Posted on 03/14/2019 2:29:18 PM PDT by outpostinmass2
The slew of criminal charges in the sweeping college cheating scam originated from an unrelated federal case in the Boston area — and a financial executive desperate for mercy, according to a new report. The feds were tipped off to what would be the biggest college admissions scheme ever prosecuted thanks to the businessman, who was under investigation in a securities fraud case, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. In a bid for leniency, he told investigators that Rudolph “Rudy” Meredith, the head women’s soccer coach at Yale, solicited bribes from him in exchange for recommending his daughter for admission as an athletic recruit, a source told the Journal. The probe turned to Meredith — then widened to nearly 50 others as the feds learned the scam involved wealthy parents, other college athletic coaches, and crooked SAT and ACT test proctors. At the heart of the scheme was William “Rick” Singer, a college prep expert whose business in California was aimed at getting kids into some of the nation’s top schools. On Tuesday, Singer pleaded guilty to charges that he accepted more than $25 million in bribes to help students cheat on their college entrance exams or gain acceptance to schools as athletes — even when they didn’t play sports. Thirty-three parents are among those charged, including TV actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
As much as I know there exists a plethora of more pertinent issues pressing on our nation, as a student who went to one of the named schools (and rejected by some of the others) I have a bit of a passing interest in it.
We discussed on another thread that the media has ignored the Title IX angle almost entirely. Many of these schools derive multi-million dollar annual cash flow from their NCAA standing in basketball and football. They are sort of forced to funnel this money into programs such as “ladies crew” and “women’s pole vaulting” even though these programs generate little to no income and little to no wider audience. What I am getting at is that the guy at the center of this fraud probably knew that some of these sports had few qualified applicants in the first place, and thus were more easy to exploit. They had the slots to fill. You can’t bribe your way in as the #1 state champ at the 200 meter sprint, or as a top running back or point guard. You will be an obvious fraud. But how many people pole vault?
I think you’re wrong. Plenty of people are going to do time. But it will be prison, not jail. Maybe not for long, but there’s a very good chance these actresses are going to be trying to land a role on Orange is the New Black when they get paroled.
There’s even a bigger scan - the whole student loan ripoff.
The student loan rip-off is an enormous problem. Hopefully that will start to get some recognition. The Universities will not improve until they are forced to truly compete. All they do now is shove all the financial risk off onto the students. IMO that is scandalous and needs to change. How is a 17 or 18 year old supposed to truly gauge the value of laying out $300,000 for their education before they can even measure its worth?
” How is a 17 or 18 year old supposed to truly gauge the value of laying out $300,000 for their education before they can even measure its worth?”
That’s what parents are for.
.
“It was also the answer to ‘how did THAT average kid get into an engineering program at A&M??””
I thought it was common knowledge that anybody with enough money could buy their kid a seat at any school and guarantee they graduated too. How can anybody be surprised? It has been out in the open forever. I dealt with a General Dynamics VP who was supposed to have an engineering degree. He was only marginally literate and his knowledge and decision making powers were practically zero. When I asked people who knew him they pointed out his father had endowed the university with a new building and then, viola! his illiterate kid was enrolled. Eventually, he was such a problem to GD that they bought him out and retired him with full pension in his forties. (He was part of the original family that started GD and still holds control.)
Same here. The Justice dept. and the FBI are causing all this "furor" to distract the white wash of ALL the criminally behind the attempted coup against President Trump!
Lori Loughlin and Olivia Jade each lost their jobs over this.
Lori has crazy eyes.
Wow, I have no doubt you are right, but you made me think of the transgenders competing with hardly any pushback. Is it possibly the Title IX vacuum you described causing administrators, staff and even the media to soft pedal that issue to some degree?
Of course they care. We care. Who are you kidding.
Wire fraud mail fraud has nothing to do if college is state or private. Same for Donations to fake foundations and taking deductions for it.
Possibly. To me they are separate questions. These big universities have track & field sports programs, softball, basketball, crew and many others. Title IX basically requires them to have the same program for men and women alike. Of course there are women pole vaulters, but how many are recruited vs how many are just so-so athletes but the program has openings. Now comes Mr. Bribe with $100,000 in a paper bag and the coach knows there isn’t going to be a top 10 or 20 ranked woman pole vaulter taking that slot. Those women are getting scholarships somewhere else or enrolling where the programs are better for that particular sport. So who in the admissions program is going to challenge the qualifications if the coach or AD says “So-and-so (who is going to pay cash for admission btw) should get some extra points on her admissions criteria because she can pole vault and we need to be more competitive in this area”.
I don’t mean to pick on just women, I am sure there is fraud among the male students too. It’s just that the news stories mentioned women’s crew and women’s pole vaulting in particular. It made me think of Title IX and how that is an obvious exploit for the scammer. I truly don’t know how Title IX applies to transgender people. I imagine that in the NCAA they still just go by ones chromosomes, not personal identity.
Singer boasted about his success rate to Caplan, saying he’s greased the wheels for nearly 800 other families, prosecutors allege.
If that is anyway true there are a lot of other charges to be brought and this initial scandal is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
This has been going on forever. Kids know it. They’re not interested especially with the binary legal system. I doubt my one thinks this will be over
The kids I know look at the racism that goes on in admissions much more than this. It effects them to a much greater extent
The kids I know are into debt at their ripoff colleges at 60- 150 G especially if their career field needs a masters. They’re saying they’re not interested in this story.
They sense that journalism is corrupt. They don’t like to react when the media tells them to
Even further than that, if these kids are failing classes (see Olivia Loughlin), how much is paid to the “professors “ to tweak it up to passing, hmmmm?
If only society could rely on everyone having good parents. Even among good parents I am sure they get swept up in the whole process. Where do you draw the line. Your kid gets into Harvard and a state school what do you recommend? Your kid wants to go into entertainment he gets into UCLA with out of state tuition fees, or USC at $60k a year and a state school. You can advise him or her, but ultimately they take on that debt.
And that is my issue. The schools have zero incentive to be competitive. They are “ranked” by things such as their endowment fund and the competitiveness of the incoming class, not on the credibility of their staff or the work placement among graduates - which in the end is also really up to the student more than anything else. The schools have zero financial risk in the entire scheme. With no risk there is little need to be competitive in the areas that matter most of all.
Maybe the FBI needs to take another look at the hundreds of millions of bribery contributions to the Clinton foundation, which far surpasses the money at issue here...
I honestly think you have to work at failing. I went to one of the schools mentioned. I truly blossomed as a student at university. It took me the first semester to get acclimated to the change from a big public high school to a big private university. But once I figured out that nobody is holding my hand and I could learn as much as I could absorb I took off, I never stopped. I even attended the summer sessions.
At one point in my Junior year I was called into the Administrators office because they said if I continued at that pace I was at risk of being forced out for having too many credits! I never heard of such a thing.
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