Today, Explained - Becky with the bad grades

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Remember Aunt Becky from Full House? She might be heading to the big house. Fifty grown-ups, including Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, are facing federal charges over college admissions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just before we get to the show, a quick note about Brother, the printer company. You might recall they've got this investment tank printer situation that will change the way you ink. You can learn more about it at changethewayyouink.com. And a little preview, one to two years of ink included in the box with the printer. Deal with it. Bye-bye. I am Scott Jasek, editor of Inside Higher Ed. I'm just turning off my phone because I don't want to be that podcast guy whose phone goes off. That guy's the worst. So I'm not going to be that guy. Thank you. We're here today to announce charges in the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Scott, yesterday, this huge scandal

hit the world of college admissions. It involved Aunt Becky from Full House and Felicity Huffman. What did Aunt Becky and Felicity Huffman and all these people do? They were among the 50 people indicted yesterday. The two actresses were among the 33 parents who were indicted. Total of 50 were indicted. That includes coaches, testing proctors, all on bribing their children into college through various methods. Some of them were paying off coaches to list their children as recruited athletes when, in fact, their children weren't recruited athletes. Others were basically finding ways to get false SAT or ACT scores. So you have multiple levels at which bribes were being used to rig the admissions process.

Who did the investigation? So the investigation was done by the FBI, which actually named this Operation Varsity Blues. Like the James Van Der Beek movie? Which is a very good name for this. I gave it a 10, a 10, a fucking 10. The ringleader pleaded guilty yesterday. He's the one who ran a private college counseling service, alleged private college counseling service, that funneled all this money.

Let's start with the sports thing because that's wild. How did parents allegedly get schools to say that their kids were athletes when they weren't? They were bribing some coaches. How did parents allegedly get schools to say that their kids were athletes when they weren't? They were bribing some coaches. The coach controls the list. Parents joked about the fact that they were photoshopping their kids to make them look like athletes. Wow. Putting them in uniforms, creating fake athlete profiles of the sort that a star high school athlete would have. Whose parents are good at Photoshop?

What? Well, you know, because we're talking about the rich and famous, you know, all the attention is on the two actresses. But they're involved here because this is about very wealthy people. And since a decent number of them were in LA, no surprise, you had some Hollywood involvement. This is wealthy people who have access to people who help them. How much money are we talking about here when it comes to wealthy people in private schools? So we're talking about $25 million in these cases. We're talking about typically between $200,000 and $400,000 paid to bribe your way into a top college, but in some cases, several million dollars.

So that suspicion that money solves all problems, it just kind of bears out here. Well, until people possibly go to jail. Until Operation Varsity Blues. Yes. A tan! What are some specific examples here? What sports are we talking about? What kinds of bribes went in?

Sure, we're talking about crew. We're talking about sailing. We're talking about water polo. We are not talking about football and basketball. I think that's because there is such close monitoring of who is on the football recruit list and the basketball recruit list that it would have been more difficult to slip somebody through on some sports. So they went for the sports that people pay less attention to. And perhaps as well, and again, I don't know this, perhaps the coaches were feeling a little more needy. The reality is if you are a football coach at a top university, I'd like to think you can't be bribed because you're honest. But you also might be pretty comfortable.

Did these colleges have any idea all of this was going on? The universities all claim they didn't know. Did these colleges have any idea all of this was going on? And they can't kick you out for deciding not to join the team. In fact, every year, some people are recruited and then they land at this university and say, you know what, I care more about my education or I can't balance the time. So there's no violation by being recruited as an athlete and then not playing the sport. So you, Scott Jassik of Inside Higher Ed, buy the argument some of these schools are making that they had no idea this happened. I would say there is not yet evidence to contradict that. Diplomatic. Okay. So that's the sports part of this equation. What about this cheating on the SAT thing, which I didn't think it was easy to cheat on it. So no, it's not. So this is the SAT and the ACT. And so it was a multi-step effort. First step was to get classified as somebody with a learning disability and ask for accommodations.

People with learning disabilities, and this is totally legit and it happens all the time, get extra time to take the test or, you know, various other things so that the test can actually measure what they know and what they can do and not hold them back because of their learning disability. Then they made up excuses, according to the indictment, to go to one of two testing centers. Most people go to a testing center near where they live. There were two testing centers that were, quote, controlled by those in this conspiracy. They would say, oh, I've got a family wedding in Houston or, you know, and say, explain that's why they were taking the test there. The real reason they were taking the test there is that allegedly these testing centers were controlled by this conspiracy. And so in some cases, they let other people take

the test for them. Yikes. And in other cases, they had their answers corrected. In this case, though, if what is alleged is true, it wasn't high techtech cheating. It was old-fashioned bribery. Bribery is the connective tissue between the sports thing and the SAT thing and all these parents and all these coaches and all these test administrators. What consequences will all of these people face if these allegations are true? So yesterday, shortly after the indictments came out, we started to hear from the universities involved. Some of them fired coaches. Already. Already. Some suspended coaches. So they're not interested in hearing how this investigation bears out. They're already firing coaches, which means these universities believe that these allegations are completely true.

The universities generally say they have been involved in helping the federal investigators. This raises questions about the fairness of admissions. There's already a ton of scrutiny of elite college admissions. This is really bad for them. A lot of this stuff isn't, you know, he said, she said. There are recordings. There are emails. People talking about why they're doing this, not wanting to be caught. You know, the husband of one of the actresses takes a swipe at Arizona State by saying he

doesn't want his daughter to go to ASU. Was it William H. Macy? No, the other one. Oh, on Becky's husband? Yes. John Stamos? No, no, no, the real one. But you have recordings, you have emails. One of my favorites is a discussion where someone says, there is a front door, which means you get in on your own door, when you go through institutional advancement,

as you know, everybody's got a friend of a friend who knows somebody and there's no guarantee. They're just going to give you a second look. Now, the universities do not like to boast about the fact that you have a better chance of getting in if mom and dad have given $50 million. Sure. But that's just a fact, like Jared Kushner. Well, yes, that is just a fact. And so you have these cases. And so that's a lot of this is public now. My guess is you're going to see a rush of people negotiating plea agreements. Rich people don't like to go to jail. The whole point of Operation Varsity Blues,

the whole point of this investigation, was to make sure college admissions remained fair. There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy. For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected. The thing is, though, wealthy people don't have to commit fraud to get into college. They already have a separate college admission system. It's called college admissions. That's next on Today Explained. Okay, so if I'm being honest, I don't have a printer in my residence here in the District of Columbia. But when I was back in California at my mom's house last week, she had a printer,

and I was really excited to be close to a functioning printer. It isn't an investment tank printer from Brother, though. So she's kind of liable to run out of ink at any time. That doesn't really happen with the investment tank printer from Brother because it comes with a boatload of ink. And that's not really all it does. There's more. There's something called the intelligentigent Page Gauge that displays ink levels. There's a super large ink storage tank inside.

Plus, if you've got a business, they'll help you run it while delivering super functionality. Like they print, but they also copy. They also fax. Learn more about the Brother Inkvestment Tank Prin at changethewayyouink.com. And you better not go there unless you're ready to change the way you ink. So, Scott, for the first portion of this conversation, we went through all these ways that wealthy people are allegedly illegally trying to get their kids into college. But important to note here that there are lots of legal ways to try and skirt the system too, right?

Absolutely. Look, everything about wealth in American society plays out in the way students are prepared for college and get into college. Do you live in a wealthy suburb? Or if not, do your parents send you to an elite private school? Those choices lead to you having lots of educational opportunities that are not available at a low-income school. And not just the courses. I mean, people go to the elite high schools, graduate from high school these days with

15 AP courses on their transcripts, which looks very good. They don't have those options at inner-city schools. Then look at counselors who help you prepare for college. At inner-city schools, counselors have hundreds and hundreds of students and are dealing with all kinds of issues. At elite high schools, you have counselors who are entirely focused on the college admissions process and families by private counselors to work for them on top of that. Then the SAT and the ACT. If you're low income, you can get a waiver on taking it, but not unlimited waivers. Wealthy students can take the test over and over again to improve their scores. Wealthy students can hire very good private coaches who will help them improve their scores. Preparing the application, there's now a whole industry of essay coaches who, quote,

help students write their essays. All of these are things available to the wealthy that are not so available to low-income students. And it goes on and on. Early decision. If you're a low-income student and you know that you have to compare financial aid awards, you might not apply early. Plus, your parents weren't able to take off 10 days to go on a college trip and see your options. Everything in the process favors the wealthier applicant. And everything I just described is 100% legal.

If I was bothered by something that we heard from the U.S. attorney yesterday, it was sort of the assumption that he was cleaning up the only injustice in an otherwise meritocratic system. Yeah. It's not so meritocratic. I mean, and you're talking about sort of like the front end of admissions. But there's also, of course, like legacy admissions too, right? Absolutely. I mean, legacy admissions likely already have lots of advantages and are strong applicants because they're likely to be wealthy. If your mom and dad went to Harvard, you likely were raised in a good high school and so forth.

Yeah. But this raises real questions of fairness. Even Britain, which people think of as being kind of old school on class privilege, does not favor an Oxford grad's kids to get into Oxford. Bejan Steven, a member of our Vox Media family over at The Verge, said something yesterday like, wow, it looks like money was the real affirmative action all along. How much of our college admission system is benefiting white students over black students? Well, look, it's true. Money speaks. And if you are a multimillionaire black person, you could play this game as well. Now, when I was looking at the photos of those charged yesterday, they looked awfully white to me. It's the same with legacy admissions. Black alumni children and Asian alumni children

benefit. But overwhelmingly, we're talking about white people here. And if you look right now, there's this big lawsuit against Harvard University, which the plaintiffs hope will eventually go to the Supreme Court and may end the use of affirmative action in elite college admissions. In the documents that have come out in that case, the people bringing that case say that because Harvard helps Latino and black students, that's why fewer Asian students get in. Well, in fact, the legacy advantage and the athlete advantage are a big part of that. And it, the legacy advantage and the athlete advantage are a big part of that. And it's important to remember on the athlete advantage, the stereotype is that college athletes are African-American. But that is a stereotype based on football and basketball.

If you look at who is getting help these days, it's actually a lot of white people and generally reasonably well off white people. One of the new sports that's really spreading is lacrosse. Where do you play lacrosse? You play it in the suburbs. You don't play it on a street in an inner city. These are frequently sports that are played in wealthy suburbs. No crime in that. I grew up in a comfortable suburb. But to the extent that there are more and more advantages tied to certain activities, it happens that these are activities that are primarily used by white people. You're talking about sort of systemic advantages that colleges must be aware of. Are they doing anything to address all of this, the illegal stuff plus the legal stuff that we're talking about now?

Certainly many colleges are upping the aid that they give to low-income students, and some of them are admitting more. Frankly, if you are a low-income student and you get into a place like Stanford, you're going to get a very generous aid package. You probably won't have to borrow money. It's very good if you get in. But the reality is relatively few get in. But if you look systemically at the whole system, so for instance, a lot of talented minority students start at community colleges and then transfer. I'm a talented minority students start at community colleges and then transfer. I'm a talented minority who started at a community college and transferred, Scott. Good for you.

But most elite colleges don't admit many transfer students. Last year, Princeton University let in its first transfer students since 1990. They had a policy against admitting transfers. If you look at those who they admitted, they are more diverse than the regular students. They include veterans, a lot of people with a lot of experiences that the average Princeton undergrad may not have. And so that's wonderful. But that's a path at elite colleges only open to a few. If you look at public colleges, particularly in places like Florida, it's become the norm of how you get a bachelor's degree is you start at a community college. But that's a radical shift that most elite colleges don't want to even think about. What action could colleges take just right out of the gate here to make this system function better?

They could drop early decision, for instance. They could go test optional. If you look at the data on SAT and ACT scores, wealthier students do better. But then what would you decide on? Just grades or a fuller picture kind of option? You could decide just on grades. Or if you do use tests, and some people favor tests, you could use them in more limited ways. But there's a lot of concern

that colleges want a high average test score so that they look good in the U.S. News rankings. So a lot of these things are interconnected in ways that are a challenge for colleges to change. And I think more than this scandal would be required. There's this belief in America that like no matter who you are, you're going to get a fair shot, right? If you do the work, you're going to get a fair shot. Has this pierced that whole bubble a little bit? Look, I don't want to suggest that students shouldn't work hard, study hard, learn as much as they can. You are better off doing those things and will have more options, whether it's to go to a community college or a

public university. These are great institutions that advance many people. But many low-income students who could get in to an elite college don't realize it and don't apply. So a student should listen to that advice and work as hard as possible. At the same time, I do think it's important to be honest with students that they have the odds against them in a way that others don't. Scott Jasek. Jasek rhymes with classic. Is the editor and CEO of Inside Higher Ed. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Irene Oguchi is the executive producer. Luke Vander Ploeg, Noam Hassenfeld, Bridget McCarthy, and Afim Shapiro round out the team. Our intern is Siona Petros, and the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder drops beats. Thanks to Jared Paul, Christina Animashan, Brian Resnick, and Eliza Barkley for their help this week.

And thanks to you for rating and reviewing us wherever you listen. I give it a 10. A 10. A fucking 10. Thanks again to Brother for supporting the show today, for the brotherly love. Brother has a new investment tank printer that will change the way you ink,

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