A Supposed Stickler for the Rules, Now at the Center of a U.S.C. Scandal

The bashing of the USC administration is nonsensical. These were famous or very wealthy parents. Why didn't they simply make a large donation to the university -- the way that Jared Kushner's dad donated to Harvard -- so their child could be admitted? Perhaps the answer is that USC admissions no longer lets big donations sway admissions decisions to admit less qualified students. It hasn't been the "University of Spoiled Children" for many years. However, like other universities, including Yale, U Penn, and other colleges caught in this scandal, they did allow coaches' to designate athletic recruits who would nearly always be admitted if they met some minimum standard. That is what led to this scandal. If the USC admissions office had simply been a lot more friendly to wealthy people willing to donate large amounts of money to have their child admitted via the legal "back door", there would have been no need for them to use this illegal side door of paying a coach to designate them as a recruit.

Over the years, USC seems to be involved in every college sports (and academic) scandal that comes down the pike. From OJ to Mike Garrett to Pete Carroll to Lori Laughlin and her social media influencer daughters, it's a complete cesspool.

OJ took a stab at academics, but soon realized that he was better suited for the physicality of football. He never impressed me as being very academically inclined.

No bad news that comes out of USC should shock anyone these days...it's a tsunami of corruption and incompetence. USC has an extraordinary professional network in Southern California...it is the only thing that explains why people want to attend a school that is in one of the worst neighborhoods in LA and has been know for years as "University for Spoiled Children". Plus it has the best college parties in LA...their frat row is like Animal House.

This is why wealth destroys merit in a society built on wealth. I never want to hear again the old lie that wealthy people are mostly self-made, and if poor folks would just stop being lazy, they could open all the same doors. Just. Stop.

So women aren't superior to men after all?? This is very low behavior and hopefully she will suffer the consequences.

So even in the world of white privilege there are levels of privilege among white athletes. Outside of track and field these minor sports are all white kid's games. How terrible is that.

Well, of course she was tough on other people's recruits. She had to keep slots open for her bribes.

All of this pales in comparison to the shoe contracts.

Watch this— none of the 50 people indicted spend in jail, their kids get degrees and by summer no one will remember this. They are all white with plenty of money for attorneys. They might pay a relatively small fine. Courts can be purchased, not hard to do. Unless you have no money and jump a subway turnstile— you get Rickers and sent upstate

Please know that there are student athletes-seriously. Many athletes are admitted to selective colleges and universities, fairly and based on athletic AND academic ability. The doctor you see, the surgeon, lawyer, engineer, teacher, soldier, financial advisor, realtor, contractor, nurse, minister or one many other professionals who have passed board certifying/licensing exams ran track, played basketball, rowed crew, wrestled, swam, played tennis, football, baseball, skated, played hockey or fenced. Elite? You bet. Racist or sexist-never. Any person who studies hard and plays a sport deserves some respect. Don't tar everyone who went to a selective college or university and played a sport. Ok. Golf is a sport.

Like many people in this country I am so tired of rich people behaving badly starting with Individual #1 on down. Wall Street bankers coned the world, cost taxpayers $700 billion and 8 years of a struggling economy, millions of foreclosures and no one goes to jail. Trumps resume reads like a criminal rap sheet and yet he sleeps comfortably in the W and has cost taxpayers $72 million in golf junkets. Millionaire congressmen protect them selves but not their country by taking handouts from lobbyists. This will not stop so long as these people pay a fine and go on with their lives with a slap on the wrist. We need to imprison these people and in large numbers.

Totally not a surprise. Comes with territory. Even though USC is not really an elite college by any stretch, it confirms that it is truly the U of Spoiled Children and very corrupt administrators. Also note worthy, none of there star QB end making in the NFL— ‘bustville’. Character matters

The college admissions racket, such as legacy admissions to the Ivy League and other elite universities, has produced disastrous results for this country. A certain president who “graduated” from Yale and Harvard gave us Iraq, Afghanistan WarS, and in 2008, he just about wrecked the US economy. It’s obvious, this President did not learn a thing at Yale or Harvard!

What do they say, folks who write rules can be the biggest rule breakers or thieves rob banks because that's where the money is. Simply hard to believe - a woman n her academic position would abuse, cheat and deceive when she could have done a ton of good. Money is corrupting. And lots of money sloshing around appears to be absolutely corrupting. It would have been nice to have been told her official compensation so we could appreciate whether $20,000 a month was lucrative or just a play money. Finally, given today's environment on sexual identity - I can't help but think that she may use LGBT status as "get out of jail" card.

That's great for Johnathan Cabral that he finished 6th in the Olympics. It' still not a good reason for him to be admitted to USC or Oregon (and any other school).

I guess the criminal coaches, A.D’s and parents who got caught thought that would never be the case. I just hope if the bribes were an appreciable amount they get some tax evasion charges. Like Al Capone.

Good old Donna saw an opportunity to make money and took it. She, like many others in similar positions, was able to enrich herself because there's NO supervision, or accountability, in College Athletics. USC is no different than any other college in the U.S. that trades access to academically unqualified jocks in exchange for seasonal entertainment. Administrators, coaches and even staff know what's been going on for decades, and now they pretend to be offended by the whole charade being exposed.

Stunning! The email about the fake water polo athlete, I believe, is really up there in pathological liar territory.

This is all such a disgrace. Sports needs to just come out of higher ed. Especially professional sports.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There should be no athletic scholarships,school's are educational institutions not minor leagues for the major leagues.

Living in Europe, we are often called upon to explain two puzzling things about the USA -- it's now up to three, but Trump is a newer embarrassment. (1) Gun laws. (2) College sports. Using colleges as professional farm teams is utterly incomprehensible to those who do not live and die by the college sports system. I can explain the rationale, background, and fascination, but I can't get anyone to agree that there just might be merit in the whole process - including myself. Let's call college athletic departments what they have really become - free recruiting grounds for NFL, NBA, NHL, etc.

Tangentially is another side gig industry. In particular for lacrosse at the high school level. Lacrosse is certainly still a sport that is considered somewhat elite and privileged. However it has grown tremendously across the nation and into many different socio-economic strata in past 15 years. The scheme is: Lacrosse is a sport where a good player can get into a great university. Not talking free ride scholarships ( and the parents often have the money). There are high school coaches which run camps and tournaments for the local players. Then, there are instances of complaint that if a player does not invest in participation in the extra teams and events ( outside the normal high school ) they will not be given playing time during the HS season and hence not get proper development, recognition and recommendations by the coaches which are profiting as both employees of the school district and ‘entrepreneurs’ in their outside but compulsory sports organization. I can bet this happens in ice hockey and volleyball and soccer too.

Maybe we should also look into the academic corruption that occurs every day at nearly all colleges. My son, a sophomore at North Carolina State University, was forced to buy access to a math computer program that looks at vectors derived from multi-differential equations. The program was created by his calculus professor and the access cost $250. None of the other professors that taught the same material required their students to purchase access. Other professors require students to buy "their book", which is often priced considerably above a more commonly used book that covers the same material. Although slightly different than this admission scandal, the book issue affects far more people and, if summed, probably accounts for much more money. If there are multiple classes (at a single college/university) covering the same material, then they all should use the same book. Futhermore, the book's profit should not benefit a single professor - unless he/she has something like a Nobel Prize.

"Heinel ran an independent business counseling parents and high school administrators on how to comply with NCAA regulations." She was a high-level administrator. What's with the side business? Higher Ed has been taken over by an "entrepreneurial" model that can be very corrupting.

Surely there is a marketing opportunity for some "elite" school, somewhere, to declare that it will accept students only from among those that graduated in the top 10% of their high school class (as certified by their counselor, head teacher, and school district). Home-schooled applicants would qualify by being in the top 10% in standardized tests and AP scores. The legacies and and athletes might be picked more often from this pool but no-one could then argue that academic standards were low for them.

Good story, but a few things: *USC got a president-elect on Wednesday, so not sure why acting president, Austin, was cited in the piece. *One of your photos is of the University Village, not the USC campus itself. *I recommend your reporters look into possible complicity by Haden. He has a less than stellar past when it comes to nonprofit donations. *This story seems to be reporting that Heinel was not keeping the ill gotten money for herself, but somehow distributing it back to the athletic department. Please clarify what she is being accused of in this regard. *Naples, near Long Beach, may not be as exclusive as you think, relative to other SoCal beach neighborhoods. *The story also has little to no attribution to the fact that Heinel hasn't had her day in court. (At least not that I know of.) She is accused of these things, or the complaint or indictment says she did them. Innocent until proven guilty applies to news reporting too.

Fight on for ol' SC, indeed. Oh well, from all appearances, they fielded an entire football team of students with bogus athletic credentials this year. This scandal may run even deeper than suggested by this piece.

USC students and alums can't be happy with all this. It knocks their school down a notch. Clean house time, for sure.

Heinel needs to be locked up if the allegations are true.

A total disgrace. Real elite athletes dedicate their lives to balancing training and school and traveling No one should ever criticise them for having slightly lesser grades, if that were even the case. Trying traing 3 to 4 hours a day, every day, for years, instead of swotting the books!

I daresay it's time for the "death penalty" to be applied at USC, on all sports. And maybe Congress needs to do a complete and thorough investigation of the NCAA and reorganize it as well. Is there another Judge Mountain Landis out there? If she wasn't so badly needed on the Supreme Court, I'd want Ruth Baader Ginsburg.

20 years or so ago, there was a well-reported story under California's 'three strikes' rule, of a man sentenced to 25 years for stealing a slice of pizza. It strikes me that if these charges are correct, Ms Heinel is a far greater danger to society than a pizza snatcher. I know that 'three strikes' is long gone, but can we just multiply up? A hungry man who snatches a slice of pizza is a nuisance; a greedy woman who changes the rules of society for her own $$$$ benefit is a threat.

My experience has often been that there is a correlation between “by the book” sticklers for rules and self serving even corrupt practices. Just look at LAUSD!

The taxpayers were being fleeced by these grifters as well, since every one of those big "donation" checks were tax-exempt. The tax-exempt status for college athletics has spawned the corruption that is rampant throughout the area, most particularly in "revenue" sports. These sports do not serve the mission of the universities, their students do not meet admission standards and cannot participate, much less succeed, in the classroom. Their "faculties" and facilities are vastly favored in the budgeting process over the institution's norms and they do not successfully graduate students at a rate comparable to the overall university. In some cases, notably football, the participants are subject to enormous personal danger. There is no justifiable rationale for funneling billions of public dollars in the form of tax exemptions to these programs. They should be forced to decide whether they conform to the education mission of the universities, in which case the students must be eligible for admission without privilege and must take real classes and graduate at rates comparable to their colleagues while the coaches are put on the same pay scale as all the rest of the faculty, or if they are businesses, in which case they lose all tax exemptions and operate separately. Between recruiting scandals, head injuries, academic cheating, warping the administrative decision making process and ugly illegal behaviors, athletics are damaging colleges more than they are helping.

Test scores and grades are not relevant for many college applicants. Taking into account the college slots taken by legacies, jocks, affirmative action admittees, and cheaters like those whose parents were arrested in the college admissions bribery scam, there aren't many slots left for qualified but middle-class, non-minority kids at the top schools. There is no easy solution to the problem because legacies, jocks and affirmative action seem to be here to stay. And, yes, there are a few outright crooks: parents, students, outside admissions advisers and college/sports administrators who abused the system and violated a variety of laws. Thankfully they are only a small minority, but all of them deserve punishment to the extent allowed by law.

This scandal is soooo delicious for a man that despises pernicious privilege of the elites. If I were running things all the parents caught up in this should only be allowed to use public defenders. Why should people busted for using their wealth to game the system, be allowed to use their wealth to hire big time well connected attorney's to get them off as easy as possible.

A stickler for the rules regarding others but the rules did not apply to her. Typical con artist.

She had a great side-gig, that's for sure. The real issue comes down to professional sports $$$ in a college setting. No, I don't mean the "big bucks"in water polo, (thats a joke) but the football & basketball money that makes sports in college, across all sports, drive decision making. - It shouldn't take a genius to look at the classes the majority of athletes are enrolled in to see the problems. (maybe and the class attendance, too, could use a look-see). This 2-tiered system of academic vs athletic students has outlived its usefulness.

I always find it astounding how athletics seem to bring corruption to colleges and universities. Sports should not have specialized admission processes. Students are there for an education and should be admitted for academic strengths only.

'lives with her partner, a school-district special-education administrator, on Naples island, an exclusive neighborhood in Long Beach, Calif., known for multimillion-dollar homes". I imagine that it is very helpful to have a supplemental source of income to finance one's lifestyle. While making ends meet in California on a couple of school administrator salaries may be tough, but there are honest ways to make it all work.

It seems like Johnathan Cabral might be the first student with a legitimate lawsuit, if he chooses to sue.

The Republicans have gone after elite universities in the last few years, culminating in their efforts to tax the largest endowments. Not coincidentally, the targeted colleges were mostly in blue states, making for juicy political targets. But by continuing to admit unqualified athletes and an uncomfortable percentage of legacies (and as revealed in this scandal, the children of the dishonest rich), these colleges have played right into the hands of those who see elite universities as untrustworthy and "rigged". I hope that top colleges make sincere, transparent and well publicized efforts to reform these admissions practices.

USC has gone to great lengths in the last two decades to climb up the rankings. It has been hard to shake off the reputation of being a school for wanna-be actors and dumb jocks. And for a while it looked like they succeeded. But they were cutting corners in athletics, admissions, and management. , But based on the increased rankings, the big gifts came in. In the publicity for a $200 million gift in 2011, the Dean of USC's College of Letters, Arts & Sciences said "[This gift] demonstrates their deep understanding of a basic truth - that all human progress and enlightenment rest on a firm foundation of outstanding scholarly inquiry..." Yikes - it doesn't seem that much at USC is grounded in "basic truths".

Strikes me as the classic inside-job. She knew every trick regarding falsifying athletic credentials from years of sniffing out the fakes. At some point, understanding the money to be had in working with admissions "consultants" (Singer) she turned. The temptation to work the system, which she herself absolutely controlled, became too great. Interesting piece of the puzzle. I had assumed the trust has been broken at the coaching level--that coaches realized they could recommend kids and no one was really vetting their decisions. Yet in this case it was the subversion of a gatekeeper who was expressly tasked to vet these decisions and prevent the exact unlawful duplicity she is now indicted for.

There needs to be a regulatory process; to allow these decisions to be made by one individual encourages bribes and backdoor deals.

Coaches at these schools (the Ivies, Stanford, Cal, USC, etc.) should draw their athletes from the admitted students pool. A fair solution is that Admissions gives a list of students who qualify academically (at same level as all other students) who play the sport and let coaches pick some from that list - not a coach created list. Then, we will have real student-athletes, even if that means the quality of the athletics suffers.

Athletic and legacy admissions are the biggest problems at most private colleges, and the easiest problems to fix. Sunlight is the best disinfectant: it would not be hard for the Common Data Set to add the percentage of legacy matriculations and the percentage of matriculated recruited athletes to their published data. True, colleges can decline to answer those questions (as the most selective often do about Early Decision admits). But refusing to answer is almost as good as an answer itself. I challenge the folks at the Common Data Set to make these additions. www.commondataset.org