Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Purchased admission to university

Dozens of rich people and their collaborators have been arrested for fraudulent schemes to have already very privileged young people admitted to allegedly élite universities. Some parents bribed proctors of the SAT or the ACT so that a child could take the test with, shall we say, a little help. Others bribed coaches and others to pass their children off as recruited athletes deserving of extra attention and, of course, lower standards at the admissions office. Reportedly much of the money went through a charitable organization, and some of the people involved took tax deductions for their "donations".

I fully concur that the acts alleged are contemptible and that they should be punished aggressively. But does anyone really believe, as the prosecutor claimed, that "there can be no separate college-admissions system for the wealthy"? A separate system for the wealthy has existed for decades, and much of it is perfectly legal. Read Daniel Golden's book The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—And Who Gets Left outside the Gates. (Golden, incidentally, wrote the article cited above.)

Is Junior uncompetitive for Ivy? Call the "development" office and work out a donation, maybe a couple of million dollars, that may ever-so-coincidentally come to the attention of the people down the hall in admissions. As long as there is no formal quid pro quo, you should even be able to deduct the donation. Of course, this strategy works only if you have that much money and can afford to part with it—in other words, if you're filthy rich.

You may not have to go that far: your name may be enough. When it discovered that it had rejected a British princess, "horrified" Newcastle University back-pedaled and admitted her after all, blaming an "Italian" admissions officer for failing to consider that Her Disgrace "may have had more significance for the institution than another applicant"—than some poor slob like Old Guy, that is. US universities likewise fall all over themselves to welcome the scions of the rich and the prominent (usually one and the same).

If your own name doesn't command attention, you can have a well-placed person pull strings with the university. This ploy works especially well if you happen to be friends with the golfing partner of the university's president. Not many of us, however, can claim that distinction.

Or, if you yourself attended the university in question, or your spouse or another relative of your child's did, then your child counts as a "legacy" and gets special consideration. Again, this strategy doesn't work for people like Old Guy who are "legacies" of nothing in particular.

Those are just a few of the ways in which one can exercise direct influence over the admissions office. Indirect influence takes thousands of forms, many of them requiring money but all of them considered perfectly legitimate: aristocratic and expensive private schools, music lessons, élite sports (think polo and lacrosse—no competition here from the kid at East Bumblefuck High School), foreign travel, costly tutors for the SAT, even costlier "admissions consultants".

The tactics listed in the last few paragraphs may not strike you as fraudulent, unlike the purchasing of SAT scores or the bribing of the university's personnel. But they prove the existence of a "separate college-admissions system for the wealthy", one that takes up spaces that might otherwise go to lowly commoners.

31 comments:

  1. The Hollywood set has money, but it is new money. They don't have the networks to get their kids into upper academe or positions with the State Department. So while a old money nimwit like GWB sails into Yale and HBS, the Hollywood set has to resort to stunts like the one just uncovered. Hardly the perfect crime, but they probably thought nobody would care. Which perhaps they shouldn't.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's an interesting take. I like the term "mundanely privileged."

    https://www.chronicle.com/article/They-re-Already-Rich-Why/245889?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&cid=at

    BTW, GWB is hardly a nimwit. While he may not have been a natural academic, his grades were about average for his time (above average in some fields, like economics), and he got himself elected President. Twice. I'll trade my "A" in advanced statistics for that or for his leadership skills or his flying skills anytime.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 4:39 again. Flying planes is still a mystique to the hoi polloi, but is really not that hard, even jets, once over all the phobias. GWB was bred in that class to do that type of job. I will concede though that physically he was optimal. If leadership skills means ridiculing others because you can get away with it, then yes he was numero uno.

      As far as the admissions scandal, I get why the public is outraged. But what I find ridiculous is the notion that for every admission that was fraudulently obtained, one deserving student's life was ruined. And that my Junior, who has to go to East Loser State U. could have gone to Yale. There are not enough of these cases to make much of a material difference on the entering class demographics. It is a metaphysical argument to say that it altered anyone individual's life in any way.



      Delete
    2. It's not that anyone's life is ruined by being kept out of Yale. (Arguably my life was ruined because I was not kept out of Yale-like establishments.) But there's decided unfairness in a system purported to be meritocratic.

      I wouldn't object if the US dropped its pretenses of "meritocracy" and admitted that the Yales are for the rich only. Then the Yales could operate openly as country-club universities for the good and the great rather than pretending to serve "the best and the brightest". As things stand, however, people practically swoon at the mention of a Yale, as if anyone who attended had to be brilliant. Actually, most of the people who attend are just rich.

      Delete
    3. The rot is so deep...

      You don’t learn anything practical at any college in the United States, except maybe, and this is a big maybe, the elite STEM
      schools (MIT etc).

      The elite schools provide value to the lower class kids who go because the upper class kids go. The upper class kid gets self esteem and pretends he or she accomplished something, and the poorer kids get hired by the institutions controlled by the class structure that supports the upper class kid.

      You can’t make admissions meritocratic when the underlying education is theoretical and not practical. If you are poor, and get into these schools, you aren’t going to work at Deloitte because you read Plato at Princeton, you will work at Deloitte because rich people that want to say the system is meritrocratic (who also went to Princeton) hire you. You then learn on the job and progress accordingly.

      Jack Walsh ran GE without a college degree, it’s not rocket science.

      Delete
    4. To Old Guy: But what is meritocratic? Just going by SATs? SATs and Achievement Tests? You know the college admissions have a ranking system for high schools. A 3.0 at rich suburban school with 525,600 minute impromptu concerts is not considered the same as inner city school with knife fights every day. What do you consider to be meritocratic?

      Delete
    5. Precisely, 6:33. What constitutes "merit" is not easy to determine.

      I submit that merit is subjective and hard to define, which means that "meritocracy" is a lie: before we can talk about meritocracy, we have to have an agreed standard of merit, but we don't. Consequently, claims to fill the class with "the best and the brightest" are bullshit.

      Furthermore, the vaunted "holistic" approach serves mainly as political cover for a fundamentally aristocratic scheme of admission. Originally, in the 1920s, it was designed to keep Jews down to 5% of the class. (WASPs made up substantially all of the remainder, and women wouldn't be admitted for decades yet.) Then it came to be used as justification for admitting the rich kid with the B– from Choate over the Nebraskan hayseed with an A from his public high school and a prize from the 4-H Club or the Future Farmers of America. After all, the Choateling has ever so much more blue-blooded grace and refinement than the admirable but rustic kid from Nebraska—or at least we in the admissions office shall presume that, without evidence other than pedigree.

      Each fancy prep school that charges $60,000 per year has its own contact in the admissions office. So does each fancy public school in Westchester County or New Trier. But not East Bumblefuck High School in Hick State, USA, which Old Guy attended. Quite possibly Old Guy was the only one from East Bumblefuck ever to apply to a Harvard or an MIT. Eventually he barely scraped through the admissions office at one of these. Something must have gone wrong that day.

      Delete
  3. I think when we talk about having "backing," prior to law school, this is certainly an example. It's easier to get out from under the student loans, that's for sure, let alone other potential opportunites that are ready-made.

    And the reality is that being in the top 10% and writing on Law Review, while impressive, doesn't beat this kind of clout. Working hard is for suckers, in other words...

    ReplyDelete
  4. I generally believe in the value of higher education. But as more and more BS comes to light, the less and less I believe it's worth it in the final analysis. What should be something that molds and shapes people to be "productive" in society instead just fleeces them - meanwhile, the wealthy get preferred status.

    No different than anything else in human history, I guess, but this seems more egregious - especially when all the prior scolding from the liberal academic intelligencia is properly put in persepective.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you expect them to admit to their hypocrisy and sit in sackcloth and ashes, then you'll be waiting a long, long time...morals and lectures for thee, but not for me.

      Delete
  5. Just fuckity fuckity fuckity fuckity fuck these people. If the elite private universities want to play this game, fine. But when employees of state-funded universities start bumping qualified applicants so the fucking rowing team can have a few extras...screw 'em.

    It used to be that the state flagship served as a great equalizer for smart kids from modest backgrounds--like myself--to get ahead. I went to the University of Texas back when tuition was $32 a semester hour and we had to serf DARPA-Net by candlelight. My SAT score and GPA were good enough, so I was accepted outright, no questions asked, no ridiculous interviews in which I had to say what king of fruit I would be if I were a fruit...no pointless essays, no "personality" scores. Now, my own kids don't have a snowball's chance in Hell to get in there because they do not belong to any of the special groups that get "special" consideration. Even if these two actress' twit daughters had been good rowers, who gives a shit? Do you really think that 99% of the students paying tuition or 99% of the taxpayers supporting California's universities really want smart kids to be denied entry into their universities because the rowing coach claims he has a couple of ringers, and let's just ignore their SAT scores and GPA's, 'cause the students of USC and the taxpayers of California are just going to die if USC's rowing team doesn't go to Nationals this year? Fuck 'em all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some of these paid hundreds of thousands or even millions to get Baby into a state university or a humdrum private university such as Wake Forest. Strange. If you were going to forfeit your integrity and buy your child's way into university, wouldn't you insist at least on a Dartmouth?

      Delete
    2. Do you mean UCLA? 19th ranked nationally. Not very easy to get into. Neither is Wake Forest.

      Delete
    3. Speaking only for myself, my outrage meter would be much higher if it's found that coaches/admins at public schools are on the take. Can't get to worked up over what happens at private schools

      Delete
  6. These are only the dumbest of the dumb, and those that got caught.

    The "edge" the rich have starts from birth and continues onwards, building up every day and every step of the way until it's nearly insurmountable, outside of a near miracle, for a few tokens to get in.

    When you are in a safe, nurturing environment, with good food, access to information, the best teachers, the best tutors, clothing, hobbies, internships, along with expert guidance, you are a tremendous advantage to schlubs that are figuring it out as they go along and at the whims of a public educator with a hundred plus students a day who needs to grade on a curve and give low marks to somebody at least.

    Statistically, most human beings are average. The fallacy is focusing in on outliers, especially outliers from poorer backgrounds, and extrapolating that to show merit in general. It's obvious those that have the resources and guidance are going to achieve more.

    I'm not even sure this is as reprehensible as the narrative may state. If there is an idea that base intelligence should be more important, well, then that is set at birth if all other things were equal, is that truly any better? That sounds like communism. I've read Ancient China had some sort of system like that, and they had major issues with their culture as a result of it.

    Like it or not, we are born into families and a hierarchy as human beings. Personally I think that is less a problem and the bigger problem is the materialism and hypocrisy. Where a person of average birth can have obtain a comfortable living and take pride in what they do, free of ridicule from the elite classes, there is little to no reason for them to care about what the wealthy are busy doing. But American society and really the world around has for a half century or longer ridiculed the less well off and created a constant state of materialistic warfare in every social class, with extreme government interference (why for instance is the government involved in schools and student loans in the first place?).

    ReplyDelete
  7. The alleged fraudulent stunts have resulted not only in criminal charges but also in civil litigation. A former teacher named Jennifer Kay Toy is suing for "no less than $500,000,000,000"—yes, that's half a trillion dollars—because the alleged fraudsters' children were admitted to universities (not particularized in the complaint) at which her dear Joshua was turned down.

    It seems to me that the lawyer who drafted this complaint should be punished for the poor legal work, including the outlandish amount claimed.

    ReplyDelete
  8. While we're on the subject of admissions scams, let's remember the scam of building a 28-year career at MIT, all the way to the position of dean of admissions, on the strength of three non-existent degrees:

    https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/4/26/mit-admissions-dean-resigns-after-fake/

    Marilee Jones resigned after being caught. Nowadays she offers services as an "admissions consultant". I wonder whether she recommends to her clients the sorts of, shall we say, embellishments that she used on her own application for that job, and throughout her time at MIT.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good link, OG. The key takeaway for me was that she was "highly regarded" in her field despite having only one year of part-time college under her belt. In other words, not having the degrees she made up meant jack. A British ex-patriot friend of mine explained to me how education works in the UK. After he graduated from their equivalent of high school he was hired at British Telecom where he rose quickly into the white collar ranks and kept progressing despite no higher education. The attitude at British Telecom and other British corporations was: "This is our industry. We can teach it to you far better than Cambridge or Oxford." (And of course, there are no student loans for learning on the job.)

      Therein lies the rub with America's obsession with educational credentials. How does a degree from Albany Medical qualify you to be an admissions officer at MIT?

      Delete
    2. Is that still possible in Britain? It used to work in the US, too. Plenty of baby boomers got white-collar jobs without a degree.

      She was a damned admissions officer. Sorting applications into the categories "admit", "reject", and "put on the waiting list" just isn't difficult, nor would a PhD in biology (really, she expected people to believe that she would have taken a clerical job with that sort of degree?) have helped.

      Lots of people defended her on the grounds that she was allegedly good at the job. I don't buy that for one second. First, as I mentioned, that job just isn't difficult. Almost anyone could do it. Second, the university could hardly have complained about dishonesty on applications, or even in academic work, if it had let a proven liar keep her job. Third, there's a little thing called integrity. I know that I sound quaint and innocent for bringing this point up, but please humor me.

      On top of that, MIT simply had to get rid of her. By keeping her on, it would have told the world that one can get away with lying about degrees. Why bother to go to MIT, then, when one can just claim to have earned a degree there?

      Delete
  9. One of the few things I actually admire about law school is that admissions is pretty straight forward - if your GPA and LSAT are high enough, you will get into a top school. It's not that way with "holistic" college admissions, not by a long shot. Even if you have perfect SAT/ACT scores, a 4.0 GPA, and have taken all AP classes, unless you have a hook (i.e., URM status, recruited athlete, child of a very wealthy donor, child of a prominent politician and a few others), your chances of getting into an Ivy League level school are poor. Legacy status alone doesn't do you much good at these schools unless it comes with a seven figure donation. It's no accident that these scamsters used the recruited athlete angle since that's one of the few surefire ways of getting into elite colleges.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The "recruited athlete" angle largely bypasses the ordinary admissions process. Some damn coach chooses a bunch of applicants, and the admissions office rarely overrides his decisions.

      Things work differently in law school because there just aren't many high-scoring students to go around.

      Delete
    2. There were plenty of students in my school that had "disabilities". They got as much time as they wanted on exams and could even bring materials it seemed. As far as I could see, they had absolutely no actual disabilities.

      And how could they have? If they had actual disabilities and law school was meant to prepare people for actual legal practice, allowing these privileges would not work because they would not then be allowed in actual practice.

      But these people all got great grades and great jobs. They usually were at best only mediocre in intelligence, except they were smart enough to demand these things and clearly knew how to get the best jobs.

      There is no such thing as merit for the most part. If you actually look at IQ, virtually everyone is within a standard deviation or two. In practice, intelligence does virtually nothing. It is the guidance and opportunities that matter, and how people treat you.

      Most people already have their minds made up in advance and then just justify things afterwards. When you have your end result already decided it's extremely easy to spin anything anyway you want. And yes that includes grades and everything else.

      I remember law schools claimed they used double blind grading, but from talking to professors a few times it became obvious to me that wasn't in fact the case at all. Especially if you hand wrote your exams, that was even easier for them to know and they usually just gave high marks to whoever did. I wish I'd figured that out before my last year of law school. My last semester I especially did well, although at that point it really doesn't matter anymore.

      Delete
    3. To 9:52 I disagree that there are no differences between people in academic and cognitive abilities. Perhaps intelligence is roughly equal at birth and environmental factors at an early age determine abilities, but differences in ability become obvious very early on and are unlikely to change very much. You even contractdict yourself. In paragraph 3 you state that many law students were of mediocre intelligence and in paragraph 4 you state that human intelligence is roughly equal.

      But I do agree with you on what you say about favoritism and affirmative action.

      Delete
  10. Getting into college and/or grad school is one thing. Getting a job after college and/or grad school is another. And chances are really good that the kid whose parents paid for the high-priced tutoring and the SAT coaching and the phony athletic slot are the same parents who are going to get that said kid a job upon graduation.

    I really don't see the fuss. We all know this is how the system really works.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Again, let universities be seen for what they are. Let everyone see that the game is rigged. Your child may well Do Everything Right and still end up like Old Guy.

      Delete
  11. But there seems to be an assumption in this thread that everyone getting into the elite schools are completely unqualified and based on connections or money. The elite schools on the West Coast have been dealing with the huge number of Asians that have impeccable academic credentials taking more and more seats. This is pissing off the wealthy whites who are being pushed out of seats to these schools. This phenomenon has moved to the East Coast elite schools also.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's old news. There have even been lawsuits by people of East Asian origin who claim that they're being kept out of the Harvards on racial grounds. And they are, relative to their proportion in the pool of applicants. But they're greatly overrepresented relative to their proportion in the general population.

      The most underrepresented group in the élite universities nowadays turns out to be white people not of the upper class.

      No one in this thread has said that everyone at the élite schools is completely unqualified. Please be more careful with your allegations.

      Delete
  12. The problem is much m, much deeper. The education is useless, and from there all problems flow.

    It’s like old school Karate dojos vs MMA. Old school Karate dojos only tangentially taught you to fight, and it’s took years to be able to use the stuff in practice. If you go to a place that teaches MMA, you’ll know how to fight in a year or two and get progressively.

    Joe Rogan had a podcast explaining that when the UFC and other full spectrum fighting sports came out, you had all these guys with old school martial arts training fighting the new guys that had real practical hands-on training with actual skills you can use in a fight, eg Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The guys with real skills kicked the crap out of the guys that did Kata training for 20 years.

    How did Harvard become the best law school in the country? While everyone else was saying the law came from God, philosophized on the subject, etc Langdell came along and said let’s get down to brass tax the law is whatever the highest authority in a given jurisdiction says it is.

    Practical innovation stopped a long time ago. Everyone complaining that the system is unmeritoctatic fails to grasp that the barriers to entry and the skills obtained in the education itself is not practical. The only value the middle class and poor kids get by going to elite schools is that the elite will throw them a bone so that said elite can pretend the system isn’t rigged.

    People want to keep the inherent corruption of an impractical educational system in place, while getting rid of nepotism and all that Jazz. Not possible. The two are linked.

    ReplyDelete
  13. There are other qualities besides SATs and grades that get people into top universities. If you are co-running your father's real estate business and hosting the Israeli prime minister in your bedroom, you clearly have more opportunities than anyone else. On the other hand, you may be quite extraordinary in your drive and ability to succeed.

    The fact that Kushner, an orthodox Jew, was able to attract Ivanka Trump and get her to convert to Judaism says a lot about Kushner's drive and ambition.

    Just remembering, the lady who wrote Prozac Nation got into Yale Law School with less than stellar LSATs and probably not straight A grades.

    Sometimes life is about things other than SATs and grades.

    No question, the opportunities do not go to the poor.

    The Yale Law school lady was a scholarship student at a private high school.

    Just saying, it is very hard to make it and even harder if you are poor.

    This says nothing about the extreme oversupply of lawyers, including those from the top schools, who cannot use their degrees in a way that makes the decision to attend law school a reasonable one.

    ReplyDelete
  14. So now we have gone from law school is bad to education is useless. That is really amazing that a poster here can conclude that education is useless for others than himself. The audacity here continues. I do agree that education at the elite schools may not be significantly better than at other run of the mill schools, and in places like Florida, people are happy going to UF instead of Harvard, especially given the tuition savings. It seems that the Northeast is the most prestige obsessed part of the country. Not every section of the country is that myopic. But face it, generally the brightest students go to the elite schools even with all of the scams and payoffs and bribes that have been going on forever. That makes it easy for prestige obsessed employers, like investment banks and top law firms to find a pool of potential applicants. The schools make it easy for them. On the other hand, elite school or not, the brightest students will tend to rise to the top regardless of the school they attended. But attending a university, any university, is almost mandatory to escape from the working class unless somebody starts and thrives in their own business. That's right, some here will say that waste management workers in NY make great money. Well that is great for them...but I'm not sure that means that above average intelligence workers should be clamoring for those jobs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm all for having people defend the law school scam on this blog. Successful toilet law school grads are welcome to tell their story raking in $50k, working out of a dilapidated office building, handling DUI cases. But the ellipses troll offers no constructive discussion to this blog. Rather, the little troll opens his comment with a straw man argument, attacking Old Guy for saying education is useless when in fact Old Guy never made such an argument. Ellipses troll has never disclosed their background or occupation. They simply offer platitudes and other nonsense interspersed with ellipses. Time to block this troll.

      Delete