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It’s different in the scale of the donation. 2 Million dollar donation materially improves things for other students and is tax deductible. $15,000 bribe does

It’s different in the scale of the donation. 2 Million dollar donation materially improves things for other students and is tax deductible. $15,000 bribe doesn’t do much for other students except rob them of a spot.

avar 8y ago
Some of these schools have endowments so large that no amount of donating to them will move the needle. They don't need more money: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/malcolm-gladwell-revisionist-history_us_578d2c6fe4b0c53d5cfa79e0 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/malcolm-gladwell-revisi...
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  This is so true but greed enables them to take and take and take. I find this so hypocritical, these universities are shaping the future educating the next generation of leaders and already have more than what they need with their exorbitant fees.. it seems like there's no limit to this as long as there is supply, there is demand.
bilbo0s 8y ago
This. A guy donates an engineering complex, and every engineering student on that campus gets to take advantage of said complex and its resources. Guy donates a new business school building and every student on that campus can take advantage of said building and its resources. In exchange, the university lets in two girls, their daughters or whatever, who might want to major in Art History and French, and coincidentally will likely be inheriting a few hundred million to upwards of a billion dollars in the future. (Future donors.) It's a fair trade. I'm not wealthy on that level, but if I were calling the shots at a university I'd make that trade every time.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Then the university should advertise the cost of admission and make it fair for everyone.
  - temporalparts 8y ago
    I think it is well known that anyone can donate a building for easy admission. It is no secret, just something available to only the top 0.1%
    - wyldfire 8y ago
      > It is no secret It sounds like you agree, then? It should be public.
      - auntienomen 8y ago
        It is public. Universities almost always include the donation size when they put out press releases about the new building.
        cm2187 8y ago
        And usually the building bears the name of the donor!
        extra88 8y ago
        Often they take the classy move and name it after a relative, often a parent. Harvard's Maxwell-Dworkin building got that name because those are the maiden names of Bill Gates's and Steve Ballmer's moms.
        michaelt 8y ago
        But very rarely how many of the donor's family they lowered admission standards for, and by how much.
        fossuser 8y ago
        It isn't public - none of these universities publicly say, "You can donate 2 million and we'll let your kid in". Which was the amount at Stanford in 2012 (at least based on what someone I met working in admissions told me). It's left unsaid because it's better for the brand to pretend that this isn't a thing and that just because your parents gave money or because your parents are famous doesn't mean they'll let you in.
- hopler 8y ago
  Oddly sexist example but OK.
  - strikelaserclaw 8y ago
    if you put a gun to my head and asked me "Rich parents donated 2 million dollars to get their daughter into Harvard, what is her major?" I would say "Arts/Language/Social" every time. If it was a male, i would say "Business/political science" without fail.
- michaelt 8y ago
  I were calling the shots at a university I'd make that trade every time. Me too. But would you be proud enough of the policy to publicise it and your price list? Because I'd do it, but I'd also be embarrassed I was doing it.
- woah 8y ago
  What? The building is an asset of the university. They can charge more because they have it. It is not a donation to the students.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  If that's a reasonable proposition within the system, maybe the system is broken? Also, in the interest of truth-in-advertising, shouldn't the institutions that practice this not have to rename themselves from "university" or "college" to "degree supermarket"?
athenot 8y ago
Part of the condition for a donation to be tax-deductible is that you claim you didn't get anything in return for your donation. Donating for improvement that affects others is one thing, but donating for a quid pro quo might affect this.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Why can't a poor kid from Oakland, or wherever, watch the classes online and self-study, and pay a nominal fee to exam? In other words, is the concept of creating barriers to entry, limiting competition, not unreasonable? In any market, economists say that is anticompetitive, and should even be illegal. Are people paying for education? Or for epaulets? So let's talk about this "materially improving things for other students" in an honest context of what this is.
  - i_am_proteus 8y ago
    They're paying for epaulets. I took graduate courses at a "local" state university before starting a full-time program at a big-name-top-low-number private school. The private school was not a better education, but it was undoubtedly better for my career because of the "epaulets."
  - nemothekid 8y ago
    >watch the classes online and self-study, and pay a nominal fee to exam? We are already far past the point on using exam scores as a basis for admissions. Many of the Ivies, famously say every year that they could fill their incoming class with students with perfect scores and perfect GPAs many times over forcing these schools to consider other factors. The US DoE says there are 16.9m undergrads, assuming ~4m are freshmen, the top 1% is 40,000 students. The Harvard freshman class size is 2000 students. At this point its only natural, according to the "market", that people would be paying for slots.
- toast0 8y ago
  The tax question here is what is the fair value of the benefit received, the waiving of admission requirements or the granting of admission. I would expect that to be pretty hard to put a dollar amount on.
logfromblammo 8y ago
It provides them the opportunity to network with a young, impressionable kid whose parents can afford to throw $15k into a toilet and flush. If you believe the primary purpose of a university is to educate and certify, that is indeed "not much". But if you believe that the education is secondary, and the actual primary purpose is to cultivate a social network of influential graduates and dropouts, and to act as gatekeeper to future opportunities, then that bribe is better than a perfect SAT score. That kid will end up with seed money or angel investments from mommy and daddy, and will be able to hire some former classmates right out of the gate, and they might build a unicorn, which will forever be tagged with "founded and built by a team of University X graduates". In that sense, no one is robbing anybody of a spot. There are genius spots, and rich idiot spots, and the only problem is getting a few from each pile into the same rooms, with a reason to talk about their futures. One way is to coerce the rich kid into studying (or cheating) their coursework by paying off the genius kid. Management training.
sgustard 8y ago
Also, a bribe goes into one person's pocket. Buying a basketball team and hiring a coach in order to win is legal. Paying one player to lose a game is not legal.
stvswn 8y ago
This is precisely not the reason there's a distinction. The problem is that the $15,000 bribe went to the pockets of someone who was subverting the process (mainly the coaches), robbing the university.

avar 8y ago

Some of these schools have endowments so large that no amount of donating to them will move the needle. They don't need more money: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/malcolm-gladwell-revisionist-history_us_578d2c6fe4b0c53d5cfa79e0 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/malcolm-gladwell-revisi...

onemoresoop 8y ago
This is so true but greed enables them to take and take and take. I find this so hypocritical, these universities are shaping the future educating the next generation of leaders and already have more than what they need with their exorbitant fees.. it seems like there's no limit to this as long as there is supply, there is demand.

bilbo0s 8y ago

This. A guy donates an engineering complex, and every engineering student on that campus gets to take advantage of said complex and its resources. Guy donates a new business school building and every student on that campus can take advantage of said building and its resources. In exchange, the university lets in two girls, their daughters or whatever, who might want to major in Art History and French, and coincidentally will likely be inheriting a few hundred million to upwards of a billion dollars in the future. (Future donors.) It's a fair trade. I'm not wealthy on that level, but if I were calling the shots at a university I'd make that trade every time.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Then the university should advertise the cost of admission and make it fair for everyone.
- temporalparts 8y ago
  I think it is well known that anyone can donate a building for easy admission. It is no secret, just something available to only the top 0.1%
  - wyldfire 8y ago
    > It is no secret It sounds like you agree, then? It should be public.
    - auntienomen 8y ago
      It is public. Universities almost always include the donation size when they put out press releases about the new building.
      - cm2187 8y ago
        And usually the building bears the name of the donor!
        extra88 8y ago
        Often they take the classy move and name it after a relative, often a parent. Harvard's Maxwell-Dworkin building got that name because those are the maiden names of Bill Gates's and Steve Ballmer's moms.
      - michaelt 8y ago
        But very rarely how many of the donor's family they lowered admission standards for, and by how much.
      - fossuser 8y ago
        It isn't public - none of these universities publicly say, "You can donate 2 million and we'll let your kid in". Which was the amount at Stanford in 2012 (at least based on what someone I met working in admissions told me). It's left unsaid because it's better for the brand to pretend that this isn't a thing and that just because your parents gave money or because your parents are famous doesn't mean they'll let you in.
hopler 8y ago
Oddly sexist example but OK.
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  if you put a gun to my head and asked me "Rich parents donated 2 million dollars to get their daughter into Harvard, what is her major?" I would say "Arts/Language/Social" every time. If it was a male, i would say "Business/political science" without fail.
michaelt 8y ago
I were calling the shots at a university I'd make that trade every time. Me too. But would you be proud enough of the policy to publicise it and your price list? Because I'd do it, but I'd also be embarrassed I was doing it.
woah 8y ago
What? The building is an asset of the university. They can charge more because they have it. It is not a donation to the students.
mpweiher 8y ago
If that's a reasonable proposition within the system, maybe the system is broken? Also, in the interest of truth-in-advertising, shouldn't the institutions that practice this not have to rename themselves from "university" or "college" to "degree supermarket"?

athenot 8y ago

Part of the condition for a donation to be tax-deductible is that you claim you didn't get anything in return for your donation. Donating for improvement that affects others is one thing, but donating for a quid pro quo might affect this.

wallace_f 8y ago
Why can't a poor kid from Oakland, or wherever, watch the classes online and self-study, and pay a nominal fee to exam? In other words, is the concept of creating barriers to entry, limiting competition, not unreasonable? In any market, economists say that is anticompetitive, and should even be illegal. Are people paying for education? Or for epaulets? So let's talk about this "materially improving things for other students" in an honest context of what this is.
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  They're paying for epaulets. I took graduate courses at a "local" state university before starting a full-time program at a big-name-top-low-number private school. The private school was not a better education, but it was undoubtedly better for my career because of the "epaulets."
- nemothekid 8y ago
  >watch the classes online and self-study, and pay a nominal fee to exam? We are already far past the point on using exam scores as a basis for admissions. Many of the Ivies, famously say every year that they could fill their incoming class with students with perfect scores and perfect GPAs many times over forcing these schools to consider other factors. The US DoE says there are 16.9m undergrads, assuming ~4m are freshmen, the top 1% is 40,000 students. The Harvard freshman class size is 2000 students. At this point its only natural, according to the "market", that people would be paying for slots.
toast0 8y ago
The tax question here is what is the fair value of the benefit received, the waiving of admission requirements or the granting of admission. I would expect that to be pretty hard to put a dollar amount on.

logfromblammo 8y ago

It provides them the opportunity to network with a young, impressionable kid whose parents can afford to throw $15k into a toilet and flush. If you believe the primary purpose of a university is to educate and certify, that is indeed "not much". But if you believe that the education is secondary, and the actual primary purpose is to cultivate a social network of influential graduates and dropouts, and to act as gatekeeper to future opportunities, then that bribe is better than a perfect SAT score. That kid will end up with seed money or angel investments from mommy and daddy, and will be able to hire some former classmates right out of the gate, and they might build a unicorn, which will forever be tagged with "founded and built by a team of University X graduates". In that sense, no one is robbing anybody of a spot. There are genius spots, and rich idiot spots, and the only problem is getting a few from each pile into the same rooms, with a reason to talk about their futures. One way is to coerce the rich kid into studying (or cheating) their coursework by paying off the genius kid. Management training.

sgustard 8y ago

Also, a bribe goes into one person's pocket. Buying a basketball team and hiring a coach in order to win is legal. Paying one player to lose a game is not legal.

stvswn 8y ago

This is precisely not the reason there's a distinction. The problem is that the $15,000 bribe went to the pockets of someone who was subverting the process (mainly the coaches), robbing the university.