Fraud on college admissions: the real scandal is what is legal

Details of revelations that wealthy parents would have paid a consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to represent their children as successful athletes, thus giving them an elite advance length admissions to college, are enticing, deliciously juicy. (Jane Coaston's presenter has some of the best stories, including that students are portrayed as the best recruits in sports they have never even practiced.)

But under the celebrity gossip and anecdotes of choice, one inevitably concludes that the entire case of being admitted to America's elite colleges in 2019 – and make no mistake about it 39 is a case – is corrupted until the end.

When the Justice Department held a press conference Tuesday to announce fraud charges against dozens of people, including consultant William "Rick" Singer and actress Felicity Huffman, the FBI's special agent Joseph R. Bonavolonta, called the project a "sham that strikes at the heart of the college admissions process."

But what he's revealed is how bad this nucleus is. If the only purpose of the admission process to US universities was to create a perfect educational environment for students – not to appease rich donors or improve the school brand through athletics – fraud does not would not have worked at all.

The real scandal, as they say, is what is legal.

The system worked only because the admissions to American universities are shattered

The underlying logic of the project was that affluent parents wanted to integrate their children into elite colleges, but they had poor grades and test scores that would not allow them to be admitted through the process. usual. Fortunately for them, admissions to colleges are not level playing field.

Alumni children have a boost. The same goes for the children of the main donors. A recent lawsuit on Harvard admission policies has revealed details of how they are treated as much they are for their potential as students. And athletes are consistently admitted with lower marks and test scores than other students.

None of these benefits in the admission process generally attracts as much attention and indignation as the most notorious admission preference: positive action based on the race. This outrage rarely considers that, legally, positive discrimination can not exist to help a student overcome discrimination. According to the Supreme Court, colleges can only consider race in admissions to the educational benefit of all students on campus by creating a racially heterogeneous environment, and only if the fact of race is the only way to create this environment.

No similar requirement justifies the admission of former students, children of donors or athletes. It does not matter if Jared Kushner – who entered college with a $ 2.5 million gift – added something to his the time of classmates at Harvard. It is enough that Harvard had the interest to admit it.

Singer would have exploited the preference of admissions for athletes by turning poor middle school students, through corruption and photo editing, into mediocre promising students. It worked.

There is no academic reason for this preference to exist. Athletes with poor marks and exam results may be in a freshman class as an excellent athletic program is in the best interests of the college. (Most of the students who benefit from these preferences are already white and affluent: they belong to families who could afford to endure years of tennis, golf or lacrosse.) Good sports teams win championships and championships. Championships earn money, recognition, and goodwill and donations from alumni. In some sports, and in some of the colleges targeted by the Justice Department's program, losses are spreading to television contracts for billions of dollars.

The influence of athletics at the university goes far beyond football and basketball: colleges trying to eliminate a "non-remunerative sport," such as wrestling, fencing or gymnastics, risk offending former students to deep pockets with good memories of their academic years. wrestling mats; Colleges whose swimmers or football players succeed can be caught in the Olympic glory borrowed. (These colleges will soon become known with a new slogan: "Olympians Made Here.") All of this income is scarce. flows to the students, those whose bodies are actually on the line.

Singer's plan, described by the prosecutors, has probably harmed a handful of truly talented athletes who lost their place in the freshman class of a college for the benefit of a student whose sports record was rigged with bribes and a photoshop. They should rightly feel hurt.

For the rest of us, we must not forget that Singer's plan only worked because the colleges are ready to give an advantage to the athletes. In a world where colleges place paramount importance on the academic interests of all students, desperate parents would probably still be willing to pay unscrupulous consultants. But their money would be wasted.

The crisis of confidence in higher education

One of the answers to the case of fraud was not incredulity to its existence but to its complexity and seemingly superfluous crime. If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars and a child with a poor academic record, why not just make a big donation to the university of your choice and get your child's admission (and get a tax deduction to start)? Why mess with all this business of paying test takers, bribing coaches and photoshunter?

The answer, according to the complaintit's only getting a "second look" from the admissions committee, the kind of thing that a big donation could buy you, was not enough; the parents wanted the absolute guarantee that only the quality recommendation of a college coach could give them. (Take a break and think about it.)

But the mere fact of corruption was not, in itself, shocking (including to me). Colleges are increasingly considered for what they are: another system that the rich can play.

In 38 colleges, including Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, there are more students among the 1% of families with the highest income than the bottom 60% (families earning 65 $ 000 or less per year), according to a 2017 York Times Analysis Report.

It is assumed that many of these students were admitted, not by big donations and bribes, but by the years of wealth benefits: good schools, exam preparation, tutoring, private sports classes and music, etc. stress that comes with poverty.

Others arrived by less scrupulous means. The details of the legal regimes that the rich are committed to bringing their children into the best schools can be just as fascinating and overwhelming as the judicial rankings of the Department of Justice: a lawsuit about the practices of the rich. Harvard admission recently revealed that the college held a secret list are the parents of major donors.

A student whose family donated $ 1.1 million benefited from a special visit to the campus of the former head coach of tennis: "We rolled out the red carpet," a- he said, according to the Harvard Crimson. It is unclear whether the student was finally admitted, but students on the donor list have an acceptance rate of 42%. Harvard globally accepted 4.6% of students in 2018.

And $ 1.1 million is less than a family paid by Singer for admission to the University of Southern California, whose endowment is about eight times that of Harvard. The details of the scandal uncovered by the Department of Justice are notable, not because the rich are trying to afford higher education, but because these rich people in particular have it all wrong.