What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/what-happens-after-rich-kids-bribe-their-way-into-college-i-teach-them

What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them

Anonymous

Mon 25 Mar 2019 10.00 GMT

If you think corruption in elite US college admissions is bad, what happens once those students are in the classroom is even worse. I know, because I teach at an elite American university – one of the oldest and best-known, which rejects about 90% of applicants each year for the small number of places it can offer to undergraduates.

In this setting, where teaching quality is at a premium and students expect faculty to give them extensive personal attention, the presence of unqualified students admitted through corrupt practices is an unmitigated disaster for education and research. While such students have long been present in the form of legacy admits, top sports recruits and the kids of multimillion-dollar donors, the latest scandal represents a new tier of Americans elbowing their way into elite universities: unqualified students from families too poor to fund new buildings, but rich enough to pay six-figure bribes to coaches and admissions advisers. This increase in the proportion of students who can’t do the work that elite universities expect of them has – at least to me and my colleagues – begun to create a palpable strain on the system, threatening the quality of education and research we are expected to deliver.

Students who can’t get into elite schools through the front door based on academic merit don’t change once they’re in class. They can’t do the work, and are generally uninterested in gaining the skills they need in order to do well. Exhibit A from the recent admissions corruption scandal is “social media celebrity” Olivia Jade Gianulli, whose parents bought her a place at the University of Southern California, and who announced last August to her huge YouTube following that “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying … I don’t really care about school.”

Every unqualified student admitted to an elite university ends up devouring hugely disproportionate amounts of faculty time and resources that rightfully belong to all the students in class. By monopolizing faculty time to help compensate for their lack of necessary academic skills, unqualified students can also derail faculty research that could benefit everyone, outside the university as well as within it. To save themselves and their careers, many of my colleagues have decided that it is no longer worth it to uphold high expectations in the classroom. “Lower your standards,” they advise new colleagues. “The fight isn’t worth it, and the administration won’t back you up if you try.”

In comparing stories, we have also found that such students strive to “work the system”, using university procedures to get the grades they desire, rather than those they have earned, and if necessary to punish faculty who refuse to accede to those demands. It is perhaps unsurprising that students whose parents circumvent the rules to get them into elite universities are often the ones who become adept at manipulating the university system in a corrupt way.
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[murielm99]

1. These students should be in community colleges where

there are usually learning resource rooms with tutors. The tutors help with skills the students have not acquired elsewhere. They help with English and math. I took some college level math courses at a community college. I spent a lot of time in the LRC doing math homework.

The four year school where I was an undergrad tested everyone during orientation week. I tested okay because I was not told to take any remedial classes. There were some people who took a class the students referred to as "Grammar Zero." It seemed that most of them were engineering students who had low levels of writing and grammatical skills. I think some of them needed to develop better reading skills as well.

It is sad that things have gotten so out of hand at elite universities.

[Socal31]

2. Why is it so easy to find corrupt universities and staff to bribe?

I wouldn't even know who to ask. Is there a hotline or darkweb message board?

[Cicada]

4. One rich parent who declined the offer said a finder pitched the service to him

Some rich guy, forget who, had a son interested in Georgetown. He said someone he assumes works as a finder sought him out and pitched the corrupt help to him but he and his son said fuck off.

[Scarsdale]

3. I was in my 60's

when I went to take a lesson in Golf at the local college. Since it was a class that earned credits, I had to take the entrance exam!! I said "I am only taking Golf, no other classes" Those are the rules, credit class - exam. So I had to go through the entire entrance exam. I did O.K. on all but Math. I did get some strange looks from the young co-eds, though. Had I signed up for classes, I would have had to take remedial math.

[MosheFeingold]

5. I always thought

The elite schools were where the talented could meet the rich-but-mediocre, so the talented could get great jobs and become rich, and the rich could play golf and let the talented run the companies.

Kind of a fair trade.

Seems to have worked that way in my generation, anyway.