Lori Loughlin and husband sentenced in college bribery scandal
axios.com
axios.com
The people who have been prosecuted as part of this scandal aren't being prosecuted for devaluing earned degrees at selective colleges; they're being prosecuted for finding a cheaper way to get their children into selective colleges than paying the ten million+ selective colleges charge a for legacy admission.
But I agree, on a moral level, that legacy admissions are an odious practice, and particularly so when tied to donations.
It’s not a donation if you’re getting something in return, e.g. preferential treatment.
The rules may be unfair but at least in the latter case, everyone knows that they are up against.
Not a donation if the donor is receiving something in exchange.
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
https://adminguide.stanford.edu/chapter-4/subchapter-1/polic...
One of these things is bribery and corruption. The other may be unfair and people have reason not to like it, but it's above board. You want to pick nits over my use of the word donation and the fair market value of admission, go ahead.
Another way to look at it is to look at the total cost of fully private preparatory primary and secondary schooling for a child, in programs that groom them to maximize their chance for admission (what a lovely childhood that sounds like). That's probably about half a million dollars, give or take, depending upon where you live.
So I'd guess it's somewhere in that ballpark of 200k-500k. I don't know what the median size of donation-based admissions is though.
Student fees have never left a surplus to invest. It's from investing donations.
I think there's way too much cynicism in the comments here. These schools really do take their social responsibilities seriously and really do offer and prioritize student aid. And to the extent they can't, it's because they simply don't have the cash available. Giving to universities is a good thing (well, usually -- maybe there's an argument that the super-elite schools with outrageous endowments don't need this, I guess).
Should universities be "selling" spots for this purpose? I don't know. But it's not correct to imply that they don't have a good use for that money.
But it’s not altruistic, they are getting paid. They prefer donations because, in our gilded age, they are a more reliable source of tuition dollars.
Higher ed today fails a very basic test - they have no practice around student success. Startups like SkillShare started with that in mind.
Many universities have launched initiatives and programs in the past few years to drive “student success,” but they are entirely dependent on outside providers - whose recommendations they actively resist. It is bananas.
Universities’ measure of student success? Do students drop out.
Once again, entirely self-serving.
Talk to veteran higher ed faculty & staff - they all know it.
Universities don’t actually know what their value is, so they just keep trying to pretend to offer what people wanted in times past in an era that has no use for any of it. They are a brutal application of enlightenment thinking in a world that does not play by those rules.
They know they are playing a smoke & mirrors game. The average student is 27 and has a kid, yet they still sell the “college experience,” mostly to foreign nationals with rich parents. It is corrupt from beginning to end.
Do not pay for college, kids. Read “DIY University.”
If a billionaire donates a new building to a college so his dim-witted son can get in, the entire school benefits because they have a new facility. And the school can see to it that nobody gets "displaced" by this dim-witted kid by increasing the class size by 1.
If a wealthy person bribes and athletic coach to get his kid into school, the school gets no money and no benefit, and someone else was actually displaced.
It’s not a donation if they’re getting something in return.
Anyone not seeing the difference between that and a sports coach pocketing a few tens of thousands of dollars is suffering from severe ideological impairment.
A donation is eligible for tax deductions. Payment in lieu of acceptance for child or increased probability of acceptance for child is not tax deductible.
A sports coach pocketing a few thousand dollars, versus a much wealthier person pocketing a few million from all taxpayers. Where is the ideological impairment?
The wealthy person is not "pocketing" anything.
That said, I'm always a bit miffed by the enthusiasm for prosecuting the person bribing rather than the person accepting the bribe. It's not just in bribery. You see the same targeting of the interloper in cases of adultery. It's like everything was perfectly fine until contracts and vows were broken due to temptation alone.
We should be cutting deals with everyone that offered a bribe and nailing people to the wall you accepted the bribes. They are the ones truly stealing. The others are buying stolen property (certainly also bad).
It was probably evidence they provided that led to the convictions of the people doing the bribing.
Which is an argument that it's immoral/illegal for the employee. For the parent? Gotta pick bribery being ok or not.
I was similarly bothered by this, and by the fact that nobody was worried that these students would fail out given that they cheated their way in.
Says a lot about the actual signalling value vs. educational value of the universities (and the lottery that is admissions).
On a tangential note, Lisa Brennan-Jobs' really great memoir "Small Fry" talks about her experience with this a bit. She dreamed of going to Harvard and during the admissions interview it didn't seem to be going anywhere until she quietly mentioned that her dad founded a computer company (the interviewer asked which one which prompted Lisa to say Apple at which point the dense interviewer figured out she was Steve Jobs' daughter) - and then the interviewer left the room for a time.
When the interviewer came back she was smiling and generally a lot more engaged. Lisa went to Harvard.
College admissions is an unfair system in a billion different ways, I hope ISAs like Lambda School end up replacing a lot of it for most people. Lori Loughlin and the actors cheated the system, but it's weird to me that they got in trouble because they didn't cheat in the right way.
You need to be rich enough to pay a large enough bribe to the school directly. If that fails, hopefully you have a famous father.
Otherwise it's a lottery.
[Edit]: For those arguing paying the school bribe is different because other students benefit, I'd argue there should be at least some transparency in this process. If admissions slots are for sale, let the public see the price (instead the schools pretend otherwise).
You would be surprised at how difficult it is to fail out of programs.
From what I’ve seen profs have an unwritten rule to not fail students from school admin, otherwise they might complain and so it’s easier to give a D than fail them completely.
While you do get some education, I'd argue the majority of the value is the signalling the institutions provide by being selective.
It's about forcing scarcity for social status.
At Caltech this definitely was not true. None of my fellow students were legacy that I knew of, and none were rich that I was aware of.
> (since basically anyone who gets in will be fine)
Also not true of Caltech. Caltech sometimes did make mistakes in admitting students who couldn't hack the program, and those poor students suffered until they gave up. It didn't matter how hard they worked, it just didn't work for them.
On the other hand, some students (like Hal Finney) effortlessly, and I mean effortlessly, aced everything.
Not me, I had to work fairly assiduously or I got F's.
To expand on my previous point it’s not that all majors are unfailable - I knew plenty of kids that failed out of STEM and switched to some more generic liberal arts major anyone can pass.
At Caltech that’s probably not an option.
Of course, I have no chance of becoming World Dictator, so those who don't like math are safe :-)
On the other hand, my mom teaches pre-baccalaruate math at a CSU and gets all kinds of grief from administration for failing kids who don't earn a passing grade.
A friend of mine "flunked out" this way, and 10 years later came back and finished with all As. I asked him if he got any smarter in that decade. He laughed, and said no, he was just willing to do the work the second time around.
Hey I took pre-bacc math! At a Cal JCC but still... even my community college math classes were way harder than my "prestigious" undergrad institution which like Caltech is basically impossible to fail out from. Especially if you play a sport! Hockey and football teams got 1 page cheat sheets on exams which was outrageous.
What do you think the word "bribe" means? Paying money for a service (admission to a university) is not a bribe. Exchanging money for services is literally how the entire economy works.
Paying an agent of an organization money to subvert their organization's processes and steal from their employer, on the other hand, is actual bribery.
In the quiet admissions process if you give them enough money they’ll act in your favor, but none of this is public or official and they pretend they’re not doing this at the same time.
It may not be illegal, but you’re shuffling deck chairs on the titanic of ethics at that point. If you’re selling slots at market price then do that, quietly taking money in a wink-wink donation for admissions slot looks a lot like bribery to me.
The colleges I applied to all had a section on the application for listing alumni you're related to.
It is not a well publicized fact that 'people who donate get even higher preference', even calling it 'preference' is a euphemistic way to obscure the bribery.
It isn't preference, there's some hidden price and people are paying it for a slot.
Nobody is paying for a building and finding out their kid is not accepted.
Show me where on any top university website it says 'as an alternative to our standard merit-based admissions process you can contact this number to discuss payment for admission'.
They can't say that, both because it would reduce their leverage in negotiating the bribe value, and because what people are paying for (in large part) is the social status of having been accepted to an exclusive institution on merit.
Universities know this, it's why they spend effort encouraging applicants they know they will never accept in an effort to drive down the acceptance percentage and drive up their exclusivity.
If it's public that your rich parent bought your slot then suddenly a lot of that status evaporates.
Since the social status is more the product in question than the actual education people paying for it don't want this to happen.
This being public is bad for the school's brand too since knowledge that a lot of students can buy their way in would reduce the status that they're selling in the first place.
For example, one university had a rule that any prospective student who inquires about a certain program, and shows a detailed understanding of how that program works, be fast tracked in.
Why? We’ve spent a ton of time building that program and want to enroll interested students!
The same was true, to a lesser degree, of any prospect who had clearly done her research and was interested in this college specifically.
Asking things like “I hear you offer one on one tutorials - how do they work?” show that the students are actually interested in the college, and would probably be a good match.
On the other hand, if we get the idea that we’re simply a “safety school” that the student wants to avoid if they can - that student can expect an extremely rigorous and unforgiving assessment of her abilities.
Yes, and the cheaper way involves fraud, which is why people are being prosecuted. It's like you're saying robbing a bank shouldn't be a crime because people are just trying to find a cheaper way to get money from a bank than depositing the money first.
"My daughter got accepted into USC all on her own," the rapper wrote in the caption. "No jail time!!!!"
(Dre made a $70million dollar contribution). Thanks Dre! Continue to fight for social justice!
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/24/entertainment/dr-dre-daughter...
The point is not that you mustn't get a college entrance by paying people for it, but that you must pay the right people. If you donate two million to the university, maybe they'll admit your useless child and carry them along. The two million you donated does enough good for the University that the leadership deems it worthwhile to trade. Conversely, if you bribe the coach to lie to the University, then that's you getting something of great value for far less and without paying the appropriate people.
Being against the rich paying their way in is one thing, but this scandal isn't the same thing as that.
> Being against the rich paying their way in is one thing, but this scandal isn't the same thing as that.
So as long as it's legal it's okay.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-ha...
"...Here is one thing that U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in announcing the charges:
“There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy, and I'll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.”
Level playing field! Here is another thing he said less than a minute later:
“We’re not talking about donating a building so that a school’s more likely to take your son or your daughter. We’re talking about deception and fraud.”
There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy, except for the extremely well-known one where you donate a building in exchange for getting your kid in! “Lol just donate a building like a real rich person,” the U.S. Attorney almost said. Josh Barro’s analysis on Twitter is exactly right:
The admissions slots were stolen from the colleges and resold on the black market. Which is a crime, for good reason. We don’t have to act like there wasn’t a legal, primary market for the admissions slots already.
I think the key is not to understand this as a crime against other applicants, or the public, or “fairness.” It’s a crime against the schools.
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.
I think the unfairness argument should be taken up a level - it's unfair that someone can even have the wealth to do this.
In fact there should be a two-speed college system - one for very wealthy people who like having buildings and stadiums named after them, and a separate vocational academic system for those who can't afford to operate on that level.
Studying would be optional on the fast track. Academic life would become a round of partying, networking, and assortative mating, and efficiency would be enhanced by shortening it by a year or two. This would increase student throughput and further boost the property portfolios of the high status educational institutions.
With this system everyone would know exactly what their money was buying, and immoral attempts to cheat the system would become very easy to spot.
It scales proportional to your wealth. The varsity blues parents were just too poor to issue a proper bribe.
Let’s see all this “philanthropy” if tax deductible donations have to be anonymous.
The average American approves of political donations when they agree with the political purpose. (donating to a hated politician is seen as corrupt, so Americans always see the opposing party as corrupt)
The average American approves of open and fair ability to buy extra service. Paying ten million dollars to get a dumb kid into college is only tolerated, but it would be generally approved of if it were on a published official price list.
Everything else is not OK.
I know, you would love to forget that Greece and Bulgaria are in Europe.
However... they are.
To get basic things done in Russia, like official paperwork, basic government services, or dealing with cops, it always helped to grease the wheels in some way. None of that really works in the US, you need to spend a lot more to be involved in corruption, and even then, it's often uncertain.
I say this a lot: in many ways, I would rather be pulled over by the police in Mexico than the United States.
In Mexico, I know what they want: money. I know about how much they want (more, because I'm a gringo), I know that if I relax, keep my hands visible, and reach for my wallet when the time comes, I'll be on my way.
In the US, who knows what the police want. I have to actively represent my social class to avoid a delay while they fetch dogs and shake down my car; I'm leaning on my pale skin to avoid all sorts of unpleasantness, and if they're behind quota, I might get an expensive ticket which I have to return to that jurisdiction to contest, or just pay.
The US has, in many ways, the worst of both worlds: corrupt, but in an illegible, confusing, class-bound, and expensive way.
I have a Mexican friend who was drugged, beaten and robbed by the police in Mexico. Would they treat me differently for being a gringo? I don't know, but I would much rather roll the roulette of getting a ticket that is documented and is an inconvenience vs dealing with a cowboy system.
I have a lot of concerns about the Irish college admissions system (a numeric score is derived from final school year exam results; places are filled based on the highest scores who applied by a national computer system, then anyone left is shunted to their second choice (which may be in a different institution) and so on), but at least people can't outright buy a place.
People write a national level exam, get individual ranks. No two people get the same rank.
A convention is organized by the education body, where students are called in slots, with the top rankers going first. So they have all the colleges to choose from, all the subjects, etc.
Some % of seats in all colleges are reserved for various categories of students like athletes, physically handicapped, etc. But they are also prioritized based on their rank and an additional score (like a national level badminton winner is prioritized over a state level one, even if the national level player has a worse rank than the state level one).
Apart from this, all colleges are allowed 'management' seats, which are essentially seats that can be purchased. However, even to purchase seats, the student has to get a qualifying rank in the exam.
Costs for the seats are also fixed nationwide, with govt. doling out grants to the colleges for specific indexes, like male / female ratio, etc.
I guess the US and like countries attempt to base privilege on well-documented rules instead of ad-hoc, less predictable and more ambiguous 'do me a favor and I do you a favor' bribery that's more known in other countries. Of course it doesn't always work this way but in theory. The good ol' boy network is still a thing and money does buy judicial privilege in many cases but at least we sort of try.
Really laying bare that you’re paying for the diploma, and not the education itself.
>Loughlin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and Giannulli pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/22/us/lori-loughlin-guilty-p...
>Loughlin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and Giannulli pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/22/us/lori-loughlin-guilty-p...
Which brings me to, Wikileaks or someone should publish the FMV of quid pro quo admissions charity by college.
I assume it edged its way from plausible deniability to mutual culpability in a very subtle way. Amd I believe the fraudster was eventually colluding with the FBI. How is it not entrapment?
I would argue that the kind of bribery at the heart of this case is considerably worse, as it fosters a mentality that everything is for sale at the right price.
There are several precedents that come to mind though, prostitution is one.
"Well, last time, the defendant was given 5 years. Therefore, a fair sentence is 5 years".
Tacking a 5 year sentence on to anything because "it doesn't matter" seems exceptionally short-sighted.
"Plea bargains", a strange mixture of government approved gambling and trial by ordeal making a travesty of the justice system.
Then you have these parents, that paid money to some corrupt worker, and it's jail time.
So, the only victims here are students and athletes who lost an earned spot in university. But they don't have any agency here.
The universities administration has no skin in the game - they get paid, the endowments are bountiful, and the professors keep on suffering on. There may even be a backslaps and high five deal to recapture any "lost" income.
The guilty here are resourceful and powerful, so really, the court case is more of a negotiation at best. Kiss the hand of the king and receive a small slap on the wrist sort of a deal.
The government has bigger fish to fry than worry about fairness.