We have all heard how the wealthy “donate” large sums of money to universities and by some “coincidence” their kids end up at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.
Can NY times reporters please research the correlation between $5 million dollar parent donations and their kid’s acceptance rate?
Pay for Play has been going on for as long as universities have been operating. One could argue that the “donations” are just like the “bribes” in this article, just much bigger.
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@Richard
Read "The Price of Admission" by Daniel Golden. I read it a long time ago - I'm in the higher education space - and it really is fascinating/disturbing!
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What happens to the money these coaches pocketed? True hall of famers, this group. Despicable.
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I'm appalled that adults are teaching these kids (young adults) to lie and cheat so blatantly. It's astounding the degree to which everyone was complicit and the degree to which they were able to get away with this for years. Business as usual for the wealthy and their kids, I guess. I'll likely never be rich, but I sleep well at night.
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Well, this is my second attempt to be recognized:
This manufactured 'scandal' of the DOJ to prosecute 'Low Hanging Fruit' reminds me of the Mortgage Securities fraud of the last decade: Many mortgage brokers tried to pass off blame for the stock market collapse, to the families seeking home loans. Despite poor or even non existent bases for the applicants being accepted, the brokers chose their own commissions as the primary motivation to approve these applicants for loans they could not pay.
But these are not the legally proscribed bribes of publicly elected offices, but coaches, admission officers, and presidents, etc of private colleges. Like the mortgage brokers, having allowed greed to guide the creation of a corrupt business practice under the guise of the promise of an endowment, or the profit from a bribe; It is these perpetrators, occupying positions of fiduciary and ethical responsibility, who are the real culprits.
Should DOJ go after the estate of Fred Trump, or, Charles Kushner both of whom provided endowments to their respective son's , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner's colleges that were followed by their academically mediocre sons admissions? Because their sons have each attained the highest positions of trust to provide and make informed policy decisions: YES.
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Contrary to the initial reports, it seems like a mixed bag of co-conspirators. Will Singer was obviously committing fraud. Individuals who took money for themselves (or their children) are also clearly fraudsters. However, it is a stretch to say that giving a false reference for someone is a criminal offence when there is no legal duty unless it is imputed from the appropriation of something belonging to another. Coaches who took donations to the college team were committing fraud on who? They may have violated the internal rules of the university about processing gifts, but that is a private matter, not a criminal one. And the university gains! Hardly a victim of fraud. From the standpoint of the parents writing checks to the university team, they must be baffled to find themselves charged with committing fraud on the university. It will depend heavily on what they knew about the coach's authority vs. legal duty to be honest. We demand honesty in the securities context with a fiduciary from directors/executives to shareholders. We demand honesty in retail (more or less) to promote commerce. But we should be very wary of holding that there is a novel, universal legal obligation to tell the truth to your boss. The schools were certainly at no disadvantage to seek the facts. Shame on the universities for listening to sports coaches, rather than putting the in the effort to look for exemplary scholarship and academic development.
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They always say sports doesn't build character it reveals it..
How true and apt..
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NBC is reporting as many as 800 parents may be involved.
Another issue is coaches who make huge salaries giving their own kids full ride scholarships when their kids lack D I talent to play. Thus a kid who has athletic talent and has worked in the classroom and in athletics is denied a full ride so a kid whose parent is making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars gets an undeserved free ride.
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Third time lucky?
This manufactured 'scandal' of the DOJ to prosecute 'Low Hanging Fruit' reminds me of the Mortgage Securities fraud of the last decade: Many major mortgage brokers tried to pass off blame for the stock market collapse, to the families seeking home loans. Despite poor or even non existent bases for the applicants being accepted, the brokers chose their own commissions as the sole motivation to approve these applicants for loans they could not subsequently pay.
But these are not the legally proscribed bribes of elected, public offices, but coaches, admission officers, and presidents, etc of private colleges. Like the mortgage brokers, having allowed greed to guide their creation of a corrupt business practice under the guise of the promise of an endowment, a bribe by any other name; It is these morally corrupt individuals, occupying positions of fiduciary and ethical responsibility, who are the real culprits.
Should DOJ go after the estate of Fred Trump, or, Charles Kushner , for instance? Both of whom provided endowments to the respective colleges of their sons , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, that were followed by their academically mediocre sons admissions? Because their sons, having each attained positions of trust to provide and make informed policy decisions, the answer is, YES!
1
It makes you wonder if everyone is corruptible. I think the coaches are even more despicable than the parents because at least the parents were following some primordial instinct to advance the interests of their offspring at the expense of others.
4
This manufactured 'scandal' of the DOJ to prosecute 'Low Hanging Fruit' reminds me of the Mortgage Securities fraud of the last decade: Country Wide, Wells Fargo and many other mortgage brokers tried to pass off blame for the stock market collapse, to the families seeking home loans. Despite poor or even non existent bases for the applicants being accepted, the brokers chose their own commissions as the primary motivation to approve these applicants for loans they could not pay.
But these are not the bribes of publicly elected offices, legally proscribed, but coaches, admission officers, and presidents, etc of private colleges. Like the mortgage brokers, having allowed greed to guide the creation of a corrupt business practice under the guise of the promise of an endowment, or bribe's profit; It is these individuals, occupying positions of fiduciary and ethical responsibility, who are the real culprits.
Should DOJ go after the estate of Fred Trump, or, Charles Kushner both of whom provided endowments (read: Bribes) to their respective son's , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner's colleges that were followed by their academically mediocre sons admissions? Because their sons have each attained positions of trust to provide and make informed policy decisions, yes.
Will they give the names of the people who purchased their children's acceptance into the universities, or will the rich get away with it?
3
Many of us in tennis business and in and around the DC area are wondering how Georgetown, a school that rarely lands a recruit in the top 100 in the county, did not know that they had landed a player in the top 50. A player with that type of ranking, and with pumped up board scores, would be recruited by almost every school in the country.
Are you telling me that the Georgetown AD, and assistant AD, and somebody in the admissions office were never once curious about their star recruit ? We’re they that lazy and/or incompetent ?
Makes you wonder how many people were in on this....
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I share outrage expressed below by almost all.
But their solution to throw the proverbial baby out - is an overreach.
I worked on the oil patch for 43 plus years.
Our industry is definitely not known as lily white goody.
Over the years - we have tightened gift taking and gift giving.
It's to a point where we have to declare if someone from the other side bought us just a breakfast at McDonalds.
So, this gift taking by these coaches is shocking.
And as someone said - if Mr. Singer found these half a dozen coaches to participate in this scam - how many turned him down?
And why none - bothered to report to anybody.
Or for that matter, assistants of these crooked coaches - where is their allegiance.
I think sports plays a unique and an excellent role in our universities under NCAA.
As a matter of fact, at London Olympics - I met so many foreign athletes. The one thing they had all un common - many were NCAA student athletes.
As a matter of fact, we joked that if NCAA had a team at the Olympics - they would beat America or anybody for that matter - hands down.
So, let's not throw the baby out by destroying sports programs.
This is a good start to out these coaches - hopefully, most will learn.
But I know and you know - there are always going to be bad apples.
3
More, more, more, more. It seems these coaches were highly respected, at the top of their fields and in secure, seemingly well paid jobs. To risk giving it all up for more money? What happened to values? Isn’t a part of coaching teaching the team sportsmanship and values? They are disgusting.
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I think the most selective colleges need to do a much better job of vetting their applicants. They can no longer assume anything is true. Everything needs to be documented A photo of an athletic event can be photoshopped, but a newspaper article might be better. The same goes for all the humanitarian projects, business ventures, and the other phony activities and schemes these callow teens and their fraudulent parents can think of in order to stand out. Funny though, but they seem to drop their interest in these activities once they get in. Essays should be eliminated because they’re just a bunch of baloney. The most depressing thing is that these elite institutions are so mediocre when it comes to running an application process that makes any sense at all. They should just come out and give a breakdown of who gets in and why and not continue to give false hopes.
2
What's going on at USC? I've read in the past year where campus gynecologist George Tyndall was accused of misconduct, former medical school dean Carmen Puliafito used hard drugs and poor judgement and was stripped of his license, coach Tony Bland pled guilty in NCAA corruption scandal, and now corrupt coaches from two sports are involved in an admissions scandal. For the sake of the decent students, graduates and staff, get your act together.
6
I wish the same people who are outraged at this cheating scandal were as outraged at the cheating going on in our government staffed by corporate shills, sycophants and go alongs while pushing out long term knowledgeable and experienced staff.
Pay attention to the crimes committed daily that pollute your environment and make machinery dangerous. How many people need to die before we are as outraged at corporations putting profits before people?
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This only shows how inverted and perverted college sports have become.
Any university will do anything it can to get $$$$ so they can afford coaches and Presidents outrageous salaries.
But what goes to a college athlete who is injured with a disability for life?
At best they may get a bus ticket back home while the coaches get 7 and 8 figure salaries.
3
There have to be some people out there who said no to Singer. The back story to this scandal is how did Singer deftly navigate his way around the college athletic world without getting outed. And how did he carefully cultivate people into essentially destroying their careers and reputations?
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Greed is destroying America, pure and simple.
No one should have any job for more than ten years.
And we need strong progressive taxes for people and corporations.
Traffic and other fines should be indexed to income.
Terrorism is simply push back from losers in a winner-take-all society.
That’s what the far right is doing. Next is revolution, read history, it’s coming.
1
Two important things. Did Singer and his cronies invent this system of bribing University coaches to flag their clients' children as desirable athletes for the admission process or did he just learn about a corrupt methodology that was already in place? If this system was already in place -some of Singer's nefarious related work goes back to 2012- what are we doing about digging into who was corrupted back then and who paid for it and who benefited from it. There is quite possibly a much bigger story here and a lot longer list of the culpable. The answer lies with the coaches as we have seen with Singer once facing criminal charges some will turn to avoid jail time. Who told them about this easy route to extra wealth? Was it dark secret shared among certain cash short coaches for decades? How far back does this system go? Let's see every person who benefited unjustly exposed. Boy! Some people must be losing sleep.
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It could be argued that the only legit amateur teams on any campus are the club sports. The players all got in thru the normal admissions process. They form and run their own teams and competitions and, at least in Rugby, have the opposition back for a beer afterwards.
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While we blame university coaches and rich parents, we should not forget the key reason sports quotas exist: university sports is big business and also attracts legitimate good students.
As long as students are drawn to university based on their sports teams, this problem will persist.
4
I was an Ivy League admissions officer in the early '00s and interacted a good amount with the coaches and athletic director so that they could understand which types of students to recruit - and which ones were simply not going to be strong enough academically (read: don't bother), no matter how incredible their athletic ability.
The scandal is of course disconcerting and upsetting on many levels, but I am honestly wondering how Singer even *found* these people - at so many universities and across so many sports - who were willing to risk their careers, livelihoods and reputations. Did he approach any coaches who refused his bribes? If so, did any of them report Singer to the authorities?
In admissions, we weren't allowed to accept any gifts - even a box of chocolates! - from applicants or their families. I just can't fathom how Singer was able to find enough corrupt (or corruptible) people to sustain his fraudulent scheme. It's a real shame that these people willingly participated.
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@JFT - You raised really good questions. It makes me wonder if there will be more to this story as it progresses. Was this known in the sports community and kept quiet?
I know from a sport one of my children played many excellent Canadian athletes in that particular sport went to Ivy League schools on a sports scholarship. My understanding was that the rules of engagement between university coach and the potential high school athlete and their parents were very strict. Also if the SAT score was not high enough, regardless of their excellence in this sport, they could not get in. So all of this fraud puzzles me.
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@Liz McDougall
I am assuming you're talking about hockey!
There are no merit or athletic scholarships in the Ivy League, but there was some (or more than some) forgiveness in the admissions offices on scores and grades compared to the general applicant pool for officially recruited athletes. That said, you are absolutely correct that there were minima and standards that needed to be met.
Singer clearly knew not only to get the endorsement of the coaches, but also to falsify the ACT/SAT so that the scores would be considered admissible.
In my four years in admissions, I never heard of nor witnessed anything but the utmost professionalism and respect for the strict recruiting process. It is a shame that these coaches let greed rule their judgment.
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@JFT
I went to a state school in the Midwest, graduated and then lived in Palo Alto. I dated a Stanford student, she was a HS valedictorian, bright. Her roommates, a few legacy admissions, not so much.
My state school was easy to get into, hard to get out of. People dropped like flies.
Stanford was hard to get into, easy to get out of. Everyone graduated.
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The time has come for colleges and universities put a moratorium on recruiting of athletes who do not meet all the academic requirements of other non-athlete students. Coaches should form teams with real students. Until they do that, these schools have no real credibility or right to call themselves institutions of higher learning.
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Keep competitive league sports out of the academic domain of all schools. Like in other countries competitive league sports should be a separate entity managed and financed like a professional league.
School, whether high school or college, should be all about an education including physical fitness with no interest in the competitive side of any sport.
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I hear some of the private elementary schools in the Boston area have teachers classify a majority of their students as having learning disabilities so they can take admission test to private high schools without a time limit. Cheating (and moral decay) starts early for the privileged.
Should I name names...?
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@John: I'm betting there are a lot of nervous wealthy parents right now.
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@John, if you actually have evidence, yes. But all kinds of rumors float around and spread these days. Even a comment like yours becomes "I recently heard teachers do this" in someone else's telling. So yes, if you have evidence. But otherwise, we don't need more rumors than we have now.
6
To summarize the new news here:
1) USC's athletic department has a corruption problem
2) Georgetown, a Catholic organization, discovered a sinner in its midst and shuffled him along to another parish (oh, my bad, college)
3) To paraphrase Thomas More: It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wake?
Thanks for the update!
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I am sick to my stomach reading about this cheating scandal. So many high school athletes train for years at their craft. To think these coaches took spots away from other elite level athletes is so wrong. The boys at my son's school train so unbelievable hard in sports. Also, to pretend your child as a learning disability to get extended time on the SAT is so upsetting. Parents have been fighting since the Individual with Disabilities Education Act with was passed in 1975 for that right. I am truly outraged and disgusted by all this. So sick. I hope the parents go to jail and the children get kicked out of the schools.
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@Out West: You are right to be outraged. With the exception of the future responsibility of life saving that is the purview of medical doctors, the tradition of time constraints in answering test questions is a mystery to me.
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@Out West This whole problem has its roots in high school athletes that focus on athletic training and not their classwork. Do away with special admits and both of these problems go away. Gaining admission based on bogus athletic skills is not too terribly different from gaining admission because of real athletic skills when you haven't earned the grades and test scores.
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@Charles Most college athletes playing "minor sports" (let's leave football/basketball out of this conversation - ENTIRELY a different thing!), have played for many years. It is hard to keep ones grades really high when one puts in so much time traveling and practicing. But most do so!!!
Most people have no idea about recruiting in the minor sports. Most sports have 3 slots given them for admissions.
One is the top tier - this recruit is such an outstanding athlete and will be valuable to the entire team due to his skills. He will be forgiven if his GPA is not perfect and his test scores are significantly lower than the average for that school.
The middle tier recruit is also an outstanding athlete in his sport. He, too, will be valuable, just not quite to the degree of the top tier. His grades and test scores will be in the lower range of those typically admitted.
Then there is the 3rd tier. This is a student with significant ability - an asset for the team. His test scores and grades put him in the middle range of those typically admitted.
After that, there are the "supported" candidates. These are athletes who will be an asset to the program and who have grades and test scores that will get the student into the college on his own merit. The coach just wants admissions to know he wants this student.
No top university wants ANY athlete who is incapable of doing the work at that institution!!! At such schools, there are no "gut" courses for athletes.
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