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They're not that elite if they're gonna get ensnared in this one. If you're one of the elite you just donate a building, which is a completely legal way to get

They're not that elite if they're gonna get ensnared in this one. If you're one of the elite you just donate a building, which is a completely legal way to get your kids into a school of your choice.

NeoBasilisk 8y ago
not elite enough to escape scrutiny but elite enough to embark on these ventures It's a balancing act, and this time it looks like many are going to fall.
wavefunction 8y ago
$500,000 isn't going to get you much of a building. These folks just didn't want to fork out the real dough even though some of them had the means.
- protomyth 8y ago
  It might of made a nice check for one of those endowments, scholarship funds, or private (as in non-public) grants that make university administrators quite happy.
coke_n_sympathy 8y ago
At least donating a building gives value to the other attending students that far outweighs the cost of their child going
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  What about the kids that didn’t get to go? The ones that the rich students replaced. That’s the real tragedy. The students don’t even know that they were out-moneid.
  - bradleyjg 8y ago
    Why is that a tragedy? So they didn’t go to Yale, Stanford, or USC (?!?). Presumably if they were borderline at those schools they ended up somewhere perfectly fine. I’m happy these parents are being prosecuted, but I don’t think there were any tragedies here.
  - throwaway287391 8y ago
    The amount to donate a building probably covers the cost to expand the student capacity of a university by several dozen students. With the donation they could easily afford to accept everyone they otherwise would have accepted and also accept the one rich kid and still come out way on top. So I'd be surprised if they did this -- though not shocked.
    - drb91 8y ago
      Schools also have an incentive to keep acceptance rate as low as possible as it’s an (extremely bullshit) signal of value.
      - throwaway287391 8y ago
        Sure, but if we're actually talking about donating a building (maybe I took that too literally?), we're talking about 3 kids a year, tops. It would barely change the 2nd decimal place in an acceptance percentage at a lot of schools.
        drb91 8y ago
        Yea but why would they? Their prestige is grounded in the illusion of elite meritocracy.
        kortilla 8y ago
        Because they don’t want the illusion of meritocracy to be tarnished. It’s better to say 10k students were accepted on merit and an addition 3 building donation students.
  - beenBoutIT 8y ago
    The opportunity cost is tremendous, replacing intelligent students with an idiot students robs the universities in so many different ways.
- munk-a 8y ago
  I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships, grants and other things out there, many go to people who don't need them and there are issues with the system both on that end and with regards to the cost for an education - please ignore those and just focus on the concept of financial aide to an intelligent driven student who genuinely needs it to pay fair value to get an education in terms of reimbursing all expenses given to give this student an education and nothing else.
  - phil21 8y ago
    Don't you need the funding of the super rich guy with the dumb kid who takes up a single student slot in order to offer free school to the dozen kids who "deserve" it academically? Without the first (in aggregate, over generations), the others don't even have the option.
    - darpa_escapee 8y ago
      Plenty of people make donations for reasons of prestige, legacy and even genuine care, which have nothing to do with making sure their kid gets into a certain school.
      - stale2002 8y ago
        But there would still be less of those donations. There would be some, yes. But significantly less. And less money means that these school are unable to let in as many poor people as they did before.
        munk-a 8y ago
        In general terms regarding systems in our society - If the system is dependent on charity to support it... it isn't supported, if the system is valued by society then society should support it up to the cost of it's value. Education is absolutely worth the cost and the need to charity is highlighting the underfunding here[1]. [1] Also, the inefficient use of money, higher education is absolutely guilty of inefficient operation with lots of cushy bureaucrat jobs, but imagine we could make higher education efficient and it still required an additional injection of cash via charitable donations.
- jazzyjackson 8y ago
  This assertion that it's a value-add for the rest of the students assumes that they wouldn't have new buildings donated by alumni as an honest donation and not a bribe. I think it would be very interesting to see a plot of the number of buildings named for the donor + how many children of donors were admitted in exchange for these buildings. I would expect that schools can get all the endowment they need without trading admission for it. Anyone seriously trading a building for a spot in the school is not making a trade in the best interest of the school, they are playing favorites to keep particular donors happy. But wouldn't the school be better off as a whole, to stand with integrity, without the cloud of corrupt donors?
iscrewyou 8y ago
What a great way to polarize more people in this political environment if some of these parents are let off the hook.
- protomyth 8y ago
  People have been giving buildings and endowments for hundreds of years. It is not illegal to give buildings and money for the endowments. What these folks did was run a scam on the university.
  - iscrewyou 8y ago
    I completely agree with you. I’m just commenting on the fact that these people should not be let off the hook just because they donate a building.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      There is no hook or wrong doing in giving a building. It benefits a lot of people. These folks actually did something illegal. Grouping people who actually gave to the university with people who paid a scam artist is wrong.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - lotsofpulp 8y ago
        There's nothing wrong with giving, but there is something wrong with giving and calling it a donation, when in reality it's a quid pro quo transaction. Which is illegal, but unprovable. Matt Levine's comment quoted elsewhere in this thread is describes the only difference in the scenarios.
        TheCoelacanth 8y ago
        What law is broken by an explicit quid pro quo for admission? I'm pretty sure there's nothing illegal about that, it just is avoided because it doesn't look good.
acchow 8y ago
Why is that legal?
- gizmo686 8y ago
  What law would it break?
  - defen 8y ago
    The IRS would probably not look kindly on universities (tax-exempt) literally selling seats at massively inflated prices. But if you give a lot of money and your kid just happens to have really great “intangibles” well that’s just fine.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  Why not? A private university has no obligation to run its admissions program they way you think it should. The reason there is a crime here is because the universities were the victims of fraud, not because the law mandates fairness in admissions.
  - 893yfno8gmh 8y ago
    No, not the way I think it should, but the way they promise they do. If a university promises fairness and that's a lie, then it is fraud against the students / applicants.
  - prawn 8y ago
    Do US universities receive public funding? If they did, would that influence the discussion?
    - bradleyjg 8y ago
      We have public and private universities. Private universities get public funds through a variety of means, mostly scientific grants, but not public funding in the sense of unconditional grants to the general university fisc.
Agathos 8y ago
Matt Levine's trademark... objectivity? cynicism? is perfect for this. "It is not about fairness; it is about theft. Selective colleges have admissions spots that they want to award in particular ways. They want to award some based on academic factors; they want to award others based on athletic skill; they want to award others in exchange for cash, but—and this is crucial—really a whole lot of cash. Buildings are not cheap. ...The bribery scheme devalued the asset not only by stealing it and re-selling it for less than it was worth, but also by being so explicitly commercial. ...consultants and coaches are misappropriating the asset and selling it for their own benefit." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-have-to-pay-the-right-person https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-ha...
893yfno8gmh 8y ago
> which is a completely legal way to get your kids into a school of your choice. It may not defraud the university, but that doesn't make it legal. When a university promises its admissions / grading are fair / based on neutral criteria, but in fact accepts bribes and gives preferential grades... that's also fraud. It's fraud against the students who have are paying for an education which is not what they were sold. Bribing the school makes those parents parties to that fraud. Donating a building (for the purpose of getting your kid into a university) is (usually) a crime. Edit: That's not to say a University can't acknowledge in its application materials: "Yes, we accept bribes!" However, that may may hurt the business more than operating legally.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
But that misses what's going on here. Some of the indicted parents certainly did have the means to donate a building. But social status is now built on at least the appearance of a meritocracy. Donate a building, and everyone says your kid just got in because you donated a building. Bribe a coach secretly, and sure, everyone knows your kid had tons of advantages growing up, but you can at least keep up the facade that the kid deserves to be there.

They're not that elite if they're gonna get ensnared in this one. If you're one of the elite you just donate a building, which is a completely legal way to get your kids into a school of your choice.

NeoBasilisk 8y ago

not elite enough to escape scrutiny but elite enough to embark on these ventures It's a balancing act, and this time it looks like many are going to fall.

wavefunction 8y ago

$500,000 isn't going to get you much of a building. These folks just didn't want to fork out the real dough even though some of them had the means.

protomyth 8y ago
It might of made a nice check for one of those endowments, scholarship funds, or private (as in non-public) grants that make university administrators quite happy.

coke_n_sympathy 8y ago

At least donating a building gives value to the other attending students that far outweighs the cost of their child going

iscrewyou 8y ago
What about the kids that didn’t get to go? The ones that the rich students replaced. That’s the real tragedy. The students don’t even know that they were out-moneid.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  Why is that a tragedy? So they didn’t go to Yale, Stanford, or USC (?!?). Presumably if they were borderline at those schools they ended up somewhere perfectly fine. I’m happy these parents are being prosecuted, but I don’t think there were any tragedies here.
- throwaway287391 8y ago
  The amount to donate a building probably covers the cost to expand the student capacity of a university by several dozen students. With the donation they could easily afford to accept everyone they otherwise would have accepted and also accept the one rich kid and still come out way on top. So I'd be surprised if they did this -- though not shocked.
  - drb91 8y ago
    Schools also have an incentive to keep acceptance rate as low as possible as it’s an (extremely bullshit) signal of value.
    - throwaway287391 8y ago
      Sure, but if we're actually talking about donating a building (maybe I took that too literally?), we're talking about 3 kids a year, tops. It would barely change the 2nd decimal place in an acceptance percentage at a lot of schools.
      - drb91 8y ago
        Yea but why would they? Their prestige is grounded in the illusion of elite meritocracy.
        kortilla 8y ago
        Because they don’t want the illusion of meritocracy to be tarnished. It’s better to say 10k students were accepted on merit and an addition 3 building donation students.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  The opportunity cost is tremendous, replacing intelligent students with an idiot students robs the universities in so many different ways.
munk-a 8y ago
I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships, grants and other things out there, many go to people who don't need them and there are issues with the system both on that end and with regards to the cost for an education - please ignore those and just focus on the concept of financial aide to an intelligent driven student who genuinely needs it to pay fair value to get an education in terms of reimbursing all expenses given to give this student an education and nothing else.
- phil21 8y ago
  Don't you need the funding of the super rich guy with the dumb kid who takes up a single student slot in order to offer free school to the dozen kids who "deserve" it academically? Without the first (in aggregate, over generations), the others don't even have the option.
  - darpa_escapee 8y ago
    Plenty of people make donations for reasons of prestige, legacy and even genuine care, which have nothing to do with making sure their kid gets into a certain school.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      But there would still be less of those donations. There would be some, yes. But significantly less. And less money means that these school are unable to let in as many poor people as they did before.
      - munk-a 8y ago
        In general terms regarding systems in our society - If the system is dependent on charity to support it... it isn't supported, if the system is valued by society then society should support it up to the cost of it's value. Education is absolutely worth the cost and the need to charity is highlighting the underfunding here[1]. [1] Also, the inefficient use of money, higher education is absolutely guilty of inefficient operation with lots of cushy bureaucrat jobs, but imagine we could make higher education efficient and it still required an additional injection of cash via charitable donations.
jazzyjackson 8y ago
This assertion that it's a value-add for the rest of the students assumes that they wouldn't have new buildings donated by alumni as an honest donation and not a bribe. I think it would be very interesting to see a plot of the number of buildings named for the donor + how many children of donors were admitted in exchange for these buildings. I would expect that schools can get all the endowment they need without trading admission for it. Anyone seriously trading a building for a spot in the school is not making a trade in the best interest of the school, they are playing favorites to keep particular donors happy. But wouldn't the school be better off as a whole, to stand with integrity, without the cloud of corrupt donors?

iscrewyou 8y ago

What a great way to polarize more people in this political environment if some of these parents are let off the hook.

protomyth 8y ago
People have been giving buildings and endowments for hundreds of years. It is not illegal to give buildings and money for the endowments. What these folks did was run a scam on the university.
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  I completely agree with you. I’m just commenting on the fact that these people should not be let off the hook just because they donate a building.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    There is no hook or wrong doing in giving a building. It benefits a lot of people. These folks actually did something illegal. Grouping people who actually gave to the university with people who paid a scam artist is wrong.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      There's nothing wrong with giving, but there is something wrong with giving and calling it a donation, when in reality it's a quid pro quo transaction. Which is illegal, but unprovable. Matt Levine's comment quoted elsewhere in this thread is describes the only difference in the scenarios.
      - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
        What law is broken by an explicit quid pro quo for admission? I'm pretty sure there's nothing illegal about that, it just is avoided because it doesn't look good.

acchow 8y ago

Why is that legal?

gizmo686 8y ago
What law would it break?
- defen 8y ago
  The IRS would probably not look kindly on universities (tax-exempt) literally selling seats at massively inflated prices. But if you give a lot of money and your kid just happens to have really great “intangibles” well that’s just fine.
bradleyjg 8y ago
Why not? A private university has no obligation to run its admissions program they way you think it should. The reason there is a crime here is because the universities were the victims of fraud, not because the law mandates fairness in admissions.
- 893yfno8gmh 8y ago
  No, not the way I think it should, but the way they promise they do. If a university promises fairness and that's a lie, then it is fraud against the students / applicants.
- prawn 8y ago
  Do US universities receive public funding? If they did, would that influence the discussion?
  - bradleyjg 8y ago
    We have public and private universities. Private universities get public funds through a variety of means, mostly scientific grants, but not public funding in the sense of unconditional grants to the general university fisc.

Agathos 8y ago

Matt Levine's trademark... objectivity? cynicism? is perfect for this. "It is not about fairness; it is about theft. Selective colleges have admissions spots that they want to award in particular ways. They want to award some based on academic factors; they want to award others based on athletic skill; they want to award others in exchange for cash, but—and this is crucial—really a whole lot of cash. Buildings are not cheap. ...The bribery scheme devalued the asset not only by stealing it and re-selling it for less than it was worth, but also by being so explicitly commercial. ...consultants and coaches are misappropriating the asset and selling it for their own benefit." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-have-to-pay-the-right-person https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-ha...

893yfno8gmh 8y ago

> which is a completely legal way to get your kids into a school of your choice. It may not defraud the university, but that doesn't make it legal. When a university promises its admissions / grading are fair / based on neutral criteria, but in fact accepts bribes and gives preferential grades... that's also fraud. It's fraud against the students who have are paying for an education which is not what they were sold. Bribing the school makes those parents parties to that fraud. Donating a building (for the purpose of getting your kid into a university) is (usually) a crime. Edit: That's not to say a University can't acknowledge in its application materials: "Yes, we accept bribes!" However, that may may hurt the business more than operating legally.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

But that misses what's going on here. Some of the indicted parents certainly did have the means to donate a building. But social status is now built on at least the appearance of a meritocracy. Donate a building, and everyone says your kid just got in because you donated a building. Bribe a coach secretly, and sure, everyone knows your kid had tons of advantages growing up, but you can at least keep up the facade that the kid deserves to be there.