FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme • Hacker News Board

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

#311

Post by austincheney » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

awzeemo wrote: post #303

austincheney wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No empathy. The entire system is pay to play for the social connections. If they were actually interested in education the scenario would have been completely different. I saw similar fabrications growing up as I attended one of the wealthiest high schools in the country. The top 10 of my graduating class got complete scholarships the most expensive schools in the country and the parents were willing to do anything t…

Exactly. Olivia Giannulli even outright says “I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know..." (source: https://youtu.be/lveMkZc-NRE , https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/style/olivia-jade-giannul... )

Just to clarify my opinion, I believe there is incredible value in education. But if you are paying to join a social club that isn't education.

There is an old saying "It isn't what you know its who you know". Ray Dalio says that line of thinking is disastrous. Its all about personality and experience. You put the right people in the proper places and its golden, and you can qualify those results (and who are the right people) with data.

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

#312

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #306

dragonwriter wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't you instead endow a scholarship for students of your favorite college? Because endowing a scholarship is setting up a charity and donating to a University (the kind anyone donates to, at any rate—no one is endowing chairs at the University of Phoenix) is giving to an existing charity; the two probably have similar tax, feeling of giving back, and status/ego benefits, but the former is more work.

The charity you set up will be perfectly aligned with your interests and values, whereas the highest paid employees of the existing "charity" are probably the president and the men's football coach, and not necessarily in that order. As charities, universities massage their financials to make themselves look better. They set the tuition rate. They determine the scholarship amounts. They bring in dollar-denominated do…

> The charity you set up will be perfectly aligned with your interests and values

If you are perfect at setting up and managing a charity, perhaps, but then if you are concerned with education, and what something perfectly aligned with your values, may mean you need to set up a university, not a scholarship fund.

> whereas the highest paid employees of the existing "charity" are probably the president and the men's football coach

You assume that this conflicts with, rather than reflects, the interests and values of the kind of people who donate money to the universities. I think that if you explored the issue you would find that it is not the case, and particularly that the variation in whether or not that is true at any particular university correlates very neatly with the values of the people who donate to the university. (As far as causal explanations, I would assume that there is a two-way feedback loop; donors who value football will make a school more likely to pay the football coach well which will attract more donations from people who value football and less from those who do not, etc.)

> A private scholarship charity can't play those games

Yes, but that's just another way of saying that a private scholarship charity has a lot less control of what actually gets delivered as education than a university.

Not sure that's a reason to support the former over the latter, though, especially when the choice is taking the additional effort and cost to set up the former; its just another way of saying "less bang for the buck".

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

#313

Post by mcguire » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #222

mcguire wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers $15,000 and $50,000 were mentioned in the article.

Are you saying that's a high number or a low number? Because if you're saying it's high, you picked the wrong examples, here's a different example from the article: >The student’s parents paid $1.2 million in bribes, officials said.

Low. Certainly not enough to be in the "donate a building" range. In fact, I doubt $1.2million is in that range.

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

#314

Post by scrumper » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

apkessl1 wrote: post #258

scrumper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parents are facing serious federal charges there. Conspiracy to commit mail fraud is what, up to 5yrs prison and a $250k fine? I feel for them - it's the type of crime I can easily imagine myself committing* - but good that this has been put to a stop. *while also believing that, given the opportunity, I would choose to play it fair.

Statutory limit is actually 20 years, under 18 U.S.C. § 1341 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341 In practice, most of the defendants would be likely to get under 5 years assuming this is their first offense, don’t commit further crimes, etc.

Oww. Lots of plea bargains coming up I am sure. Don't think any of the parents would make a particular sympathetic defendant in front of a jury.

Matt Levine today framed it rather neatly as a property crime, in that the dodgy charity guy and the coaches stole those selective admissions slots from the universities and sold them on to the parents. (Those parents of course being fully aware that other people would be taking test on their kids' behalf, so they are hardly victims.)

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

#315

Post by strikelaserclaw » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #310

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means you are gonna have to initially work a bit harder, be a bit more resilient to rejection, and be a bit more creative in trying to build those networks. I.e You are going to have to force those doors to open for you.

But yet...outcomes seem like they're destined to be worse overall.

If you discount that different people value different things in life, and take a viewpoint of money as being the sole measure of success, then the median Harvard salary after 10 years is like 90k? Certainly not every Stanford/Harvard/whatever graduate is killing it regardless of how many opportunities they have had. At the end of the day, success is really on an individual level. You make your own outcomes in this world. I could name countless people who've done very much without a degree from a prestigious university, David M. Solomon, the ceo of Goldman Sachs, Andy Rubin, etc... Certainly guys who went to HYP/X/Y/Z will have it easier in many regards, but you can also think of clawing your way to desired outcomes as teaching you life lessons that those guys will never have learned.

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

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Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

jtfairbank wrote: post #224

anigbrowl wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in quite a corrupt society, so here is the part where I tempt you to undertake a nihilistic leap into radical politics: http://www.capitalaspower.com/ I shudder to imagine just what my children will have to go through. Things have been known to improve as well to decline. Don't let your anger make you pessimistic, experience will supply you with plenty of occasions for that later.

How is that Capital As Power site radical at all when it merely purports to explore the dominant mode of capitalism / politics in the USA today? Now if you linked to something like https://sub.media/ or https://itsgoingdown.org/ I'd understand...

I like to invite people to climb into the pool as opposed to just tossing them in at the deep end :)

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

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Post by ralmeida » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 12:20 AM UTC

gdne wrote: post #302

lozenge wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Obama once said there were 57 states... gaffes are gaffes

He’s describing a recorded marketing video. It was deliberately produced and edited to contain that specific message. Comparing that to an off the cuff error during a live discussion is disingenuous.

Since it was "deliberately produced and edited", presumably by multiple people, it's even less likely to speak much about the education of the person on-screen, as the post in question appears to have questioned.

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

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Post by integrate-this » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 12:20 AM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #305

integrate-this wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Despite this, I choose to donate to my universities because a) when its my children's turn, I want the organization to remember my name, and b) I honestly believe that education is a truly worthwhile pursuit and I want to expand access to, and quality of, education and discovery. PhDs and grad students may be a bunch of blowhards but they drive a lot of innovation.

> when its my children's turn, I want the organization to remember my name When it's time for my children, I want the organization that will be teaching them about professional and ethical conduct in the real world to not only not be corrupt, but also demonstrably free of all prejudicial biases in the applications process. Which is to say, I want my children to be assigned a randomized identifier and their personally…

Well, okay, so I should stop donating to the scholarship fund then? If alumni stopped donating then quality of education or number of students would have to go down.

If my kids aren't going to get preferential status then there is no reason to be a sponsor of that institution over any other.

Given that your top comment is, "I don't understand why people donate to Universities," I'm not sure that you're in a great position to say that others shouldn't receive priority admission. If everyone did what you did then our University system would collapse.

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

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Post by cwilkes » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 7:18 AM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #187

Balgair wrote: post #171

Oh dear God. Reading into the indictments, it seems that a lot of the kids never had a clue that they were complicit in the schemes: >... and it was like, the kids though, and it was funny 'cause the kids will call me and say, "Maybe I should do that again. I did pretty well and if I took it again, I'll do better even" Right? And they just have no idea that they didn't even get the score that they thought they got. C…

The kids who only got in with some SAT fudging, like Felicity Huffman's daughter, were probably just below requirements to get into some of these universities. I read somewhere else that USC has so many applicants that if you don't have a 3.8 GPA with a 1400 SAT you are going to be the odd man out. So if you need 400 SAT points to get there, you probably aren't going to do it with just good prep (which usually only n…

What I don’t get about the rowing angle is that she would be found out within a few minutes of being on the crew. Also I imagine that there aren’t many spots available so that if the fake rower decides not to show up the real rowers will look at the roster and ask the coach why they are down a person.

As opposed to the SAT fakers where you can get into college and skate on by for a couple semesters / years without getting kicked out.

I also don’t get how the coaches didn’t think that they would get caught. Don’t they have to publish lists of students athletes? Presumably with the USC one the only way they got in was via a recommendation from the rowing coach.

Re: FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme

#320

Post by reallydude » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #204

reallydude wrote: post #128

A friend of mine, from high school (~1994), had the experience of being in a family that won the state lottery. He skipped high school a lot after that, driving around in his new car. Later, I heard his parents bought him a degree from USC. USC has had a reputation in California of corruption for decades. This story should not be a surprise for many.

Curious what he did with his life after USC given the windfall he received, any idea what he's up to?

As of today, it looks like he is a freelance software consultant.