I have covered college sports more or less my entire career. but I never thought I'd live long enough to see a recruiting scandal that involved the admission of athletes who couldn't play.
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 12, 2019
This quote is actually illuminating. "Why didnt the rich people just exert their influence the socially acceptable way?" https://t.co/XYGuW41qa4
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) March 12, 2019
Former school official on Kushner getting into Harvard: “His GPA didn't warrant it, his SAT scores didn't warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted"
HIs dad donated $2.5 million https://t.co/t6IwirVoVH
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) March 12, 2019
Interesting window into what this whole bribery enterprise is about — it’s for well-off folks who know what the jig is, but who aren’t wealthy enough to use their billions to legally kick in the front door of college admissions. https://t.co/qnDVW6cRkW
— Matt Pearce ?? (@mattdpearce) March 12, 2019
going to prison to keep your kid out of a safety school is next-level helicopter parenting
— Albert Burneko (@AlbertBurneko) March 12, 2019
What in Aunt Becky's experience made her think this fatuous child should be anywhere near higher learning? This is the kind of entitlement that elected our president. @thecut https://t.co/44MZ7Vmymk pic.twitter.com/xUOCf4Ilm5
— Linette Lopez (@lopezlinette) March 12, 2019
Michelle Obama said these people in the positions you're trying to get into aren't actually smart or special, and the news of the day basically proves her point
— Parkey's Participation Trophy (@SowaTheArrogant) March 12, 2019
The saddest funniest thing about this college bribery scandal? These kids went to the best schools, had the best resources, and they couldn't compete with kids who had nothing. Their parents blame affirmative action instead of the fact that little Jackalope McQueasy is lazy.
— ?Mikki Kendall? (@Karnythia) March 12, 2019
Hey, remember this story about another rich person's underperforming kid who somehow made it into the Ivy League? https://t.co/UwOfBK5RUI
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 12, 2019
Trump was allowed to transfer to the Univ of Pennsylvania after receiving “respectable” grades at Fordham, a Jesuit school in New York, following an interview by a “friendly” Wharton admissions officer who was a former classmate of Trump’s older brother. https://t.co/XvtsjgBfMC
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) March 12, 2019
I wonder how many wealthy folks with kids in college are now calling their lawyers and asking “for a friend” about a hypothetical situation where their kid “might” have cheated on their SAT or completed their application with a donation on the side.
— Clint Watts (@selectedwisdom) March 12, 2019
I don't know why KavaNOT popped into my head.
???
— PRESIDENT PELOSI RUNS THIS (@BrownietheBully) March 12, 2019
NotMax
Dammit, stuff like this makes me miss the idle rich.
;)
Jay
Pretty sure that some of the parents could have gotten their kids in the “old fashioned way”, but wanted to only spend $0.20 on the dollar.
Duane
Mom picks up daughter returning from college. Daughter says,” Mom I ain’t a virgin no more.” Mom says,” I spend all this money on that expensive school…and you still say ain’t?”
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
20 years ago I read a long Mick Jagger interview. He got off on a tangent on one of his daughters trying to get into Harvard, but they wanted Jagger to donate a million dollars to fund a department chair and he thought that was too much so she went to another school.
My initial reaction was, “wow, Jagger is filthy rich, why is he haggling over a million dollars”. Then I realized they weren’t asking for a “donation” but for a bribe and then it struck me, “Ohhhh, that’s how the ne’er do wells get in.”
Arclite
Thing that pisses me of is that they are taking legitimate spots for people trying to get in on scholarship. My daughter is a swimmer who always goes to state championships and places. She also has a 1500 SAT score she’s trying to kick up to 1600. She’s a junior and she’s looking at Ivys. Not for parental bragging rights like these fuckers, but because she’s smart and she wants to challenge herself. We’re barely middle class, and it would be nice for her to finish college without a $200k debt to pay off.
mrmoshpotato
@Duane: Yes. You and Daddy didn’t buy the English department, remember?
Cermet
As someone who’s child got into the top Ivy League school in her chosen field, and also received massive reduced tuition from said school, all I can say is: merit does pay’s off, for sure.
This, however, is just the 0.1% pretending they are the 0.001% and that, those 0.001% fuckers will never tolerate; hence, the FBI sting and jail terms will be received for the most famous (and of course, those with the least political connections, as well.)
TriassicSands
It’s just the flip side of “student-athletes” who can’t “student.”
OzarkHillbilly
Meh.
Amir Khalid
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Jagger is CEO of the Rolling Stones as a business concern, a successful one, and over the years he’s stood the Stones’ ground against record labels, tour promoters, and venue owners like Donald Trump. He wouldn’t stand for Harvard trying to shake him down.
BellyCat
Capitalism solves
everythingeducation.OzarkHillbilly
I’ll bet he does. My money says he’s one of the few who actually does time.
Jay
@NotMax:
They didn’t go from having 45% of the wealth to having 99% of it overvthe past 40 years by being idle.
OzarkHillbilly
That’s because when a college accepts a bribe it’s called a donation.
Anne Laurie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: IIRC, Jagger has a degree from the London School of Economics — and he didn’t have to endow a building to get it, either.
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
Mick Jagger was a middle-class kid, a schoolteacher’s son. His parents wanted him to be a schoolteacher too, but he dropped out of the LSE in 1963, soon after the Stones’ first single came out.
JGabriel
via Anne Laurie @ Top:
The best way to summarize this scandal is: Elite universities are pissed that the bribes they collect for admitting subpar students are being collected by employees instead.
Jay
@JGabriel:
Naw, Rich People buy Privledge for $0.20 on the dollar.
BruceFromOhio
@Arclite: This, this, this. TeensFromOhio busted their asses, nailed the SATs and ACTs, scored some scholarship love, and are getting degrees with no debt. They did it themselves, because no way daddy BFO can muster any cash to grease any wheels. No one can ever take that away from them, and they have their pride and their names intact.
Now you are out the benjamins, and your name dragged around like a rag cleaning up the dogs piss. Fucking parasites.
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: Mick Jagger’s kids didn’t need to go to Harvard to be who or whatever they want to be and unlike these parents Jagger was smart enough to realize that.
MagdaInBlack
Would these be the same folks who feel affirmative action is a bad thing?
Barbara
@MagdaInBlack: I doubt if there is one to one correspondence. My take is that these are mostly classic high achieving parents whose kids have failed to come even close to meeting their expectations, for whatever reason, but probably mostly just the normal distribution of smarts and drive in a given population. Instead of trying to help the kid figure out the best path for them, the parents wanted credentials that the kids could not attain on their own.
batguano
My stepdaughter just won a full tuition scholarship to her top college choice. We’re not wealthy, she didn’t have an admissions coach, she’s just that damn good.
Ken
Please! That’s Jackalope McQueasy III, or “Trey” as we call him.
Ian G.
I remember when the story came out that Shitgibbon had mocked Jeff Sessions for his accent and his degree from the University of Alabama (nothing elitist about that, right MAGAts?) that I said that if I had two job applicants, one with a 4.0 from the University of Alabama or another state school and one with a 3.0 from an Ivy League school, I’d take the state school applicant every time. Having attended an Ivy League school, I can confirm the place was full of lazy entitled shits who were there because their parents had money/connections.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@MagdaInBlack: People forget: one of college’s major functions for the already wealthy is as a kind of 4 year daycare / insurance policy. Most kids 18-22 do the same stupid shit, but in College, your mistakes are handled by Campus Security and the Honor Board, as opposed to the LAPD and LA County Sheriff. I went to a somewhat “elite” liberal arts school (through the front door!) and there were several students there who in hindsight we just there to screw and get high until it was time to start that job at Dad’s construction company / car dealership / winery, etc.
low-tech cyclist
@Arclite:
Dude. Something like 1/3 of the slots in every Harvard freshman class go to legacies.
In terms of depriving more deserving students like your daughter of slots at top universities, this stuff is down in the white noise.
Walker
Our admissions is able to sleep at night over traditional “bribing” because it is how we fund the financial aid for everyone else. If you are middle class and can get in, it is cheaper to go to an Ivy (solely on financial aid, not merit scholarships) than a state school.
Another Scott
Thread: HighlySelectiveHat:
I’m in the yes and no camp at the moment.
I think I got into (private) college at least partly because my dad graduated from there. I had good but not extraordinary grades and test scores. I got free tuition because my mom worked there as a secretary (and had a strong union). There’s an awful lot more that goes into acceptance decisions than grades and scores, and that’s a good thing in most cases. And as long as schools have to rely on donations to keep the lights on, then donors will want more than their names on a building in return.
The justice system needs to treat everyone fairly, and the “beat up on the near-rich” aspects of this seem designed to drive memes and clicks and take our eyes away from the prize (electing sensible people who will make our economy and society more just). But how does one get there except by making a stink about how near-rich people tried to game the system yet again?
Cheers,
Scott.
Mathguy
@Ian G.: A 3.0 at an Ivy is equivalent to a 1.5 GPA anywhere else.
jonas
Obligatory Simpsons reference for the occasion:
Mr. Burns: Something is not right about Larry’s upbringing. Send for the boys of Yale at once!
(Burns’ office. Two admissions officers from Yale are by his desk)
Mr. Burns: Well, did you meet Larry?
Male Admissions Officer: Oh yes. He made light of my weight problem, then suggested my motto ought to be “Semper Fudge”. After that he told me to “relax”.
Mr. Burns: How were his test scores?
Female Admissions Officer: Let’s just say this: he spelled “Yale” with a 6.
(Mr. Burns, in a not-to-subtle moves, opens his checkbook)
Mr. Burns: I see. Well, I- …Oh, that reminds me, it is time for your annual contribution. How much should I give?
Male Admissions Officer: Well frankly, test scores like Larry’s would merit a very generous donation. A score of 400 would require new football uniforms. 300 would require a new dormitory. And in Larry’s case? We’d need an international airport.
Female Admissions Officer: Yale could use an international airport, Mr. Burns.
Mr. Burns: Are you mad?! I am not made of airports! Get out!
Another Scott
@Mathguy: Meh.
I remember an intermediate-level math course I took in college at Chicago (not officially an Ivy League, but kinda-sorta when it comes to competition for admissions and aid). There were about 5 of us in the class (not that unusual in highly-selective schools) and the prof insisted on grading on a curve… :-/
I remember people complaining about grade inflation in 1980. It’s always been a thing. You should hear the stories my J tells about new graduate and post-graduate “kids these days” who come from state schools… ;-)
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
jonas
@Ian G.: I can confirm the place was full of lazy entitled shits who were there because their parents had money/connections.
Yup. They could *afford* to relax because their path in life and future success would have absolutely nothing to do with their performance in college.
PaulWartenberg
@Ian G.:
I know.
If I ever become President I will avoid hiring ANYBODY with a fcking Harvard or Yale degree. They’ve overwhelmed our legal and political systems with entitled hacks who didn’t work for anything. I’d rather have a SCOTUS full of law students from middle class backgrounds and decent small law colleges where the law will be taught differently than the factories that Harvard and Yale have turned themselves into.
Wag
@PaulWartenberg:
So, not planning on hiring the next generation’s fresh, young Obama?
Tenar Arha
@Another Scott: There’s the blatant tax cheating, then there’s the manipulation of systems that are designed for kids with real disabilities who are smart enough to go to school who will now be treated like dirt when they try to use those systems, and then there’s the crosshairs landing on the mothers instead of the fathers…
ETA I will never know for sure if it my mother’s legacy was what put me over the top at my school?♀️, but I know her pushing me for 4 years in high school definitely did.
Barbara
@PaulWartenberg: My co-clerk graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a degree in math. She was scary bright, and associating with her was one of the greatest pleasures of my professional life. She told me that she didn’t think she would ever accomplish anything so grand for the rest of her life. So, basically, the entitled shits fund people like my co-clerk, and the trick is trying to figure out who is who.
But really, what interests me about this scandal is how little faith these well-heeled parents had in their children, and how much stock they invested in being able to say that their kid got into and then, hopefully, graduated from USC or Yale or Georgetown. I read the complaint. One of the kids (the lawyer’s daughter) was going to an on-line school. Let that sink in. A kid who is going to an on-line school when she lives in Greenwich, CT is someone who has significant learning or mental health issues. How could her dad not realize that dummying up her college credentials and launching her into a place like Cornell (his preferred school) might be the last thing she needed? He probably has a net worth of upwards of $10 million — with that kind of money it barely matters where his daughter goes to college, and there are a lot of small schools that probably would have met her on her own terms where she could have made the most of what she has to offer.
And what really amazes me is that somehow, I still feel guilty for forcing my kids to take SAT prep courses to help goose their scores. But doing something like this — not in a million years.
Barbara
@Tenar Arha: Yes, but they indicted the lawyer-father of one of the students, and not the mother. Even though it was clear the mother knew, the father was definitely the driver. But they also indicted couples as well, so in my view they do seem to be at least trying to base these decisions on level of involvement, and also, most likely, who handled the money and signed the checks. That would be key to some of the specific charges.
ETA: It will not surprise me that more indictments are in the offing. There is a very specific pattern here: kids who took tests in one of two specific locations, who may have received the okay to have extra time, and whose place of residence is somewhere else in the country. That’s one specific pattern, but there are likely others. It won’t be hard to match those students with payments being made to Singer or one of his co-conspirators.
Tenar Arha
@Barbara: Yeah, no I get that legally you indict the one who’s left the evidence for you, it makes total sense. It’s normal.
But there’s the media focusing so specifically on Huffman and Loughlin in all the header photographs too. There’s something off about those choices, and Johnston was the closest one to providing me with a reason that helped me understand why of all stories this one is so simultaneously relatable and infuriating, you know? (My mother worked full time, but she also did the bulk of the household management which included wrangling the school stuff including signing off on my classes and report cards).
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
Was that Huffman/Macy’s older kid? G was reading all of the articles yesterday and he was saying that, from what was being reported, it sounded like the kid had some learning issues.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Barbara said “the lawyer’s daughter.”
Barbara
@Tenar Arha: The focus is on Huffman and Loughlin because those are the most well-known names in the indictment. The American Lawyer and Law 360 are all over the lawyer father, and barely mentioned the others for the same reason — he is very prominent in his specialty.
Percysowner
This is corrupt and awful. They took spots from kids who legitimately deserved it. I am annoyed, however, that although actress Felicity Huffman, married to actor William Macy and actress Lori Loughlin, married to designer Mossimo Giannulli, owner of a multi-billion dollar the mothers are the only ones getting the bad press. I mean come on, their husbands are every bit as involved, but skating publicly
gwangung
@Mathguy: Hey!
I’ll have you know I resemble that remark!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Amir Khalid: I remember hearing a story about how “Start Me Up” got used to sell Microsoft Windows 95…the Stones had never sold song rights to an advertiser before and weren’t really planning to sell to Microsoft either but as kind of a joke they named an astronomical price for the song rights. They assumed the price they demanded was hell and gone beyond anyone’s willingness to pay. Microsoft didn’t even blink – they just said yes and that was all she wrote.
Victor Matheson
@JGabriel: That’s a good way to summarize it, but I think one can make an valid argument that bribes going to the institution at least end up providing a public good. For example, the single largest line item in the budget at the college I teach at is financial aid for students with merit but without cash. More donations/bribes, more money available for providing education services to the rest of the students. Hard to argue that the crew coach taking a bribe provides the same sort of public benefit.
Dev Null
Repeating a riff from an ex-colleague: “go directly to Yale, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.”
(In the event that you puzzle over this for more than 2 seconds – I did! – I suggest you say the sentence out loud.)
Victor Matheson
@Barbara: Totally agree about the Jagger comment. Anyone with parents who have $500K to spend on a bribe are going to end up totally fine no matter what school they end up at. The kids who need the better credentialing to survive aren’t likely to have parents with the means to buy the credentialing. I am wildly confused about this whole line of thinking by the parents here and I am even in higher education.
Luthe
@Percysowner: The strange thing is that Lori Loughlin is making the headlines even though she wasn’t indicted. Her husband was the one who got arrested. But he’s “only” a fashion designer and therefore not famous enough to get media attention.
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly:
What really pisses the schools off is (i) they didn’t make a penny out of the scam, but more importantly (ii) they could’ve
sold off“awarded” those slots for a helluva lot more inbribes“donations.” As far as thosedens of thieves“august institutions” are concerned, the real crime is that their employees who were involved in the operation stole thebribery moneydonations that were rightfully theirs, and at pennies on the dollar no less.ETA: TL;DR version at #17 supra (h/t JGabriel). Scooped yet again…:^(
Arclite
@Barbara: Nor did Mick Jagger require the egotistical bragging rights of “My kid went to Harvard.” He’s Mick fucking Jagger.
scav
@Victor Matheson: It also sorta depends if you are raising and thinking of children as themselves or raising them as accessories demonstrating how perfect you and your lifestyle are. “My kid in Yale” can be entirely about the serotonin rush in the parent.
MCA1
@Barbara: Can I just co-sign every one of your posts in this thread? You’re right on the money in each of them. In the BigLaw world right now no one’s talking about two has-been actresses, they’re talking about the managing partner at Willkie Farr. And I’m told by my b-i-l that in the PE world, everyone’s all over the industry members who got rolled into this.
Plenty of the indicted are men, and in a large number of cases it’s both parents who got charged, so I think we can assume it’s about evidence here. They might still charge other parents once they start sitting down with people and waving prison sentences in front of them.
Funniest comment I’ve seen so far on this whole thing was to the tune of “William H. Macy’s wife just got arrested for a crime that you could imagine literally every William H. Macy character getting arrested for.”
Arclite
@low-tech cyclist:
Sure, but rarely as athletes. Those are the spots they are taking.
Barbara
@scav: Yeah, but my kid who bombed and flunked out of Yale after spending his first year smoking dope non-stop doesn’t have quite the same rush. This is what I can’t understand. Your kids are people with needs and talents and for some kids enrolling at Yale (or Georgetown or USC) might be the worst thing that could happen to them. Among other things, money can buy you space and time and the flexibility to give your kids a softer landing without having to walk the straight and narrow path of getting into an elite college. And it’s such a breach of trust and a vote of zero confidence in their kids, especially if they really did hide it from them, which I am not convinced of.
scav
@Barbara: but you’re already thinking of them with individuals with needs and talent and weaknesses (heaven forfend!) in all of that. Think of them more as handbags if that helps make the imaginative leap. This just is one of the many steps the bipedal accessories perform: traditionally they joined the family firm (whether they wanted to or not) married appropriately (ditto) and produced cute grandchildren on schedule.
Cathie from Canada
The FBI has me convinced that the most corrupt endeavor in the United States must be its universities — they’ve been investigating college sports for years, now they’re investigating the academic side. I’m starting to wonder how many in the FBI are still mad because they didn’t get a sports scholarship, or admission to an ivy league college?
varmintito
As somebody whose kid is neither interested in nor qualified to be admitted to a big name college, this whole episode makes me profoundly sad but I get where the parental anxiety is coming from.
I look at the economic future, and I see a place where the small minority with the right credentials, connections and experience will prosper, but everybody else faces a future where they have dramatically less opportunity, security, autonomy, etc. I don’t want my kid to have a future where she gets exploited and pushed around.
MCA1
Imagine being one of these kids now, too. You may have worked hard through high school, gotten a 31 on your ACT and figured you just got lucky in being admitted to UCLA when you were figuring you’d end up at UCSD or some other selective but not elite school. Now you find out that not only is your parent a felon, but that they didn’t even believe in you enough to just let you land somewhere on your own merit and figure out a path on your own.
Every single one of these kids went to a top notch high school, has parents of means, and grew up in an environment where they have a built-in phenomenal network. Their friends will be successful and their parents and friends’ parents know people in tons of different industries. The “who you know” part of life was handed to them by growing up in the right place. It’s not the end of the fucking world if they end up at Colorado State. They’ll be fine.
This whole thing is incredibly resonant because, in addition to catching up a number of very high profile people and making for scuttlebutt that way, it’s symbolic of any number of cultural psychoses in America 2019. Yes, entitlement, but also deep dysfunction in the education “industry,” our neurotic obsession with money and status as virtue signals, embedded aristocracy and wealth distribution inequalities, and a creeping infantilism in the way we raise our young. I’m not one of those guys who goes off about participation trophies and all that, but that’s kind of what this is. God forbid Mossimo and Loughlin allow their children to discover they’re not as special as they’ve been told to think of themselves.
Just for perspective, there were probably 3.5 million kids graduating from high schools in the U.S. last year. Even if you knock out 40% of them as not prepared for college or living in circumstances that don’t really allow for aspiring to a college degree, we’d be looking at about approximately 2 million kids competing for college admissions. The top 20 ranked universities out there have a combined freshman class every year of perhaps 40,000, total. So, we’re talking 2 in a hundred high school graduates are in position to possibly get into one of these schools. A 50th percentile academic achiever kid, like a B or B+ student, even a highly competitive, high powered private school with amazing resources, has no business being at USC, much less Georgetown, much less f’ing Yale.
MCA1
@TriassicSands: It’s not, though. At least, and I’m not in any way defending the swamp of college sports or the capture of institutions with a stated mandate of advancing education by athletic departments, the quarterback with underwhelming grades and scores is capable at football and “contributes” something to the school. These kids were neither academically qualified nor collegiate athlete material.
Parfigliano
@Barbara: prominently disbarred in the near future
Barbara
@Parfigliano: In the darwinian struggle of clawing your way to the best deal possible after being indicted, these parents have nothing to give the government. They have zero leverage other than threatening to force the government to spend resources litigating.
artem1s
considering these admission scores were inflated, I wonder when US News and World Report will revise their rankings? The private university I work for (near Ivy) doesn’t engage much in legacy admissions because they want to make sure their ranking stays up there with the Ivy’s. Doesn’t mean they never do it, it just means that they are focused on making sure each entering class doesn’t decrease their rankings. You can’t keep your ranking up if you are admitting too many W’s, 45’s and other trust fund failures. Competition to say your school is in the top 10 or whatever is critical to recruiting – critical to donations from alum – critical to what you can charge for tuition. It’s one big circle jerk. this is going to have a ripple effect on a lot of related businesses.
smintheus
@Arclite: Do Ivies give sports scholarships now?
In my day, places on at least some teams were routinely given to rich kids because it was a mode to get them admitted if they were underqualified academically. There were no sports scholarships allowed by mutual agreement, so these roster spots became valuable chips in recruiting parents who might give big donations in thanks.