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L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

nytimes.com

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Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#61

Post by mc32 »

munk-a wrote: post #38
olliej wrote: post #29

I feel like the solution here is to not bribe your children's way into school. If your children aren't academically talented and you don't have the money to publicly buy a building for the school you should accept that and just let them live off your money and power as is traditional.

I don't think building purchasing should even be allowed, remove all of the slippery slope and put students on equal footing.

Why not, it benefits the whole student body and is above board, everyone knows. These people were bribing people who were not in school governance, people in athletics for example, to get their kid in, denying another deserving kid. Neither the school or other students benefitted, only the people partaking in the bribery scheme.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#62

Post by [deleted] »

olliej wrote: post #54
munk-a wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think building purchasing should even be allowed, remove all of the slippery slope and put students on equal footing.

You still get the wondrous private institution problem of hereditary entry (which is a great example of something that isn't explicitly racist still resulting in a fundamentally and uncorrectable racist result)

[deleted]

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#63

Post by frankchn »

olliej wrote: post #51
darpa_escapee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your children aren't academically talented and you don't have the money to publicly buy a building for the school you should accept that and just let them live off your money and power as is traditional. The tradition is nepotism and bribes. It's a relatively recent thing for the state to go after the moderately wealthy for doing what they've done for millennia.

That was a joke targeting the tradition of the rich and powerful using said riches and power to get in, but at least it was obvious and in the public eye - it doesn't take a huge amount of deductive reasoning to see the connection between the new "Mark McMarksFace" Building and little jimmy mcmarksface gets into school). Similarly seeing friends and family of the school board getting in shouldn't be shocking.

I think a key difference here is that the McMarksFace building is given to the university, while the bribery scandal involves giving money to individuals. An analogy would be "buying" a car by giving $5k to the salesperson to get the keys rather than $50k to the dealership to actually buy it.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#64

Post by phil21 »

munk-a wrote: post #19
coke_n_sympathy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least donating a building gives value to the other attending students that far outweighs the cost of their child going

I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships,…

Don't you need the funding of the super rich guy with the dumb kid who takes up a single student slot in order to offer free school to the dozen kids who "deserve" it academically?

Without the first (in aggregate, over generations), the others don't even have the option.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#65

Post by manfredo »

munk-a wrote: post #38
olliej wrote: post #29

I feel like the solution here is to not bribe your children's way into school. If your children aren't academically talented and you don't have the money to publicly buy a building for the school you should accept that and just let them live off your money and power as is traditional.

I don't think building purchasing should even be allowed, remove all of the slippery slope and put students on equal footing.

One one hand, donating to improve the chances of one's kid getting admitted is kind of scummy. On the other hand, the immense amount of money that gets donated is why elite schools are able to give very generous financial aid. Stanford doesn't even charge tuition if parents make less than $125,000 per year. On principle I'm adverse to wealthy people buying opportunities, but if buying opportunities creates more of them for other people then I think that may be a net good.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#66

Post by slg »

olliej wrote: post #29

I feel like the solution here is to not bribe your children's way into school. If your children aren't academically talented and you don't have the money to publicly buy a building for the school you should accept that and just let them live off your money and power as is traditional.

>I feel like the solution here is to not bribe your children's way into school.

Or maybe the solution should be to stop accepting bribes. I really am surprised that almost all of the public outrage is being directed at the parents and more of it isn't being directed at the people who actually received the cash. I think lots of parents are willing to stretch their morals in order to give their kid every possible advantage in life. That isn't exactly noble behavior, but it is more forgivable to me than the old-fashioned financially motivated corruption of the people who accepted the bribes. And even the school agreeing to the "buying a building" style bribe has some type of altruistic motive to improve the welfare of the school. The people accepting these bribes were just trying to get rich.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#67

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

munk-a wrote: post #19
coke_n_sympathy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least donating a building gives value to the other attending students that far outweighs the cost of their child going

I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships,…

There's a massive amount of daylight between wanting admissions to be completely oligarchic and recognizing that at some point a seat should have a price. For example, suppose it was worth it to Bezos to fund the entire Harvard class of '23, and the price is that his child ought to be a member of that class. It would be absurd for Harvard to turn this down. There is no victim of this trade, except perhaps Bezos' heirs -- Harvard can use a small fraction of the money to create an extra seat for the would be freshman.

That does not mean admissions would be oligarchic in its entirety. It would not have to affect the "meritocracy" by which the remaining seats are won. Being willing to accept profoundly large donations in exchange for a seat is not the same as turning the whole admissions process into an auction. There are not enough people willing to give such donations for a seat.

Or, maybe a slightly more cynical take? Look at the parental wealth distribution of private colleges, and you'll notice that it already is "oligarchic." I mean in the sense that children of relatively wealthy parents are by far more likely to make the cut to get in in the first place.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#68

Post by dvt »

cletus wrote: post #56

Honestly, I really don't understand the motivations for some of these parents. Take Lori Loughlin. $500,000? For USC? For two daughters, one of whom clearly isn't that interested, isn't particularly academic and isn't particularly athletic? Like... why? I can understand if someone bribes their kid into, say, Harvard or Yale Law School. There's a career where going to a good school matters. But this? It just makes no…

USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast (especially in Southern California). It's obviously not on the same academic level as UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford/Caltech, but it's still very much an exclusive brand. You don't get it because you don't live here and aren't surrounded by wealthy 16-year olds that yearn to go to USC (often times over UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford).

(Disclaimer: I'm a UCLA alum.)

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#69

Post by manfredo »

ForrestN wrote: post #40

I'm surprised that this scandal doesn't seem to be causing anyone to think one step further and realize that the entire premise of "elite" colleges with competitive admissions is a device for the perpetuation of inequality. We're devoting most of our advanced educational resources to helping people who would already be successful reap even more rewards. I understand the idea of meritocracy in fields with life or deat…

Many of these "elite" colleges are one of the best avenues to eliminate inequality. Many of them have significant (at least double digit) percentages of the student population that are first generation college students. Elite universities often have the greatest degree of racial diversity.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#70

Post by yingw787 »

I think this is a really good opportunity to see just how white-collar fraud falls in line with rational choice theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(crimin...).

In the quoted article, Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty to pay a college counselor $15,000 to arrange cheating on an SAT test. Hence, one data point on the market price for cheating, as agreed upon by Ms. Huffman and college counselor, is $15,000. One claim about Ms. Huffman's net worth is that she earns $275,000 per episode of "Desperate Housewives", which airs weekly. This fine is about half a day's work for her, if that. For half a day's worth of work, she can doctor her daughter's SAT scores. This is assuming that the episodes aren't recorded at once and take much less time than one week for filming, freeing up time to invest in other income streams. So cheating in this case is a very rational thing to do, given zero cost for broken morals or ethics.

The only real "hard-power" argument I can think of for children who may inherit great wealth to gain intelligence is to avoid a run-around by the family lawyers after Mom and Dad croak. But even then, that doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence (Donald Trump is smart enough to avoid that fate), and it kind of doesn't make sense for a family lawyer to do that anyways. If the kids are stupid and can't manage their money, just charge more in fees instead of rocking the boat in order to pocket a greater portion of the pie.

Crime does pay, if we don't punish it. That's why people do it. It's especially true in white-collar crime.

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