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NPR Ed
Scandal, Fraud And Wealthy Parents
Parents: How far would you go to get your child into one of the
nation's top universities?
This week we learned that, for 33 parents, they would do anything —
like paying to have their child’s college entrance exam falsified, or
bribing a college athletic director with $1.2 million to have their
child accepted into a school as a star athlete, when in fact they were
far from it.
On Tuesday, we got wind of this cheating and bribery scheme. It
involved almost 50 people, according to the Department of Justice. That
list includes celebrity parents (like Lori Loughlin from the TV show
Full House), coaches at elites schools (like Yale, the University of
Southern California and Stanford) and administrators of the SAT and ACT.
At the heart of it all was one man: William Rick Singer, the founder of
a college preparatory business called the Edge College & Career
Network. According to the Justice Department, Singer used his business
and a nonprofit associated to it — the Key Worldwide Foundation — to
orchestrate this scheme, and made millions in the process.
Parents paid to have their child’s face photoshopped to look like they
played sports in school. Some parents paid to have their kid's college
entrance exam altered with the correct answers. Some of the kids were
unaware to what their parents had done.
On the Up First podcast this week, Elissa Nadworny put it best:
“It's also important to remember that these are highly selective
schools, so just a small portion of students get in, and I think that's
what makes this story so upsetting. We know how hard it is to get in.
We want to believe that if we work hard, we'll be able to get there.”
The news might feel like something you already knew — the rich are
gaming the system to get their way, but there are still many threads to
this story. If anything, this investigation highlights the small cracks
where fraud and malfeasance can go unnoticed. It’s also a glimpse at
where the elite college system is broken. Here’s a look at some of our
reporting on the topic.
How elite-college admissions shut out poor kids
In 2016, Anya Kamenetz looked into, among other things, how recruited
athletes are as much as four times as likely to be admitted to
selective colleges compared to their similarly qualified peers.
“Athletics are popularly thought of as the ticket to college for
low-income and minority students,” she writes. She also looked at
athletic programs at Yale, Harvard and Princeton and compared them to
programs in the three biggest public school systems: Los Angeles, New
York City and Chicago. “Kids growing up poor in Chicago, Los Angeles
and New York City have little or no access to several Ivy League
sports: crew, sailing, diving, squash and hockey. At least not through
the easiest route — their public schools,” she writes.
Why the college admissions scandal hurts students with disabilities
Federal authorities say that those involved in the bribery scheme took
advantage of testing accommodations on the SAT and ACT meant for
students with disabilities. Understandably, parents and educators who
work with students with disabilities are outraged. The parents of
students with learning disabilities — like dyslexia or ADHD — have to
prove that their child needs special attention or extra time, which can
be a cumbersome process. "Stories like this are why we continue to see
backlash to disability rights laws," Rebecca Cokley, director of the
Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, said
in a statement.
Does it matter where you go to college?
Elissa and Anya did some reporting this week to put the admissions
scandal into context. First thing to note, the schools targeted in this
investigation are very selective. Yale, for example, only admits 7
percent of applicants. But the average college in the U.S. accepts
around two-thirds of applicants. “That means this demolition derby of
highly competitive admissions just doesn't apply to most Americans,”
they write. On top of that, highly selective colleges have a “dubious”
advantage. “An individual's choice of major, such as engineering, is a
far more powerful factor in someone’s eventual earnings than his or her
choice of college.”
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