college entrance scams

Have you read any of the complaints/indictments? (Links at the bottom of this page.)

A real eye-opener, the transcribed conversations between the ringleaders and these ethics-wasteland parents, talking about defrauding colleges and testing services as if their status entitled them to it.

I'm glad that (in most cases) the kids themselves weren't in on it (CW-1 joked about how they'd be pleasantly surprised getting their scores back, then want to try again and see if they could score even higher).

But were any of them thinking ahead to their kids getting accepted on fake scores, and then finding themselves facing coursework at that level?

It seems abundantly clear that to these parents the value of college hasn't got @$#% to do with learning anything, and is nothing but some wacky status game of saying you got into school X.

 

Some colleges offer deep discounts to children of financially challenged families:

These 10 “Expensive” Colleges Have Free College Tuition or Full-Ride Scholarships for Middle-Class Families | College Raptor

Colleges for Low Income Students: Free Tuition, No Loans, and Full Ride

See also Pell grants.

It seems bisco's suggestion above is to make a much larger-scale program, funded by penalties to be paid by admission cheaters. Penalties for that would need to be very large! Depending on which numbers one uses, "unmet need' might be $10,000 per student year, and 20 million new students enter annually. It is an eye-popping total.

Coming from a different direction, total US student loan debt is about $1.5 trillion (1/3 from graduate studies), but it's unclear how to allocate that across years.

 

The parents and their kids don't bother me as much as the schools and their staff who were involved.

 

get into@6. This often does not require large donations.

Colleges (especially those ranked high) are under assault both for admitting Affluenza for money, and for choosing Diversity with low qualifications. This is a pickle, but colleges not receiving direct State support should operate with autonomy.

Or should they? Yes or no?

By way of admissions, teaching, and post-graduation outcomes, US College education has become envy of world. Very apparently there are needs to tighten ropes on these ships at sail. But who, exactly, lacking any external motivations, ought to do it?

Ask yourselves. Don't ask me.

But if you did ask me, I'd say that colleges with high dropout rates are doing something wrong. This reveals me.

 

It seems like the two prongs of the Singer attack had different degrees of culpability on the schools' part.

The prong where he bribed test proctors (unaffiliated with the universities) to boost students' standardized test scores, that one doesn't seem to me like anything to get mad at the unis for. They were deceived in a scam.

The prong where he found coaches he could bribe, employed by the unis, to say the applicants were team candidates when they weren't, ok, that implicates the unis a bit more. They had dishonest coaches working for them, and didn't look over those coaches' shoulders as minutely as it seems they needed to. That's disheartening, and the schools are stuck with the stain left by the bad-apple coaches.

The parents do bother me. The top billing for evil goes of course to Singer and his flagrant pay-me-for-fraud "college counseling service" and fake nonprofit foundation. But the parents with their totally knowing "if it's what you say I love it" participation are the very next line down, and also have no souls.

The kids who were themselves deceived and didn't know their scores were faked, I have sympathy for. They'll live indefinitely under the stain of dishonor that wasn't their choice, not to mention possibly facing removal from their schools. If not removed, they may have a tough row to hoe anyway, just to succeed under the curricular demands when their test scores were artificially boosted.

The kids who were in on the test fraud, or knowingly faking their athletic activities, my sympathy doesn't extend that far.

The one who got into USC by fraud and immediately made a vlog channel to quip about how she doesn't care about college and has no interest in what she's learning ... she may have earned a distinctive kind of enduring fame.

 

Pends.

Think about the news stories surrounding another high profile non violent felony that was in the news this week, and get back with us on that......

 

How about falsifying a different type of college entrance exam.....say.....an employment application.
Is that any different?
One might wonder how somebody holding a red ribbon from that process might feel about all of this.

If college ever gets to be "free" one wonders also whether scams like this will increase or decrease........

Things that make you go.....Hmmmmmmm.....

 

Tough rowing shouldn't be a problem...at least a few were on crew teams!

I haven't read too many details, but how dumb of a kid do you have to be to not know something is wrong? You and your classmates all take the SAT or ACT. You are average or below average...because you know who else is in your calculus class...or you aren't in calculus. You score higher than them all or on par with all the 4.0 kids. Do you think you just guessed better than others? Do you not remember what you got on the PSAT last year and how you goofed off since then?

Mike

 

In the military we would call that a "Prac-Fac" or Practical Factor.
Something that has to be checked off before you advance.

Similar to the collegiate 'theory to practice.'

Yeah.
Those kids will go far......

How to 'Legacy' admissions figure into this?
Yeah.
i know.
Private schools....but still.....ethics.

 

But did any of them know how to row?

 

How about approval for the money to go to a scholarship fund?

I don't mind if an idiot occupies a seat if their parent pays say $500k, annually, to a merit based, scholarship fund.

Bob Wilson

 

Surely there are some kids who just grow up knowing their parents are cheating louts, and for them the conclusion that their parents have bribed their exam proctor would not be a hard one to reach. But I think for a lot of other kids who may have grown up with (justified or unjustified) respect for their parents, that would be a tough mental leap to make, even in the face of strong (in hindsight) evidence. Don't know how many of these kids would be in which box.

Don't forget how easy it can be for a teen to believe "hey it's all random anyway, I had a really good day!" or "those brain pills I took must really work!" or just generally in his or her own overall awesomeness.

I think I do mind. There's still the matter of the seat. There's a capable person not sitting in it. The scholarship fund isn't helping him or her. Is the idea that the fund should create enough new seats to equal the ones taken out of play by the cheaters? And which schools should do the expanding (possibly at the cost of their small-class-size advantages) to make that happen?

And are the capable people now sitting in classes where they are 50% and the prof is constantly rehashing things for the other 50% who are there by cheating and vlogging about how they have no interest in the material?

 

Let us not forget that we are now living in The Age Of Entitlement. And I daresay many of the perpetrators are suffering from Affluenza. I rest my case M'Lud!

 

+1
With oversight.