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So I'm enjoying a lot of schadenfreude with the Varsity Blues arrests.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-accuses-wealthy-parents-including-celebrities-in-college-entrance-bribery-scheme/2019/03/12/d91c9942-44d1-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.bdad27342308

The short form is the slightly rich (the seven and eight figure net worth types, not the really rich nine and ten figure ones) have been bribing people to get their mediocre kids into college.

(the truly rich just buy the school a new gym)

They'd bribe test proctors or imposters to take SATs, bribe coaches and recruiters to claim their kids were star athletes etc.

So far it looks like 50 or so folks are going to be arrested.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
(the truly rich just buy the school a new gym)

And this is the key to it all: the problem is not that rich people are buying their way into college, it's that the kind-of-rich are trying to take advantage of a privilege that the really-rich don't want to share.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
(the truly rich just buy the school a new gym)

And this is the key to it all: the problem is not that rich people are buying their way into college, it's that the kind-of-rich are trying to take advantage of a privilege that the really-rich don't want to share.

And the schools didn't get their cut

No I am thoroughly enjoying this brief moment of justice, even if worse offenders float above it all, at least some were scooped up.

The only thing that irks me are the commentators trying to ask if an ivy league (or similar) degree is really worth all this, and the answer is yes, really, truly yes.

Time is always limited and 'what school did you go to' tells people a lot in one word. I've seen it in cut throat, supposedly meritocratic private industries where unless your answer was on a very, very short list, nothing else mattered.

I'm a public school kid (barring a brief and regretaible dalliance with NYU) and know damn well that if I had more ambition I would get myself into a graduate or executive program at one of the right schools (or at least try). And if I ever say otherwise I'm deluding myself.

Besides that, even if you can show that education at a state school is just as good, there's the connections issue. Mark Zuckerberg started his little website company in a dorm room in Harvard, yay. Well that's a lot easier when your dorm mates come from the sort of families that can drop seven figures in start up money for you, or connect you with mentors and contacts who can raise things to the next level. I'm sure there's someone somewhere who started the CUNY-Queens-Connection.com but without those contacts it would never be a world wide corporation with a billion users.

Kyoto Secunda and her clone sister still have a few years before this is an issue, but yeah, that is the score. You can do fine without the top schools in your resume, you can always go for grad school, but getting to the top... it's a big leg up if not invaluable.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
And the schools didn't get their cut

Aye. But it's not only the admissions that are taken advantage of, as I understand it those with money to drop also make sure their kids get scholarship stipends - not because the kid needs it but because that too looks good on a resumé. It's not enough that Junior got into a high class school, he should also be singled out as the "promising newbie" or whatever reason there is that a well-known trust fund gives their support. Daddy donates 200K to the fund through some suitably convoluted means, Junior is singled out for his fifteen seconds of fame and awarded a stipend of 20K for "excellence" at the ceremonies.

"Woah woah woah, these people are getting their kids in to college for $500k? I had to donate a whole gym/new library! This is outrageous!" - The Ultra Wealthy

While this is good and all, corruption is bad. I hope they use this as a reason to be ever more diligent with this kind of thing. I am sure they need to be looking in to a lot more college admissions.....

This is my shocked face?

Having worked at a wealthy private-esque college, the amount of bs that goes on there is hilarious. It impacts almost every feature of the school. Money speaks, always does. Always will.

I think my reaction is similar to yours KK.

I could probably rant about elitism and snobbery when it comes to Ivy League degrees and how graduates of those schools behave once they end up in tightly knit circles that shut people out with no basis in real talent, I don't really see myself in the mood.

A bunch of snobs are getting what they have coming I hope, and maybe these schools will at least put some effort in trying to be as good as they want everyone to see them as.

My response was 'and they are actually being punished for it? Huh.' It is generally accepted as a matter of course that the rich just buy their kid's way into college. I guess as you guys say they aren't rich enough to be above the law yet.

In a complete surprise to no-one?

Here in the UK, attending the right private school is as good as bribe for getting into an Oxbridge University.

Doesn't matter if the kid is themselves all that smart.

I mean, you need only look at the absolute shower 'running' our country at the minute to see the sheer folly of 'he's frightfully posh, and his parents loaded, he must be competent and worked hard to get where he is'.

Morale of the story, privatly run education is very easily manipulated for those with money and leads ultimately in a worse education system overall.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In a complete surprise to no-one?

Here in the UK, attending the right private school is as good as bribe for getting into an Oxbridge University.

Doesn't matter if the kid is themselves all that smart.

I mean, you need only look at the absolute shower 'running' our country at the minute to see the sheer folly of 'he's frightfully posh, and his parents loaded, he must be competent and worked hard to get where he is'.

That's more a function of them all getting a degree in bare-faced lying (sorry, " philosophy, politics and economics") from Oxford instead of doing something useful.

Theresa May got a degree in geography, FWIW.

To go back to the US scandal, though, the Ivy League universities still operate a system whereby people whose parents went there and made big donations are preferred for places.

Some of these people though....
They just seem stupid. $500,000 is enough to make a legal donation and attach of a condition of 'and take my kid'

Doing it through Mr Shady Guy who's obviously going to throw you under the bus when he inevitably gets caught just seems like a terrible plan.

Granted some paid significantly less, but they still left a heck of a paper trail (that honestly should have been apparent to the schools, I've worked in admissions, and a large pile of people go through the relevant documents for each kid, many too small and anonymous to pay off like this)

I think it is a natural parental instinct to try to get the best for your children, and pragmatically I would expect most people to leverage their resources to do this.
By shutting down legitimate ways to help their children along in life, you could encourage people into looking for illegitimate things like this!

Hopefully parents can be encouraged to channel their resources more positively in future...

Voss wrote:
Some of these people though....
They just seem stupid. $500,000 is enough to make a legal donation and attach of a condition of 'and take my kid'

Doing it through Mr Shady Guy who's obviously going to throw you under the bus when he inevitably gets caught just seems like a terrible plan.

Granted some paid significantly less, but they still left a heck of a paper trail (that honestly should have been apparent to the schools, I've worked in admissions, and a large pile of people go through the relevant documents for each kid, many too small and anonymous to pay off like this)

Then again, if they were smart enough to realize that perhaps their kids wouldn't need bribery to get in in the first place...

Not Online!!! wrote:
Morale of the story, privatly run education is very easily manipulated for those with money and leads ultimately in a worse education system overall.

Only when there's such a disparity, including cultural, in the difference between them.

I'm not an employer, but I do work for a large-ish organisation. From what I've seen, I think I'd favour employing someone from a less privileged background. Qualifications being the same, they're more likely to have had to work for it than someone from greater privilege. That to me speaks more of their 'value' and work ethic than someone that may well have had everything bought for them.

There is some degree of support for that point of view from research evidence, such as the higher crash out rate of middle class undergrads in UK universities.

Of course it may be that middle-class children know there is a better safety net to help them after crashing out, but this is the same thing in a different way.

However I think we are missing the bigger picture, which is that in a meritocracy like the USA, being richer is proof you are better, and of course we want the naturally better children to get into the best universities.

It's the same here in the UK.

But, I feel we're starting to slide into Politics, so I'll end my contributions here, lest I upset the Mods (upset would be justified), and end up getting the thread closed!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Morale of the story, privatly run education is very easily manipulated for those with money and leads ultimately in a worse education system overall.

Only when there's such a disparity, including cultural, in the difference between them.

I'm not an employer, but I do work for a large-ish organisation. From what I've seen, I think I'd favour employing someone from a less privileged background. Qualifications being the same, they're more likely to have had to work for it than someone from greater privilege. That to me speaks more of their 'value' and work ethic than someone that may well have had everything bought for them.

You're irrelevant. Sorry, thats just how it is.
You will not be looking at the people graduating from these schools. The people looking at these people are from those schools and the "interviews" are not really interviews. They are already known by the people running the companies and hiring them. Thats how it works.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Morale of the story, privatly run education is very easily manipulated for those with money and leads ultimately in a worse education system overall.

Only when there's such a disparity, including cultural, in the difference between them.

I'm not an employer, but I do work for a large-ish organisation. From what I've seen, I think I'd favour employing someone from a less privileged background. Qualifications being the same, they're more likely to have had to work for it than someone from greater privilege. That to me speaks more of their 'value' and work ethic than someone that may well have had everything bought for them.

You're irrelevant. Sorry, thats just how it is.
You will not be looking at the people graduating from these schools. The people looking at these people are from those schools and the "interviews" are not really interviews. They are already known by the people running the companies and hiring them. Thats how it works.

Yep, i can sing a song about that.
Basically a less obvious banana-republic.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Morale of the story, privatly run education is very easily manipulated for those with money and leads ultimately in a worse education system overall.

Only when there's such a disparity, including cultural, in the difference between them.

I'm not an employer, but I do work for a large-ish organisation. From what I've seen, I think I'd favour employing someone from a less privileged background. Qualifications being the same, they're more likely to have had to work for it than someone from greater privilege. That to me speaks more of their 'value' and work ethic than someone that may well have had everything bought for them.

You're irrelevant. Sorry, thats just how it is.
You will not be looking at the people graduating from these schools. The people looking at these people are from those schools and the "interviews" are not really interviews. They are already known by the people running the companies and hiring them. Thats how it works.

Which schools? Elite universities?

This isn't true for the majority of people graduating from them - though it's the case for enough that it's a severe problem.

Corruption is corruption and must be cracked down on when discovered. If we don't the corruption will only get worse.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Morale of the story, privatly run education is very easily manipulated for those with money and leads ultimately in a worse education system overall.

Only when there's such a disparity, including cultural, in the difference between them.

I'm not an employer, but I do work for a large-ish organisation. From what I've seen, I think I'd favour employing someone from a less privileged background. Qualifications being the same, they're more likely to have had to work for it than someone from greater privilege. That to me speaks more of their 'value' and work ethic than someone that may well have had everything bought for them.

Probably because you, yourself, worked hard to get where you were instead of inheriting it or having it bought for you.

Those who inherit or have it bought for them look down on those who had to work their way up; they consider their birth into wealth to 'obviously' make them better so they should reap the benefits of it. And they look to surround themselves with others who believe the same.

Then you have those who could get by on inheritance, but choose to work hard to earn what they have. Some of them actually make the intellectual jump to see that being from a wealthy family does not guarantee that they see things the same way, and that poor people can work very hard indeed without getting anywhere.

And the lawsuits have started.
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/2-stanford-students-sue-ut-other-schools-busted-in-admissions-scam/1848723232

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There is some degree of support for that point of view from research evidence, such as the higher crash out rate of middle class undergrads in UK universities.

Of course it may be that middle-class children know there is a better safety net to help them after crashing out, but this is the same thing in a different way.

However I think we are missing the bigger picture, which is that in a meritocracy like the USA, being richer is proof you are better, and of course we want the naturally better children to get into the best universities.

The US isn't a meritocracy. It's a networking system, mostly still an 'old boys club'

I would agree with Voss.

America only likes to think it's a meritocracy.

 Frazzled wrote:
And the lawsuits have started.
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/2-stanford-students-sue-ut-other-schools-busted-in-admissions-scam/1848723232

Can't say I blame them either.

Expect to see a lot of this in the near future. This could well bankrupt the schools involved, too.

Um it better not. GC is is at UT, and will be displeased. You don't want an Angry Pixie on your hands. The world will not survive.

Wouldn’t mind the nepotism if they didn’t also peddle the ‘pull yourself up by the boot straps’ lie.

 LordofHats wrote:
I would agree with Voss.

America only likes to think it's a meritocracy.

America likes to PRETEND it's a meritocracy, while doing everything it can to enable the old boy's network...