Posted on 03/21/2019 1:29:03 PM PDT by Liz
SACRAMENTO — With at least three current and former students under investigation for allegedly obtaining entry to a University of California campus through fraud, the system’s top academic official would not commit Tuesday to expelling or rescinding the degrees of anyone who participated in a far-reaching college admissions scam.
“No one has a good taste in their mouth about that kind of situation,” Michael Brown, UC provost and executive vice president of academic affairs, told state lawmakers during a committee hearing on university funding.
Federal prosecutors alleged last week that two students were admitted to UCLA through bribes paid to the men’s soccer coach and that the father of a UC Berkeley graduate paid for someone to take the SAT on his son’s behalf.
Brown said campus officials are reviewing those cases and conferring with federal prosecutors to determine whether any other UC students or applicants are implicated in the scandal. He said he is working with campus chancellors and faculty representatives to “anticipate what we do about that.”
Brown told lawmakers, “Cheating, fraud, deceit should not be rewarded.” But he added, “We don’t know what will be uncovered.”
William Rick Singer, an Orange County businessman, pleaded guilty last week to orchestrating a massive scheme to help rich families secure slots at top colleges, including Stanford University and the University of Southern California, for their children through bribes and phony test results.
UC President Janet Napolitano said Friday that the university would “take swift and appropriate disciplinary actions to address misconduct once we have all the facts.” She ordered an internal review of the admissions process to look for “weaknesses and vulnerabilities.”
Alex Bustamante, UC’s senior vice president and chief compliance and audit officer, told lawmakers that he hoped the review would “recapture some of the faith with the public that we are doing in fact what we say we are doing.”
“We’re going to look at both the campus side and athletic side,” he said.
University officials told lawmakers that wealthy alumni and donors did not have special access to get their children admitted.
About 1 to 2 percent of students who enroll each year are accepted through a process for applicants who do not meet the minimum admission criteria, according to UC. That system is meant for athletes, artists, homeschooled students and applicants from rural areas or other underrepresented communities.
“There is a process for faculty or for athletic coaches to make recommendation for admission for these students. There is no process for the alumni office or development office to make any sort of recommendation,” said Han Mi Yoon-Wu, director of undergraduate admissions. “To my knowledge, that doesn’t occur.”
In 1996, the Los Angeles Times reported that then-UCLA Chancellor Charles Young and his top aides had intervened in the admissions process to help less-qualified or rejected applicants who were sponsored by major donors and other supporters.
“No single individual is able to pull the trigger on a decision,” Brown said at the hearing Tuesday. “That goes through vetting, internal to the admissions office.”
Assemblyman Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat and UC Berkeley alumnus, said he hoped the university would decide “very swiftly and very quickly” how to respond.
“I think the university has to take some extraordinarily strong action to expel these students, to take back those degrees,” Ting said. “Because otherwise, what is the disincentive for doing this?”
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the delay proves conspiracy AND that this is the
tip of the proverbial iceberg.
3?
That’s barely the tip of the collegiate scam iceberg. Just wait until someone raises the skirts on the sports programs.
The UC system is all about the money. Despite being a CA public university system funded by CA taxpayers, 1 in 6 students are international students and close to that are out-of-state students at UC Berkeley. In-state tuition and fees are around $16K and non-resident about $45K.
Probably not worth it to them to pull the trigger and be engaged in yet another round of lawsuits.
They get kicked out, they’ll immediately file lawsuits, demand discovery from the Universities. Admissions office records, bla, bla. Deadly stuff will come out.
Just assess them a MAJOR fine and put them on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION.
And the usual note in their permanent file.
That system is meant for:
<><>athletes, artists,
<><> homeschooled students
<><> applicants from rural areas
<><> other underrepresented communities.
“There is a process for faculty or for athletic coaches to make recommendation for admission for these students.
There is no process for the alumni office or development office to make any sort of recommendation,” said Han Mi Yoon-Wu, director of undergraduate admissions.
“To my knowledge, that doesn’t occur.”
In-state tuition and fees are around $16K and non-resident about $45K.
Affirmative action is a whole lot bigger than that...
*****
About 1 to 2 percent of students who enroll each year are accepted through a process for applicants who do not meet the minimum admission criteria
Got me thinking about Cannibal U. You don’t even want to think about how they expel students but digestion is involved in the process.
The usual protocol of just waiting things out might not work this time.
I like it.......the ones who bribed will man the tanks to mow down the colleges that accepted their little darlings.
Ooooooooo....that’s not nice.
If they don’t, they will open themselves, the schools and the state of California up to massive lawsuits from the students, who got turned down, their parents and maybe grandparents.
California lawyers and other lawyers will close in on this opportunity like great white sharks herding gray whales into Monterrey Bay.
California lawyers no longer have killers sentenced to death role, in California as a lifetime lotto winning opportunity.
So they will go after this.
Yes, they know they’ve been selling privileged admittance for a long time. A very long time.
Don’t ask them about their sports teams.
Technically it’s not the students’ fault. Punishing them for the deeds of their parents and the administration wouldn’t really be right.
If it was completely exposed, it would change college sports in a big way and for a long time.
Or maybe not.
Serpico didn’t change the NYC police force for that long.
Singer was also the chief executive of the Key Worldwide Foundation (KWF), which claimed to the IRS that it was a nonprofit charitable organization.
In 2013, the IRS approved KWF as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501©(3), according to an affidavit filed by the FBI. This meant it didn’t have to pay federal income tax, and individuals who contributed to the charity could receive a tax deduction for their donations.
In its most recent filing with the IRS, the KWF said the foundation “endeavors to provide education that would normally be unattainable to underprivileged students.”
The parents swept up in the nationwide college-admissions scam are accused of not only helping their children cheat their way into elite universities, but also of getting a tax deduction for their illicit payments.
The Justice Department last week alleged that dozens of wealthy parents — including two well-known television actresses, a parenting-book author, a top attorney and several chief executives — participated in a $25 million scheme to help their children get accepted to such top colleges as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and the University of Southern California.
But wiretapped phone transcripts released by the FBI purport to show the true purpose of the charity — to be the conduit for five- and six-figure bribes paid by parents. These parents allegedly include actresses Felicity Huffman, who starred on the TV show “Desperate Housewives,” and Lori Loughlin, who appeared as Aunt Becky on “Full House.”
Loughlin and her husband allegedly hid their payments in two $200,000 wire transfers to the charity to get their daughters into USC. Another couple allegedly made a contribution of $400,000 to KWF to secure admission for their daughter to Georgetown. One family is accused of “donating” $900,000. Huffman paid $15,000 to the fake foundation on behalf of her eldest daughter, according to the FBI.
Parents got written letters from KWF that said, “Thank you for your generous donation.” To make the bribes appear legitimate they received receipts from KWF falsely indicating that “no goods or services were exchanged” for their supposed donations, according to authorities.--snip--
Written by Michelle Singletary at The Washington Post,
SOURCE https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/business/singletary-how-the-college-admissions-scheme-exploited-the-tax-code/article_ed8c6200-d500-5cb8-a960-d8b5635c81e3.html
I like it.
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