College entrance exam fraud

Not sure if it is mentioned in this thread already but just days before the scandal broke she was giving advice in an interview on how to get into college.

 

I have not paid much attention to the details in this story but I suppose it's possible that the kid has assumed all along that she got into the school on her own merits . . . maybe she knew nothing about the bribery. In that case I would feel humiliated . . . not even sure I could remain in the school.

 

Ooooo! I just ran into this old clip of Loughlin giving parenting advice. Apparently she "...never pushed her kids..." This whole thing is like a MasterClass in how to transform yourself from a moderately talented actress to a laughingstock a-hole.

http://digg.com/video/lori-loughlin-parenting-advice

 

Definitely. Probably more awkward, for the USC Board of Trustees Chair, is that she was on vacation on his yacht when the scandal broke. She is friends with his daughter.

 

As JB says, the Chairman of USC's Board of Trustees. The guy is a billionaire businessman and the yacht is the size of a small ocean liner. (Apparently his daughter also attends USC. That's something else that makes you go "hummm...")

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/lori-loughlins-daughter-was-in-usc-officials-yacht-when-mother-was-charged

At a place like USC (or Stanford, or Yale, or...) a disproportionate percentage of undergraduates are the sons and daughters of government figures, rich executives, media figures, entertainment celebrities, or the sons and daughters of university professors. An upper-class definitely seems to be using these universities to reproduce itself.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone. Perhaps the expectation of equal opportunity and egalitarianism, the idea that all applicants have to meet the same standards, is just a mixture of university PR and our own naivete.

Thank heavens these schools aren't "for profits". Then we would be expected to dismiss all of them as an entire class.

 

When all this has blown over and the "responsible" parties are purged and punished it will end up being positive for the schools involved. "This school is so elite even the rich and powerful have to illegally bribe their way in, I want to go."

 

I will never cease to be amazed at what people will do. It is so ironic. It was never a dream of mine to go to an Ivy League school nor to have my children go to such schools. State Universities seemed fine to me, and yes, for me personally, I earned my Ph.D. from an online for profit university, and I'd do it again if I had the opportunity to do over, with all circumstances being the same as when I enrolled in my program. But one of my daughters got into Princeton and the other in Upenn. The Princeton daughter graduated from there but the other daughter ended up transferring from UPenn after the first year.

Even with my daughters attending the best schools, I have heard my oldest daughter bantering with her coworkers. For those who are more mature and less pretentious, they really know it is far more about what you do with your education, than where you go to school.

 

I read a great book several years ago called "The Cheating Culture" by David Callahan (I think).

Very relevant to this....

 

Old news
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/27/kelley-williams-bolar-schools_n_814857.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000047&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=bv_fb&utm_medium=facebook&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013&section=politics&utm_source=politics_fb&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&fbclid=IwAR0bCacbsE3iylmtnxRxrxNlLs8JxmbyPRWp7jCdIiPTEwW5igDrX3OKZbI

 

Liar!

 

Here's a guy who's not too impressed with colleges, in general

http://time.com/5551315/college-bribery-larger-lie/

 

It's just a delicious scandal, checks all the right boxes, demonizes the wealthy and entitled. What's not to love? I think it's obvious to anyone that "buying privileges" goes on, what I find fascinating is that they're being prosecuted. THAT is interesting to me. Why now?

 

I guess I'm not sure what you mean with your question. Why not next year? Why not 3 months ago?

 

I had that same Why Now question.

How is this any different than being a Kennedy or a Bush and getting into a particular college? The patriarchs donate money to build a library and like magic . . .all the kids are approved for admission.

The only thing I believe is of concern to me is the SAT test fixing and items like that. These organizations should be have more oversight on grading and taking tests.
When I sat for my PMP Test at Prometric, it had my DL verified, scanned, approved, cameras watching me the entire time, no allowable bathroom breaks unless an emergency. . . .etc

In this scandal there is Photoshop pictures of the kids doing sports . . . very bizarre to build this odd college presence, instead of just admitting the brat and having them take classes and blend in.
Then the daughter on the boat with the one of the Board of Trustees . . . .Huh? Really?


Michael

 

I think some of you are missing what actually happened here. Undoubtedly what you are saying has happened and has been an "accepted" process in the past. Internal to the college it was a "known" system and for those outside of the college it was none of their concern. It is up to the school as an entity to decide who they admit and by what process they decide is beneficial to them to allow people in including legacies, those likely to succeed, and any other criteria they set including financially advantageous to the school.

In this "scandal" it was rogue staff that personally profited and deceived the school by the things mentioned above including falsifying test records, sport records, etc. While you may not agree with paying exuberant amounts of money to buy admittance to the school, the school is the one that gets to make that decision based on factual information available to them.

 

The school gets to decide who is admitted and why they are admitted. There are rules but there are also exceptions to those rules. If you donate a shmillion dollars to build a new science building then your kid gets admitted. That's old, old news. It's also legal. What has happened in this current scandal is not legal. It is fraud. There's a legal definition, etc. White collar crime. Maybe in another time or place it would have been swept under the rug. Maybe a different DA would accept a bribe and keep it quiet. Maybe this DA likes to see hear his name on TV. Cases like this can make or break a career in that profession.

 

Right, I couldn't agree more.

The only difference that I can see is that this is relatively low-level employees (the Stanford sailing coach for instance) who are subverting the published merit-based admissions system, instead of the university's top administrators doing it as a matter of often unstated admissions policy. So once again, it's all about a little-guy intruding into the big-guys' prerogatives and then taking the fall for that hubis and going to jail for it.

The whole admissions process at elite universities is corrupt but only the big guys are allowed to play the game and get away with it.

SAT scores are another sham. Elite universities stay elite by boasting of the high average SATs of the students they admit. That allows them to boast that their student bodies are the best and the brightest. It's one of the reasons why these universities are regularly found up there at the top of the US News rankings. Except that some significant proportion of their admits are what they call "special admits", whose SATs aren't included in their astronomical averages. Athletes, children of alumni, sons and daughters of big donors, celebrities or high government officials, favored genders and ethnicities. The University of California is notorious for doctoring their average SAT scores that way and in real life, if you included everyone they admit, Berkeley's average SATs are probably no better than the average state flagship university.

But again, it's the big guys who get to choose which applicant's SATs don't matter and which one's even higher SATs are a deal-breaker. Not some little guy who is taking relatively small bribes. The latter is "racketeering" and the little guy will go to jail.

 

We also know that students have been more than capable of exiting elite universities with degrees even thought they did not had the ability to performed well on the SAT. SAT should be abolished. Rich dumb kids have degrees from elite universities. Poor dump kids should have the same opportunity to an elite education.

 

I apologise for the slightly off-topic post but I could not let this comment by Phdtobe to get past me without a specific response. While I am a devoted sports fan, I think that what happens in NCAA D1 big-time college sports is a bad thing on many levels. The element I will mention here is the lack of academic standards for the student-players of certain sports at certain schools (you can name them as easily as I). I am much more fond of the model at D3 schools where athletes do not (generally) receive any scholarship money and are held to the same academic standards (grades, degree plans, etc.) as non-athletes. Big-time college sports teams (football, basketball primarily) are basically semi-pro teams sponsored by the school. Many of these student-athletes have no interest at all in academics of any description but they also take up space at the school, perhaps keeping someone else out.