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Actresses and Business Leaders Charged in College Admissions Bribery Scandal
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people on Tuesday in a major college admission scandal that involved wealthy parents, including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders, paying bribes to get their children into elite American universities.
Thirty-three parents were charged in the case. Also implicated were top college coaches, who were accused of accepting millions of dollars to help admit students to Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and other schools, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said. Along with the Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, those charged included prominent business leaders, a fashion designer and a top lawyer, officials said.
The case unveiled Tuesday was stunning in its breadth and audacity. It was the Justice Department's largest ever college admissions prosecution, a sprawling investigation that involved 200 agents nationwide and resulted in charges against 50 people in six states. The charges also underscored how college admissions have become so cutthroat and competitive that some have sought to break the rules. The authorities say the parents of some of the nation's wealthiest and most privileged students sought to buy spots for their children at top universities, not only cheating the system, but potentially cheating other hard-working students out of a chance at a college education.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @08:20PM (3 children)
From the NYT article:
Why not charge the universities? Too powerful and connected?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:35AM (2 children)
Umm, no. Because if the universities KNEW about this stuff, it wouldn't be admissions fraud. Kinda by definition here, the university admissions people and others who actually made the decisions couldn't know about this stuff for it to be legally fraudulent. (Excepting of course cheating on SAT etc., which was perpetrating fraud also against testing companies. But if university admissions people knew about such cheating, I'm sure they'd reject such candidates -- too risky to admit students involved in such illegal acts, even if there were bribes.)
Anyhow, when you pay money directly to a university to get in (e.g., large donation, new building, etc.), that's not fraud. That's a standard and traditional way to get into college for super rich people, and usually perfectly legal for private institutions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:31AM
Ignoring the test cheating part of the scheme, nobody at the universities audited the "female athletic recruits" actually doing female athletics at their institutions? Are there really no Title 9 / civil rights implications here?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:07PM
Interestingly, there was a guy in my graduating class in high school who was pretty arrogant and obnoxious. And he bragged to anyone who would listen that he scored 1550 on his SATs (this is back before the essay portion was added, so 1600 was the max score) and was all excited about getting an appointment to the USAF Academy [wikipedia.org]. Then it came out that he (and a few others) had cheated on his SATs.
His appointment to the Air Force Academy was revoked and I haven't seen him since graduation. With any luck, that smug bastard is pumping gas somewhere. Good riddance to bad garbage.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr