a clear differentiation and successful parents know it and will fight tooth and nail to game it.
3
@Ken
Right. Which is why I have no clue why anyone who doesn't get admitted to one of the top-tier colleges would take on immense college loans to attend a private college that was second, third or whatever tier. Unless you get into an Ivy or equivalent, save your money and attend a State University. Even better, go to a good community college the first two years and really save a chunk of change. Unless you graduate with Harvard, Yale etc. to stick on your CV and with the contacts you made there to help you along the way, a state college is the way to go.
3
It's ironic when the author says, " I bet that more than a few were proud liberals." BECAUSE, this just shows that the liberal case-- arguing that we cannot count on the good will of individuals on their own will not solve the country's problems (like climate change, like equal opportunity, etc), instead we need systematic social action and a change of laws--is just what is needed to address the problem!
1
@Bret:
Spot-on.
Amen.
People who have tons of money are usually not content, they always want more. It makes sense in this milieu to buy your child’s way into big-name schools. It’s the name on the diploma, folks, and another learning experience for the kid - money buys everything.
2
I’m from a poor single parent home in an Appalachian village of less than 70 people. I attended elementary school in a two-room schoolhouse. My high school guidance counselor prodded me to complete admission to the state university, then assisted me in that process. I received financial help including a $400 gift from my church, and a couple more small gifts from local civic groups in the county seat. I was admitted to university and was the second student in my village ever to do so (the first was my older sister). I was unaware that my peers may have had a different experience. I was appreciative for the opportunity that resulted in graduation, a non-factory job, graduate school, and a solid career. I now know that privilege has its rewards. Top notch schools operate on an entirely different plane. Let them. I simply want to know that those of us from poor rural backgrounds continue to have opportunities for life changing educational experiences.
10
@Jack Fundanish
Thank you, sir.
I went to a community college in upstate New York for one year. I had to leave and enroll at night in order to work so I could pay my tuition which was somewhere around $500 per semester. Guess what, i was drafted 3 months later. I finished college with VA benefits.
What is it with people who have wealth and their offspring that in their minds they deserve more than the common man?
3
I guess it would have been considered hellishly bad if (gasp!) those rich kids would've had to settle for going to a state junior college or a state university, lest they have to mingle with other lowly underachievers. And in reality, most of the kids involved are likely rich enough that they'll never have to actually work anyway, so a college degree from a good school is just something else to talk about at the country club.
I was amazed to read about the $500k spent by Lori Laughlin & her husband regarding their kids--that money would've put dozens of underprivileged kids through a college or trade schools!
But, when you look at the recruitment of college athletes & the corruption that happens with college sports, the whole thing is & has always been rotten.
5
I'm kind of surprised that some wealthy, "elite," hasn't founded a new college that competes with the likes of Yale and Harvard.
With students from here and around the world eager to study in the U.S. I would think a 'Bloomberg,' 'Gates,' or 'Jobs,' university, would be a very attractive venue.
2
If Mike Bloomberg started a college it would be an excellent one.
He was a very poor New England kid who worked hard, studied to become an engineer, and started a business.
Any complaints with that trajectory?
Ah for the good old days when your parents would just buy the school a building as the price of admission. At least then the school actually got something.
8
You speak of "routine favor-trading and favoritism that have long corrupted the admissions process, leeching merit from the equation." And how is this different from so many other areas of our society -- children of the wealthy and famous and powerful getting breaks; businesses getting contracts because of connections (some legally some illegally). Just think, products beat out competitors not only due to quality, but due to who is pushing them, who has the money to advertise them, who has the name recognition.
Capitalism is not fair. The market is not a level playing field. Privilege has its privileges. This is what Bernie and AOC have been trying to say. And now, it's only higher ed that is the problem? Maybe you need a bit more higher ed to be clear-eyed about our situation.
4
I need to give a shout out to college-bound kids whose parents are not even involved in the admissions process AT ALL. It’s atrocious enough that this scandal involves rich and famous parents able and willing to pull any and all $tring$ for their kids; what about kids whose parents have no clue about college, never went themselves, are uninvolved, abusive, neglectful, whatever.... if they don’t have a teacher, coach, or somebody else to help them or sponsor them, they are on their own and at a clear disadvantage. I was one of those kids, and I applied to schools without my single parent even knowing about it, not to mention taking the SAT at the last minute because other students told me to. I ended up with 2 grad degrees and a modicum of success in life. I visited many elite institutions for my work, and seeing parents with their kids on campus always brought tears to my eyes.
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The whole system of admission to American colleges is ridiculous and prone to cheating. In France to enter a "Grande Ecole", the closest thing there is to an elite college. you have to follow 2, sometimes 3 years of a gruelling program in "prepas", at the end of which students take a nationwide exam. Not the SAT or GMAT sort, but students have to sit for 4 to 8 hour-test for maths, physics, philosophy, literature, foreign languages etc. It is usually a 2-day thing. Then students are ranked and admitted in the Grande Ecole only on their academic merits.
It is not perfect, because kids from privileged families still have an advantage, and some kids who could be admitted are not. But at least there is no kid who is admitted and should not have been.
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When our employers begin valuing degrees from UMass as much as Harvard we may hear the end of this.
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@Ann The inadvertent and improvisational public relations benefit reflexively granted to these IVIES is disturbing. Education is presented as a fixed product, a consumerist "you get what you pay for" valuation. Anyone who was a college student can look back at the experience and tell that education is symbiotic. We learn from Socrates (the Greek) that education is in the quality of the conversation.
Can someone tell me, what is different in this (with Arrest) than what people like trump's father buying entrance into schools for his children? I believe colleges and universities have been doing this since the first colleges in America.
This is why we miss brilliant students whoes parents do not have the money to buy in. I want every college and universities exposed fo robbing the future of students who are smarter, more skilled and motivated than the obviously students that could not get in a school without their parents cheating to get them in.
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While I wholeheartedly endorse the overall theme of this piece, I must disagree with the suggestion that a financial contribution is similar to this kind of cheating. A financial contribution is not hidden — moreover, such contributions often enable colleges to increase financial aid.
These horrible actions are far, far worse.
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The colleges should investigate each student found to have been admitted in this way to determine if they were complicit or actively involved in the scam. It is highly likely that nearly all of them knew that something was going on; the kids involved are not innnocent in this. If there is solid evidence of complicity or active involvement, they should be expelled for lapses in academic integrity. The parents, if convicted, should do jail time.
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Most commenters are justly outraged at the blatant advantages of the rich in college admissions; I know of several students admitted to my own (Ivy) alma mater despite mediocre academic records because of their parents' wealth. But let's not forget that this scandal was only made possible because of the long-outdated system of preferring athletes for admission.
Why this should be so in the Ivy League, which doesn't even give sports scholarships, is beyond me. It's not as if many Ivy League athletes will go on to careers in sports. The practice contradicts the founding principle of the Ivy League, that academics should take priority over sports. Worse, it undermines the credibility of excellent colleges and generates a lot of cynicism among students. My own son, who will finish high school with at least 8 AP courses and an all-honors course schedule, is also an athlete. He's good, but he won't be recruited anywhere and the only attention he gets are the form letters and emails you get when your combined SAT scores are 1500 and up.
Meanwhile, one of his teammates, a very average student who doesn't take AP or honors classes, has been invited by the football staff to visit Yale, dangling before him the possibility of being put on their recruitment list. Academically, he would be way over his head at Yale. The other students know all about this. The boy himself is well-liked, and no one blames him for accepting the invitation. But you should hear what they think about Yale.
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Yes, but your son has the advantage of you, a legacy, and every Ivy application has a box for the legacy. So yes, your son has an advantage most kids don’t and never will have.
What else is new? Nothing much: once again, inter-collegiate athletics figures in the corruption of higher education.
When do we step back and look at the big picture? For example, why can't the NBA and the NFL fund their own minor-league systems, as does MLB? Let's start asking basic questions, and perhaps scale things back. Too often the tail (athletics) wags the dog (academics) and big tv money pulls athletics where ever tv wants it to go.
What will be the result of this scandal? minor reforms (a bandage), perhaps in reforms of oversight of admissions, will be put in place and we'll all get on with our lives, rather than the major surgery the system so desperately needs.
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There are so many things about situation that bother me, but the worst is probably the involvement of the athletics departments. Not because I think they are above reproach. Far from it: because I think that they are probably the most corrupt area of most colleges and universities. In big ten and similar schools there are regularly reports of cheating scandals that make it possible for unprepared student athletes to pass their classes. And now at more elite schools we see directors willing accepting “massaged” profiles for financial benefit.
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Folks, sadly this is not news, and it won't end. As long as there is a steady supply of parents (the root of this sickness) who think these schools are the "only" portal to a successful life for their child (and proof they were an amazing parent), the band will play on. I work at top international school in Asia and there is an unending supply of parents/students who will do anything to get into a very short list of universities in the USA. No price is too high. Our school (and so many others) is a willing accessory, pumping up grades, providing glowing letters of rec to otherwise uninteresting students....all because "we pay a lot of money to attend this school" as the parents remind us.
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