When I first heard about a federal investigation of cheating and rigging of the college admissions process on behalf of wealthy people willing to pay, I completely misjudged the ramifications. I was not surprised.
Why was I not surprised? I was not surprised because admission to elite colleges and universities has long been rigged, though not as blatantly as the latest scheme. In the present story, ringers were paid to take the tests, and test answers were changed by proctors on behalf of students whose parents paid the price. That’s awfully blatant.
The old-time rigging was more subtle. Start with legacy admissions. If the college had eight applicants for every place, a student whose parent or sibling went to the same institution was likely to be admitted despite his or her grades or scores. That’s unfair.
Then there is the rigging that occurs when the college puts too much weight on the SAT or ACT, which favors students from wealthy homes, who have gone to the best schools and had advantageous life experiences. Numerous studies, including some released by the testing companies, acknowledge that the GPA (grade point average) is a better predictor of college success than the college admission test taken on a single day. That is why more than 1,000 colleges and universities have become “test-optional.” Go to the Fairtest website to see the list of test-optional institutions of higher education.
The scores on the SAT/ACT are also affected by tutoring, which is a function of parental income. So, not only do wealthy families begin with a big advantage, they can multiply their advantage by paying for tutors who are skilled in training students to raise their scores. Tutors can be very expensive. They may costs hundreds of dollars an hour. This skews the admissions process yet again towards those with money.
It would have been far simpler for the families involved in the present scam to pay a tutor $5,000-10,000, and they would have not been investigated by the FBI.
But there is one more way to get preferential treatment. Give a large gift to the college or university shortly before your child applies for admission. Daniel Golden, a journalist then at the Wall Street Journal, now at ProPublica, wrote a book in 2006 called The Price of Admission, about how wealthy people gave money to get their children into elite colleges. He referred to a little-known family named Kushner in New Jersey. A real-estate developer named Charles Kushner, who had graduated from New York University, made a gift of $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998. Not long after, his son Jared was admitted to Harvard.
Golden wrote:
I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.
Who says you can’t buy because we hear story after story of people doing just that. As a former college professor I am appalled … but not surprised.
The situation has become even worse re: foreign students with $$$$$.
I was FORCED to take a doctoral student. This person submitted his dissertation proposal. Most of this dissertation proposal was PLAGIARIZED.
You also need to know that his student tried to BRIBE me, too.
At this person’s dissertation proposal, I had to show how much was PLAGIARIZED.
I was so disgusted, I just quit and walked out the meeting.
BTW, I knew I was being “SET UP” by someone who was doing the dirty work of politicians … and at a state university no less. No one wanted to work with this foreign student not because this student was a foreigner, but because this student CHEATS and LIES.
How can anyone sign off re: this student?
But, I am sure if this student was accepted into HarvaHD, he would just get passed on and trust me, this student would DO HARM by LYING and CHEATING on everything. This is WHO THIS PERSON is. SAD.
It’s not surprising as it’s been going on for years, but it has become more blatant. To tell you the truth, having a Jr. in high school and trying to figure out this whole mess of a system, I have learned that even middle class parents are gaming the system. A kid’s essay is his/her essay. It is perfectly acceptable for a parent to proof read….but the parents are now rewriting the essay or they are coaching the kids to “fudge the truth” in the essay. The parents are making up service duties to pad the application. “Lawnmower” parenting at it’s best with some “helicoptering ” added in for good measure. The whole “getting to college” process smells like dead fish sitting in the hot summer sun.
The college admissions process is another example of Campbell’s law in action.
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
When grades and test scores are used for social decision-making the way they are used to “evaluate” students for college, the admissions process becomes completely and hooelessly corrupted.
That’s where things stand right now.
Anyone who believes that the 50 odd people who have been identified by the FBi are the only — or even primary — problem is delusional.
The entire admissions process has become a cruel joke and the ones who bear the greatest responsibility for the current sad state of affairs are the college admissions s officers and college Presidents (like the fellow at Stanford) who perpetuate the system knowing full well how corrupt it is.
Thanks for identifying Campbell’s law.
Absolutely right. And how about college itself as “social indicator”– propelled by the stats continually drummed into mainstream consciousness comparing likely annual income based on hisch diploma vs some college vs 4-yr college diploma vs diploma from prestigious college.
Getting lost are controverting stats– e.g., those w/trade certs in non-offshoreable skills in home maint specialties like plumbing/ electrician/ HVAC etc earn mid+ incomes & job security superior to many 4-yr college grads; our 20-yr glut of STEM grads taking anything they can find, while Silicon Valley offshores jobs & insources cheap h1(b) employees; the huge # of BA’s [who in my day would have had entry-level corp jobs] working Starbucks, Uber, et al multiple gigs.
I read Mr. Golden’s book, and it is a doozy. So much for meritocracy….
Amen
The College Board is a billion dollar racket.
When are college admissions officers going to recognize THAT?
Maybe the FBI needs to investigate the organization and see where all the money is going.
Oh, wait, we already know where it is going: into the pockets of people like David Coleman, who has earned millions of dollars in salary and bonuses over the few years he has been there.
Richard Phelps of NonPartisan Education Review did an exposé of one of the big testing outfits claiming to be non-profit. Interesting reading.
So called “Nonprofits” are another giant scam.
College Board has a yearly revenue of almost a billion dollars.
The idea that it is a non-profit is just ridiculous.
Everyone who works there and does contract work for them (those at ETS, for example) is profiting at the expense of millions of American families.
The salaries and bonuses that people like College Board CEO David Coleman make are just disgusting, especially given where the money s coming from and the fact that their entire test is a fraud.
@SDP…..do you think this whole mess has anything to do with the FBI raid of the guy (can’t remember his name) who got into a pissing match with David Coleman over the roll out of the newly designed test? This whole shebang was found “by accident” while the FBI was investigating another case. I just find it odd that the College Board has taken a lot of heat, but never gets a slap on the wrist for bad behavior. Just a thought….or am I wearing my tin foil hat today?
Vice News interviewed a number of admissions officers last night. They all conceded that a certain block is reserved for legacy applicants, particularly if parents donate at least six figures to the school. A couple admitted that celebrities may also get certain special consideration. They all stated that excellence is no guarantee of admission. They also admitted that they each have their own bias or preference. Some preferred public school students. Others responded to those with a good foundation in the arts. One looked to give poor students a shot. Another looked for a well rounded student that volunteers. One factor for certain is that the wealthy definitely have the edge in admissions.
BTW, Tiffany Trump graduated from Penn last year. She now attends Georgetown Law School. It pays to be rich so they can continue the legacy of elitism.
While high legacy admission schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton won’t admit to percentage of slots going to legacies, some estimates are upwards of 50%.
That is why it is so important to stop Gates’ plan to destroy quality state universities.
It’s also no secret that colleges and universities have much higher acceptance rates for those who have gone to private schools than public schools.
The clear reason for this is that the kids who attend private schools come from families who are able to afford to pay full tuition.
It’s also very funny that people are touting individual cheating on the SAT in the context of admissions fraud when the biggest fraud of all is the SAT itself.
It makes all other frauds look small in comparison.
I am not sure that elite colleges and universities have a much higher acceptance rate for private high schools than public high schools.
According to this article (https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/lifestyles/ct-ptb-bradshaw-educated-advice-st-0515-20150514-story.html), one out of every 20 Harvard freshman came from seven high schools: Boston Latin, Stuyvesant High School, Lexington High School (all public schools), Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, Noble and Greenough, and Trinity (all private schools).
After an admittedly brief search, this is all I could find about the differences in college admission rates between public and private high school students. I look forward to seeing some additional data.
“elite colleges and universities have a much higher acceptance rate for private high schools than public high schools.”
This is absolutely true. Even the colleges themselves have never disputed that their admissions rates for students from certain connected private schools is not significantly higher than students from top public schools.
If Ivy League universities published what % of applicants from the top NYC private high schools were admitted and what percentage of students from Stuy were admitted, that would be very clear.
The exceptions are Cornell and MIT and Berkeley, which don’t seem to have the same private school bias and admit a more similar percentage of applicants from top publics and privates.
NYCPSP,
It would be helpful if you could cite some evidence about public vs private high school and admission.
You may not be sure, but they do.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-100-feeder-high-schools-to-the-ivy-league
https://www.thestreet.com/story/13325695/1/top-us-private-schools-with-the-most-graduates-getting-into-ivy-league-universities.html
Many of the private schools named have acceptance rates at elite schools of about 30%, far higher than the overall acceptance rates for the Ivy league.
SomeDAM Poet,
Your lists of the 100 schools that are most successful in placing students at Ivy League universities is, I think, a fine example of survivor bias.
You note that these schools have a much higher placement percentage than the overall acceptance rate at Ivy League schools. That is why they were chosen for these articles. The public and private schools without unusually high acceptance rates are not discussed, so these articles tell us little about the entire population.
Your denial is a perfect example of misreading and confusion.
From the first article
“The 100 U.S. high schools sending the highest percentage of students to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, 94 of them are private schools — with tuition ranging from $7,800 to $29,650 a year, according to a study by Worth magazine.”
The percentage referred to is NOT the same as the acceptance rate which I quite obviously referred to, which hovers around 30% for many of those private schools.
You do know that the word “percentage” can be used in a wide variety of contexts, right?
Ha ha ha
The ENTITLED RICH DO indeed LIE, CHEAT, and BUY their way through life. It’s disgusting. And these same people want to tell Public Schools and Public School Teachers what to do, no less.
So many of those with mega $$$$$ are just FRAUDS.
Give me a public school graduate and a state university graduate any day.
Yvonne
I could not agree more.
I actually went to an Ivy League school for two years and transferred to a state university because I could not stand the attitude of so many of the students, who thought they were God’s gift to humanity.
Those at the Ivy league school were certainly not any smarter or capable than anyone at the state college I attended, but here’s the main difference: they thought they were.
Those at state colleges have also worked their behinds off to get where they are.
Like you, I would take them any day over a grad from an elite school
Me too.
Graduates of elite schools go to Wall Street. The financial sector drags down GDP by an estimated 2%. They are worse than leeches.
If you read all the articles about the humongous 50-people scandal (which took FBI what? 11 months? How much money they spent on this?), then you probably saw names like UCLA and UCSD in the “list of prestigious universities”. Not just Yale.
Yvonne
By the way. During my freshman year at the Ivy College, hundreds of students in a freshman engineering computer course we’re caught cheating on the programming assignment.
The most pathetic part was that they were so dumb that they all submitted the same computer program that they had all collaborated on, with the same variable names and everything.
It made it very easy for the professor to determine who had cheated.
They should ALl have been booted out of the university, but instead, they got a slap on the wrist and these are now the people designing your cars, buildings, bridges and nuclear power plants.yikes
AMEN. They graduate from college by lying, cheating, and stealing. Then get rewarded for their reprehensible actions.
So, the follow up is THIS IS WHAT THEY DO forever … because they can. SICK. May they get their KARMA.
My husband has an MBA from Wharton, and he is a good, honest person, very bright in some ways, but not a genius. He was a wiz at statistics. He had a whole list of people he tutored to get them through the statistics course at Penn. Some of them went on to become CEOs of big corporations. My husband was a mediocre businessman. He lacks the “killer gene,” and I wouldn’t ever trade him for a vulture capitalist.
Retired teacher
I did not mean to imply that everyone at Ivy league schools is a cheater.
But the facts are what they are. Perhaps the cheating at the Ivy league school was an anomaly, but I had no similar experience at the state university.
Incidentally, I also witnessed an unwillingness to help fellow students (for fear that helping them would affect the curve and thereby hurt one’s own grade) at the Ivy league school that I never encountered at the state school. As a science major, I actually had labs in which people would refuse to even talk to me when I asked questions about the lab procedures. Very weird, but I don’t think it was an anomaly.
I think the more pressure applied, the more likely some people will cheat. Cheating is a big problem in China where students feel as though they must not bring “disgrace” to their family. I also tutored a number of business students in college that were struggling to meet the foreign language requirement. Frankly, a number of them were “jerks.”
I know, Some–I just thought about your last paragraph. It made me think about the Boeing 737 MAX–who designed those?!
Of course, it’s okay for “other people” to die due to the mistakes made.
The elite among us have their own private planes & the most expensive cars & drivers.
Because it WILL affect the curve. Grading by the curve is another evil used in so many unis. Dog eats dog instead of building the sense of community.
At least when rich parents make big donations to colleges in order to cast a more favorable light on their kid’s applications, the money can be used for scholarships, libraries, and other programs that benefit other students. Not so with this latest scam!
If the intention of the admissions policy is to benefit other students, then the following would make much more sense:
Simply auction off 5% or 10% of the seats at the most selective universities to the highest bidders each year. And in order to prove those students who get in via that auction would have been admitted anyway, you are only eligible to bid if (with expensive tutoring) your child can meet some minimum ACT/SAT score (and remember, the college is fine if you have to hire a psychologist who will certify your child needs extra time in order to make that minimum score and your child can take the tests many times as needed). And you are only eligible to bid if the private school your child attends to which you have donated generously makes sure your child is one of the 50% of the class who has at least an A- average.
It could raise $20 or $50 million/ year for financial aid or libraries so that the other 90% of students can benefit! And colleges can still say the students who get in via the auction were admitted via merit since they met that baseline criteria.
Also, the colleges could use that money for what is most needed by the university, rather than putting up the Michael Bloomberg Center for whatever Michael Bloomberg wants to fund.
Richards is repeating the ditto head spin. The spin’s intent- isolate the wrong doing so as to tamp down the building outrage at the latest affront to decency by the undeserving wealthy.
I wonder if the yawning and ever-growing income inequality in the US has any connection to the fact that so few of our national leaders attended the schools that the VAST majority of their constituents attend.
We really have less and less in common with them.
You all know what the college application process is like for ordinary people. It’s a nightmare. These people just operate under a completely different system. They may as well live in a different country.
They may as well live on a different planet
If they did live on a different planet, it would sure make life a lot easier for the rest of us.
I have said before that I would contribute toward a rocketship to blast the billionaires into space and take them on a ride to Mars (one way of course).
I’m sure Elon Musk would come through for us if we paid him enough.
It would be a lot cheaper to blast these people into outer space than to clean up the mess they are making here on earth., That is for certain.
Money well spent
As you already know, the billionaires are planning to try to privatize community colleges and some state schools. We have to push back.
PPIC’s proposal, March 2019, by Paul Warren, “Coordinating California’s Higher Ed System”, admits to a goal of eliminating diverse viewpoints and consensus in decision making, in favor of total control by a outside “review council”. Fully expected that a billionaire-funded think tank would be against democracy.
The number of Senate/ House members who attended Ivy Leagues is not outlandish. It has ranged 8%-12% over the last decade [compare to 30+% who went to state colleges]. Of course that’s a much higher %age than their constituents, many of whom didn’t attend college at all. But we don’t elect the average Joe to Congress. (Should we?)
My concern w/Congress is more w/how wealthy they are, as I think living flush w/cash is more likely to corrupt one’s perspective than undergrad institution. Here are the numbers as of 2017:
3/5 members’ [327] net worth is 0-1million. A third of those have more liabilities than assets.
2/5 members’ [205] net worth is between 1 & multiple millions. 12 of them hold assets equivalent to 1/2 the collective assets of all Congress. Over 3/4 of the group [157] are in the lower range (1-10million).
I like to read the US Department of Education site to see what they’re contributing to PUBLIC schools.
“US Dept of Education
MYTH ➡️ #EducationFreedom Scholarships will hurt public schools.
FACT ➡️ States can design their programs to work hand-in-hand with existing public education options to enhance individual students’ education experiences, not replace them. ”
Nothing.
Public school students and families are an afterthought once the first priority private and charter schools are lavished with praise and 5 BILLION dollars in extra funding.
We have thousands of publicly-paid employees who exclude 90% of students, families and schools. They offer public school students absolutely nothing of value.
I understand they’re ideologically opposed to the existence of our children’s public schools, but shouldn’t they at least do their jobs? Can we find some new public employees who will agree to work to the benefit of 90% of schools, instead of 10%?
Hand-in hand means from the public and school children’s hands to the private institution’s coffers.
All of DC are working as hard as they can to promote the new 5 billion voucher program.
Sadly, they haven’t accomplished a lick of work on behalf of the “other” 90% of students, the students in the (ideologically unfashionable) public schools.
Is the reason they refuse to work on behalf of public school students because none of them attended public schools, or indeed had any experiences in common with the vast majority of their constituents?
Actually, 80% attended public school acc to Heritage 2016 survey. So they aren’t strictly “representative”– 20% attended privates, which is twice the national rate– but they’re within range.
Betsy DeVos
“To see something on this scale that is backed by the administration and by a large number of members of Congress is historic and would have been almost unimaginable not all that long ago.”
She’s talking about the 5 billion dollar federal voucher.
Offers absolutely no benefit to public school students – 90% of students and families are completely excluded from this whole discussion. Our kids get nothing from ed reformers. Again. In fact, they weren’t even considered or consulted in any of this.
The only time the US Department of Education mentions public school students is when they’re talking about school shootings or drug abuse.
That’s how much contempt these ridiculous, out of touch snobs have for our kids. They hear “public” and they think “shootings and drugs”.
It’s a smear on every kid who attends a public school.
And with one fell swoop, my students’ faith that their hard work could be rewarded by an offer of admission to a selective university, public or private, has just been decimated.
It’s just one more obstacle for them to overcome, in a world where the inequities start at the time their mothers received prenatal care, because most of them didn’t.
The psychological impact of this cannot be underestimated, not just on my students and those like them across the country, but on our nation’s belief in our institutions. The values we hold so dear: equal opportunity, that hard work will lead to success, that a university education can be the great equalizer.
Dear Cheaters,
You just decimated the American Dream for my students.
But the real kicker was the final comment of the discussion that left me speechless:
“They’ll be able to buy Justice, too, won’t they?”
One only has to compare how frequently universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton admit students from certain NYC private schools versus students from public schools like Stuy and Bronx Science to see how this system works.
While I agree with most of the posts here that standardized tests are not a perfect measure, it does provide us with some way to see how often being privileged trumps academic excellence. Otherwise, college admissions officials can always insist that the student who manages to be in the top 40% or 50% of his supposedly superior private school is obviously far more worthy – or at least equally as worthy — to be admitted as a middle class or poor student who isn’t one of the top 100 or 150 students at Stuy. Whether or not it is true doesn’t matter. The myth that they are being admitted based on merit must continue.
When huge numbers of top public school students started scoring 5s on multiple AP exams, privates decided that AP exams were worthless and stated that their own courses were superior. Remember that many decades ago the AP program started at elite private schools and just a few very affluent public schools. Private schools embraced them. Until they realized that all but their very best students were being outscored by thousands of public school students applying to the same colleges. Since those private schools expect that far more than their very best students are entitled to their seats at the most selective universities, they needed to drop APs and insist that their own courses and the As and even B+s earned by their students in their private school history or math class were far superior to any mere 5 some middle class public school kid scored on their AP exam.
I know that SAT scores and AP exam scores are not necessarily a good measure of learning. But it is a shame that we have a system where — without supposedly “cheating” — it is easy for a kid whose parents donate a building to meet some baseline score and baseline private high school transcript that supposedly proves that despite their parents’ donation, they were still admitted because of “merit”.
There is an unintentionally hilarious tweet yesterday by the actor Rob Lowe’s son (Stanford graduate, brother at Duke) about how badly he feels for all the students who didn’t get seats because of the cheating scandal. In it, he contrasts the ones who “cheated” and took the seats of more deserving students with his own admissions. After all, he worked hard for it!
“I studied for MONTHS for the SAT. Twice, sometimes three times a week. Tons of practice tests. Ended up taking the SAT multiple times as well. College apps were no joke… the amount of stress kids put into that to potentially lose a spot to someone unfairly is horrible.”
We have a system where a connected kid honestly and truly believes he “earned” his seat because he studied for “months” with private tutors, and took the SAT multiple times to get a score which is still probably not as high as many middle class unconnected students who got turned down from Stanford.
It’s not so much the entitlement — is it that highly selective colleges make it far too easy for students like Rob Lowe’s son not to recognize how entitled they are — and how many better students they displace — by their admissions policies. Rob Lowe’s son believes he earned his seat and so do many other children of privilege who are admitted over middle class students because they were able to meet some baseline score on the SAT after months of tutoring, practice tests, and sometimes a certification from a psychologist that they deserve extra time.
Students like Rob Lowe’s son and other children of privilege who start the race one length ahead are the real beneficiaries of affirmative action policies. And yet the outcry is still about affirmative action policies that favor the most disadvantaged students in the country who actually deserve an advantage after starting the race two lengths behind.
YES YES YES! Thank you.
Dark Clouds Covering Vast Terrain
Yesterday’s news of scandal in college admissions and college admission counseling struck close to home, as I recently completed 30 years as a counselor educator. In my work I prepared graduate students to be counselors and to work with young people and their families on a wide range of issues related to personal and social, academic, and career development. The thought that anyone holding the title of “counselor” could stoop to the level of bribes, kickbacks, and falsification of school records in the performance of her or his duties, frankly, makes me sick to my stomach. It is a gut punch, for sure.
I see this incident as yet another indication of the rot of corruption that has infected the nation. From the White House on down through state and local politics and infrastructural and institutional operations in the whole of the public and private sectors, we see the evidence. When influence is peddled, favors are bought and sold, resources needed for the public good are sucked into a cesspool of consultant fees paid to hucksters guaranteeing spurious results, when public dolllars are simply diverted to private gain, and when word games strip the true intention from crucial public programs so that “school reform” masks corporate takeover and the destruction of public education and “environmental protection” is hollowed out so that environmental degradation and exploitation can run rampant, we should recognize the symptoms of corruption. It’s not hard to do. The dictionary tells us that to corrupt is to “cause to become dishonest or immoral, to persuade to accept bribes” and “to spoil, to taint.” We now have a president who seems to revel in his own corruption. He has not stopped lying since day one of his fraudulent election, and the fact that close to 40% of the electorate accepts the daily outrages perpetrated by this sad, immoral, reckless, and irresponsible man is just further evidence how gullible we humans can be and how deeply civic illiteracy has settled over the country. The bottom line is that we live with the reality that perhaps 65 million people in the US (out of a total population of more than 328 million) approve of what Trump is doing. They repeatedly turn a blind eye to the blatant corruption of his administration, his family and his person. Scandal after scandal sweeps across the nation’s news cycles, yet all manner of his followers (now its Cowboys for Trump) continue to deny what is right in front of their faces, namely the daily perpetuation and celebration of corruption, dishonesty and immorality.
The new college admissions scandal is not of Trump’s making, of course. But it has some of the same ingredients found in the toxic mix of Trumpism: money-grubbing greed, deep cynicism regarding the importance of fair play, rules and the public good¸ the crass use of power for personal gain, and a totally callous disregard of the lives of those who do their best to play by the rules and who have the misfortune of not being rich. So, in the bigger picture that I see we have entered a historical period in which corruption eats away at the social fabric of this society. No more laughing and rolling eyes about the kickbacks, bribes, and chicanery of “lesser” nations, you know, those so-called inferior peoples who populate the vast lands south of the US border. We’re now tolerating the same thing up here in our portion of North America. I am afraid that although it is a good thing that the FBI has busted this latest scandal, the rot will continue until much more is done.
On the other hand, in a new Time magazine feature (Feb. 18/Feb. 25) on “the art of optimism,” a young designer, Aurora Jones, is quoted as saying “even though there are a lot of dark things going on in the world, a lot of beautiful, magical things are brewing under the surface.” She’s right about the beauty and the magic, for sure, and I remain hopeful about what is brewing. In that spirit, as discouraging as I am sure it will be for my many former students working diligently, ethically, and fairly in their efforts to assist students applying to college, it is crucial to keep a focus on what is right and good. The most recent scandal undoubtedly will taint the work of all counselors in the view of many folks, as the cynical view is that “well, everyone cheats on tests and admissions apps, so we don’t want our kids to be the fools who don’t.” But we should know that beneath the surface of the current callousness and climate of bribes and kickbacks there are dedicated educators across the country, including the vast majority of counselors and teachers and school administrators who do magical things with children and youth every day, who inspire students to learn, and who instill hope for a better future.
I believe it also is important to remember that it was out of the glaring abuses, greed, and foolishness of another period of the nation’s past, namely the explosive growth of industrial and finance capitalism and of the cities in the decades following the Civil War, that a profound and transformative Reform Movement emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. There are signs that such a movement is again emerging, and I hope progressives from all social domains and sectors will begin to both see themselves as a part of this movement and take to heart the need to sharpen our consciousness of generating social change and being held accountable to it. Next to today’s new scandal in education and in the dark shadow of one of the lowest moments in our nation’s history stand hundreds of instances of magic and beauty. Let’s keep creating those instances!
The people involved in this outright fraud should be punished, including severe monetary damages and prison time. I agree wholeheartedly with getting rid of the “subtler” but phony entitlements, ie legacy and donation-based admissions, and over-weighting ithe mportance of SAT/ACT. Add to that “affirmative action”, which forces colleges/universities to take underqualified people, solely based on factors other than academic merit, which often results in a higher dropout rate and waste of tuition money. Finally, not everyone can or should go to college–bring back vocational education in high schools and trade schools, so society gets the benefit of everyone’s skills and talents. We need to value plumbers, electricians and sanitation workers as much (or more than) lawyers, sociologists and ethnic studies professors. So much of this is motivated by elite snobbery, much like the old gentry class looked down upon the middling and lower sort in colonial society.
Justice Democrats want reparations for Black families. I’m in support, as I’m sure you will be, Kael, when you read the well-reasoned and evidence-based justification.
…unless, Kael shares the racial bigotry (effectively compartmentalized) of so many of the billionaires.
Hmmm….who’s the one “compartmentalizing”? I’m for meritocracy, regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status, the shibboleths of the Left (not classic Liberals).
The SAT is not a good definition of merit.
My granddaughter, a Texan, got admitted to the U of TX, Austin, solely on the basis of her high school grades. Graduated in 4 yrs w straight As and loaded with debt.
This is the reward we give to hard-working students in college–massive debt & underemployment.
What a country!
The GOP starved the schools of funding- men like Bill Gates who lives in the state with the most regressive tax system in the nation.
Reblogged this on and commented:
This is what privilege does. Now tell me there is no class system in the US
Just checked into hotel and turned on news to see what happened in the world today and what do I see? Chuck “what’s a journalist” Todd interviewing Arne about this. So this is what a vacuous echo chamber looks like!
And I’m sure Arne had some great wisdumb to relay to all of us, seeing as he knows “how schools work.”
Yeah…$$$$$$ & more $$$$$…
Duncan’s dad was a University of Chicago sociology professor. It’s clear he got his mom’s genes. He attended the Lab School at the U. of Chicago, and made it to Harvard on this rarified intellectual scaffolding. He was not a legacy –his dad had gone to Vanderbilt–but basketball was probably a factor. He managed a magna cum laude –in sociology. His dad could’ve written his papers. Then, leveraging these creds, he became Secretary of Education and wrecked the US educational system. Not sure Arne is in the best position to talk about uneven playing fields.
Summa, magna and just plain old cum lauds are handed out at Harvard like Halloween candy.
See Harvard’s dirty little secret is out — grade inflation
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Harvard-s-dirty-little-secret-is-out-grade-2868775.php
“Honors at Harvard has just lost all meaning,” said Henry Rosovsky, a top dean and acting president at Harvard in the 1970s and ’80s. “The bad honors is spoiling the good.”
“Corporate recruiters especially value honors — some say they won’t even interview applicants who aren’t cum laude material. In a tight job market, the credential helps a candidate stand out. And honors is still a nice touch for the Sunday wedding pages; Harvard alumni regularly note that they graduated cum laude, a cultural status symbol.
Yet some academic insiders say that when 91 percent of Harvard graduates can claim honors, it becomes more like a reward for good attendance than for excellence.”
Above are further quotes from Harvard’s dirty little secret is out — grade inflation
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Harvard-s-dirty-little-secret-is-out-grade-2868775.php
The whole Ivy league schtick has gone far past it’s “spoilage date”.
The playing field was uneven before Arne, but Arne made it 2 different levels, entirely. He sure didn’t use his “sociology” degree to make the world a better place….or maybe the mission was to advance the “us vs. them”, greed infested society that has proliferated over the last 20-30 years?
The Harvard Cum Fraud
The Harvard cum laude
Is really a fraud
He isn’t a God
And nought to applaud
Poet,
Thanks for that knowledge about honors inflation at Harvard. I had no idea, but it makes sense: if grades inflate, why wouldn’t honors inflate too?
If we teachers ever want to get serious about leveling the playing field –as opposed to grandstanding or pushing the same old failed approaches (e.g. “a more relevant curriculum” or “inquiry” or Common Core or testing) –we need to implement a knowledge-rich curriculum instead of the current skills-centric curriculum that isn’t working. France proves that a knowledge-rich curriculum narrows the achievement gap. When it had this, the achievement gap narrowed markedly. When it abandoned this, the achievement gap widened markedly. What more proof do we need? When will we learn?
The irony of all this is that it came from a guilded age attempt to introduce fairness into a system that favored the super wealthy of that day. It was thought that the testing process would separate out those who were not really deserving.
Another story from that era features a few boys from Tennessee who showed up at Princeton in the early 1900s and were horrified at the amount of cheating at the school. Raised in the moralistic attitude of an honor system where they had previously studied, they worked with professors to establish an honor system there.
The story of the perversion of great wealth stands in stark contrast with the stories of people of privilege who gave up life in a yacht for a life of service.
Very true, Roy. In my short teaching career I taught at two independent schools mostly for families of great wealth. Many of my 6th grade students knew that had their college admissions all wrapped up.
The Harvard Kennedy School of Government reflects the worst of neoliberalism. The fact that the Kennedy family does nothing to protect JFK’s legacy is indecent.
Oh–& also, being a retired speducator (of L.D. students), I might mention that the Learning Disabilities Assn. of America came out with a strong statement against this, the issue being of students who were allowed to take the tests w/special accommodations, those that are given to students as having been identified as having specific learning disabilities. I was appalled to hear/read (big mention of this in the Wall St. Journal)
about this; does this scandal widen to high schools? Students have to possess previously crafted, on-paper I.E.P.s–Individualized Education Plans–that would include test-taking accommodations, & this is a very lengthy procedure, first identifying a student as having learning disabilities {involving, often, many procedures} & school administration/educators holding what is called a Multidisciplinary Conference, involving parents & educational staff &, sometimes, an outside psychologist (in addition to a school psychologist) and a parent advocate. In my experience, testing accommodations would not have been permissible w/a mere psychological report.
So–how did Singer obtain the required high school paperwork to administer testing on the basis of written accommodations? Were high schools involved in bribery or other nefarious activities? Is this investigation incomplete, or is there more the F.B.I. will be revealing?
(Watching the Chicago news, now, & Northwestern 1st year student involved in this, as well; CA parents were charged w/giving $80K to have their daughter flown out of state to take tests.)
I think people are making a mistake in focussing on the relatively small number of individuals targeted by the FBI.
They are only a symptom of what has become a completely out of control college application/admissions process.
This “scandal” was entirely predictable and is just the tip of the iceberg.
There is massive fraud involved with college admissions but it is not being perpetrated by individual students and their parents. It is being perpetrated ON students and their parents by universities and colleges, the College Board, US News and World Report which ranks high schools and colleges) and others who benefit greatly from the scam.
The latter organization s should be ashamed of themselves but they are so focussed on making money that Shane is not even part of their vocabulary.
You are correct. This is in every high school USA in some form or another. You should see the stuff I get (and my jr in HS) trying to convince me to spend thousands of $$$ for SAT/AP test prep. The school counselors pushing all students into AP because “no college will look at you if you don’t take 3-4 AP classes in your Jr./Sr. year”. I live in one of these highly ranked districts in US News and World Report. The cheating here is on an epic scale. Parents rewriting essays, parents paying $$$$$ for test prep and tutoring, the district skewing grades (IMHO….but I can’t prove it). The kids here are stressed to the max and my friend, who is in the profession of child/family therapy, has a booming (but very sad) business because of it.
Meanwhile, my family doesn’t cheat, we won’t pay for scam tutoring and my kids are conflicted because they see their friends get “better” scores on a useless test that will help them to get into a “better” college. My kids see other parents commit fraud on behalf of their children to game the college admission system. At least my kids are aware because I have been telling them that the scores on these tests don’t mean anything, the AP classes are nothing but test prep, and that their value/ intelligence/ self worth/emotional state are more than a score on a stupid test. It’s hard for them and I feel sad for them, but I will not compromise my moral convictions for a college education for my children.
LisaM
I commend you for your honesty and for instilling that in your children.
It’s very easy for people to get caught up in the game, which is what college admissions has become.
A game with very big stakes (hundreds of billions?)
The refs in the game (College Board, university admissions officers and college Presidents, US news) have been bought and paid for for a very long time, so there is absolutely no way it can ever be fair.
These people need to go before the game will change.
Admittedly very unlikely.
This whole mess has come at a very good time for my HS Jr, who is now in the process of looking for a place to attend college. It reinforces what I have been telling her all along. She is starting to see that I’m not the “bad parent” that she thought I was. Yes, it’s unfair what is happening, but being moral is better than cheating and lying any day of the week.
I have a relative, currently at Yale, whose acceptance there is mostly likely the result of a parent’s well-timed donation. Meanwhile I teach some brilliant students who will end up in community colleges. A perfect meritocracy we are not.
I personally could not care less who is admitted to private unis because hey, they are private. I do care, though, about who is admitted into public unis. I am appalled to see tuition, residence and parking fees in these unis getting higher and higher while the administrators pocket six-figure salaries.
Thom’s blog…Thom Hartmann
The Real Scandal Is the Destruction of College Affordability for the Working Class
The ability of rich kids to get into the top schools because their parents either bribed some low-level functionary or test proctor, or because their parents bribed the entire school with a $2.5 million gift like Jared Kushner’s dad did with Harvard, is made triply galling when we see those same rich people supporting politicians who revel in stripping money away from public schools and colleges.
When Reagan came to office and made Bill Bennett Education Secretary, about 80 percent of the cost of college was paid for by state and federal government; Bennett, like Betsy DeVos, began the process of reversing that process that Abraham Lincoln had started by creating over 50 public “Land Grant Colleges” like Michigan State University. Today, because of four decades of Republican efforts, 80 percent of the cost of college is now borne by students with tuition, radically raising the cost of education and leading to a crisis of $1.7 trillion in student loans that can’t be eliminated by bankruptcy.
The rich now only screw our kids by putting their own at the top of the educational citadel, but then they pull up the ladder and keep out working class people with high tuition that results from the Reaganomics destruction of state and federal funding for college.
-Thom
I wonder about the pressure these parents are putting on their kids. Some, like Jared, probably don’t care. Other more sensitive children would know that they don’t fit into this environment but have to please their parents. That’s a lot of stress if the kid isn’t really smart enough to go to a top college.
……………………………
Venture Capital CEO Loses Job After Allegedly Bribing Daughter’s Way Into Georgetown
The Silicon Valley tycoon is the latest parent to lose his job following a massive FBI investigation into an alleged $25 million cheating conspiracy.
A man accused of paying at least $425,000 to purchase his daughter’s admission to Georgetown University has stepped aside from the helm of a major California venture capital firm, according to the company, making him the latest alleged fraudster to lose their job after a vast cash-for-college conspiracy was revealed on Tuesday.
Manuel Henriquez, the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Northern California venture debt firm Hercules Capital, “has voluntarily stepped aside,” the company said on Wednesday morning, but will as continue as a board member and advisor. He was paid $8,235,700 in total compensation in 2017.
Henriquez, whose daughter Isabella knowingly participated in the cheating scheme, according to federal prosecutors, is one of 50 people charged in a $25 million scheme to bribe, cheat and lie their children’s way into a host of elite universities, including Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and Yale University. Henriquez’s wife, Elizabeth, was also charged, alongside Hollywood stars, bigshot attorneys, and other Silicon Valley tycoons, in the largest educational fraud case in history…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hercules-capital-ceo-manuel-henriquez-loses-job-bribing-daughter-isabellas-way-into-georgetown?source=email&via=desktop
Where do the following situations fit into the latitude admissions officers have in their gatekeeping roles in keeping with institutional policies? It this desirable? Is it fair?
1) High school athletes, because of their prowess in certain sports, are accepted over students who are superior academically, yet denied entry?
2) Kids from different places and with different backgrounds are given preference over students with better grades, essays, SAT scores etc. (who could otherwise fill all available seats) because the former will form a more rounded student body.
The selection process obviously is not blind and has built-in flexibility. Many of us believe in diversity. What is the right balance?
It’s ALL about the money. Football and other athletics keep the rich alumni donating. Foreign students pay more money to attend. They use more part time/adjunct professors to save on salary/benefits. Un-Koch the college campuses. Colleges are top heavy with bloated administrations that are in the business of making money only…. Education is just an after thought.
I got this information from Fred Klonsky’s blog;
…………………………
Bruce Rauner clouted kid into Payton high school, sources say | Crain’s Chicago Business
…There were big stories a few years ago about how the connected would call Arne Duncan — then chief of Chicago Public Schools and now U.S. education secretary — to get some extra help for Junior.
Which leads to a story about someone who apparently did just that: Bruce Rauner. Yes, Bruce Rauner, the likely GOP gubernatorial candidate, whose biggest public claim to fame has been a crusade to reform education by sharply limiting the power of teachers’ unions, which in his view are just a nasty special interest.
According to multiple sources at Chicago Public Schools, Mr. Rauner in 2008 picked up the phone and called Mr. Duncan on behalf of his daughter, who was trying to get into Payton. Since this story is about the old man and not the kid, I’m not going to give her name…
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130424/BLOGS02/130429892/bruce-rauner-clouted-kid-into-payton-high-school-sources-say
Yes, carol, & the real shame of it is her admission, such as in these cheating instances, took away a qualified, bonafide Chicago resident’s education away. (The Rauner’s primary residence was, at the time {& is now, I believe–hadn’t heard they’d sold their house} in Winnetka, just named one of the top ten richest suburbs in the U.S. As such, daughter would have gone to New Trier High School–again, one of the best high schools in ILL-Annoy. So why take the space at Payton High School?) Finally, it’s my understanding that she didn’t have the grades or test scores to get into Payton. It’s also said that New Trier isn’t the best school for “average students,” because there’s such competition & focus on being an AP student. (Haven’t found that to be the case, actually.) But– did the Rauners not want her to go there because she was an “average” student? & w/Payton’s reputation (also one of the best schools in ILL-Annoy), & entrance criteria, I don’t understand her going there.
Having said that, it’s not the job of “other people” (such as myself) to question the rich & powerful!!
New Trier High School is rated at the top of high schools with Payton being even higher. How is the medium average girl going to survive in this highly competitive atmosphere? I earlier posted that striving parents aren’t doing their kids any good by putting them in places they aren’t qualified to attend. It is also taking away from those who aren’t wealthy and connected who would deserve such a placement.
The system is rotten when the wealthy have no morals and are willing to ‘sell their souls to the devil’. These supposedly are our ‘job creators’ and ‘leaders’ but they certainly aren’t people worth emulating. I can’t imagine how these people live with themselves.
They sold their souls to the devil long ago and now their kids are doing the same.
I once wondered whether unethical behavior was so ethical behavior was something these people possessed before they attended elite schools or acquired while they were there.
But I think both are involved.
The schools do nothing to discourage the behavior. Some of them actually encourage it.
I know of a case in which a coach at a private high school was overruled by the administration when he told his team members that they could not attend a rock concert the night before a big game.
The students defied him and went ahead and did what they pleased.
Their parents were donors to the school and the headmaster therefore sided with the students.
The coach, who had actually worked as a teacher at the school for over two decades and a coach for most of that time quit coaching there when the season ended.
Just one example of how the system works to eliminate anyone who questions the standard operating procedure.
Harvard admissions kept a secret Dean’s List made up of donors’ relatives and others with special connections. The acceptance rate for those on the list? 42 percent , over nine times the admission rate for the proles.
That’s the way you do it at Hawvid.
Did Harvards President know about this?
Is a hundred dollar bill green?
My only question is why the secrecy?
Everyone knows that getting into Hawvid depends on who you know.
And specifically, who you know that has given Hawvid money.
Last night, Christiane Amanpour interviewed former Harvard President Larry Summers about the cheating scandal. When she brought up Jared Kushner/daddy’s giftof $2.5 Million/Harvard acceptance, he loudly talked over her question and changed the subject. I couldn’t believe she let him get away with it. He insisted that no one ever bought their way into Harvard, evidence to the contrary.
Neil Rudenstine was actually President when the alleged deal went down
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard
But shouting down anyone who questions him is Summers MO.
That’s how he and his partner in crime, Alan Greenspan dealt with Brooksley Born in 1998 when she warned them that derivatives were a ticking time bomb set to blow up the world economy. They effectively shouted her down and shut her up.
Yes, and 10 years later, mthe wconomy collapsed. What was the name of the Oscar-winning documentary that showed Summers’ role in that economic disaster of deregulation?
I saw that too, Diane, & was thinking the same thing; had he been on Democracy Now! (oops–he wouldn’t), Amy, Juan & Nameer would never have let him off the hook! Noticed that his eyes were darting around & often didn’t look directly at Christiane (& we all know “those lyin’ eyes”). Also, the man doth protest too much.
I have never like Summers (in large part, having to do w/your comment below). But, also, having read that Summers & Rahm Emanuel, while in Obama’s W.H., constantly irritated the women there
(such as Valerie Jarrett & even Michelle), & were known to be thought of as misogynists. One such item written, “What do you do when you’re supposed to go to the Chief-of-Staff to voice complaints when it’s the Chief-of-Staff about whom you’re complaining?”
(I believe that my source is the book “Game Change” {wish someone had made it into a mini-series rather than just concentrate on the Sarah Palin aspect, although the HBO film was fascinating & well-played; stories in the book covering all aspects of that campaign cycle–the Obamas, Clintons, Edwardses–were stories in & of themselves}.)
Probably the biggest scandal brought to light by the FBI investigation (potentially far more impactful than the bribes made by parents) is the revelation that Harvard alum Mark Riddell took standardized tests (SAT and ACT) for high school students — all the way back to 2012.
Think about that.
If the security of those tests is so lax that someone can get away with doing this for 6 years, how many others are there out there who have also been doing it?
Given how many people take the tests each year, it is at least plausible that there might be hundreds or even thousands of such cases that have gone undetected.
Setting aside for the moment the value of test scores, how can a college admissions officer take credence in a test score when the test may have been taken by someone else?
This should be a HUGE issue for College Board, but I suspect they will just chalk it up to a minor security oversight and go on with their totally insecure test administration.
Our union wants to create a new scholarship for students in which SAT/ACT scores are part of the criteria used to pick the recipient. Some of us on the exec. board pushed back. We developed other criteria, and the scholarship can now move forward without SAT/ACT scores having any bearing.
The news of the scandal was lighting up my phone at the meeting, and I thought, “Good, and good timing.”
A fairer test would be one linked to a common curriculum that all students studied in school. Common Core doesn’t fit the bill because it’s conceptually such a mess: it claims to be teaching reading skills and the like, but to do well on the “skills” questions you need background knowledge to understand the passages that the “skills” questions are based on. This background knowledge is not being taught in schools, so the rich kids who get this outside of school have a huge advantage. If the tests were based on background knowledge that is actually taught via a common knowledge curriculum in schools, it would be conceivable for a hard-working poor kid to outperform a lazy rich kid.
Glad the tests will have nada to do w/the scholarships, Rosemary.
A large # of colleges & universities (albeit, not Harvard) have done away w/SAT or ACT requirements (on the Fair Test link that Diane had put up on another post, or you can go to their website).
All of this begs the question, what kind of wink-wink deal does Harvard (& other “elite” schools) w/the College Board?
Has to make one wonder what kind of dirty deals have gone down/are going down between them. It’s always about $$$$$ & power.
Oh, & as for these “innocent” offspring of those charged: I’m hoping their GPAs, class attendance, etc. will be looked at, & that they will be expelled if they do not meet GPA/class attendance requirements of their schools–just like other students are held to account. I have been especially disgusted by Olivia Jade, Lori Loughlin & Robt. Giunnulli’s daughter & $$ephora $poke$woman (they just dropped her today), who was reporting on products from her USC dorm room (so cool!), said that she would miss classes for her “business travels” (maybe even the first two weeks), &–last but not least!–that college is good for parties & games, & “‘It’s so hard to try in school when you don’t care about anything you’re learning,’ she posted.” (This from The Wall St. Journal.)
Expulsion, & her parents’ second payment of first year tuition to go to the hard-working, deserving student who will take her place.
What is easier to compare: results from the same test taken by all the applicants, or results from all the different schools from underfunded public school to a shady charter school to a selective New York school? Because this country does not have a national college entrance test (neither it has national graduation requirements neither it has national curricula), then SAT and ACT are the next best thing.
BA–I don’t know if your comment was in reference to my comment, but I was talking about Olivia’s (& other such students’) current–that is, at U.S.C.–GPA. If she doesn’t care about anything she’s learning (if she is, indeed, learning–or even going to classes), I can’t imagine that she’s studying or even going to class. Therefore, how would she & others of her ilk be able to stay in the school? They’d be in the second semester now (or third trimester or 4th quarter–?), so grades would be under scrutiny. Unless things have changed drastically (the last time I was a full-time student was in 1974), one would be on academic probation for low grades &/or poor attendance. IMO that, in addition to the bribery, would/should result in expulsion.
Easier is seldom (if ever) the same as better.
In fact, most of the time easier means crappier.
It’s easy to rank students with a standardized test and to rank teachers with VAM based on the tests of their students But it means very little.
Most things that are of any value are actually quite difficult.
College admissions officers could learn something from the movie Free Solo because it highlights the value of doing things that are NOT easy.
Here’s what college admissions officers and personnel in charge of hiring for companies need to ask themselves: is it better to consider candidates based on individual accomplishments ( something that required hard WORK, including adversity overcome) or to weed out candidates at the getgo based on the score on a two hour test that largely reflects family income?
Only a lazy person would choose the test.
Someone up there commented on the pressure parents may put on their children to get into elite schools. Funny that, because Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia, has later said that she & her sister had just wanted to get into Arizona State University, because they wanted to “party.” (Turns out, they both dropped out of U.S.C., as they “were afraid of being bullied.” Big $$$$ consequences, as well: O dropped by $ephora & Tre$$emme; Mom dropped by the Hallmark Channel.
Guess some wrongdoings have consequences after all…good to know.
I tutor students for the ACT/SAT. I only charge $40 an hour. If some of these tutors were earning $5000 to $10,000, I feel like I got shafted.
&, Terri, think of all the $$$$$ you would make if you actually TOOK the te$t for them!!!
No surprise–the guy who had done so w/Singer’s “company” was asked if he was sorry for what he had done & he said, “No.”