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Actresses, prominent business owners charged in nationwide college admissions cheating scandal

nota bene said:
This is about acceptance into the school rather than about performance once accepted.
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Yep. College is like the rest of adulthood. One's got to perform on one's own, and unless one materially over-underperforms, nobody's going to notice.
 
Lets see...elizabeth warren cheats and claims to be a minority to get an unfair advantage over people who actually were minorities....leftist actors cheat to get their kids unfair advantages over others who deserved it. Both have the audacity to claim Trump is the dishonest one. Are we seeing a pattern yet dems?
 
pamak said:
Nooooo!

They donate their money because they are compassionate and believe that charities are the solution for helping common people receive any type of service. This is why the US is one of the countries with the highest rates of donations and highest rates of poverty and inequality...[sarcasm intended]
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Red:
Though your sarcasm was intended, people of means donate for reasons such as that you posited. That they do doesn't mean their doing so doesn't also come with certain perquisites. One'd be greatly naive to construe that both things -- charity and the perqs -- don't coexist in the minds of certain donors, and it'd be equally naive or cynical to think one or the other is absent in the minds of certain donors.
 
The Mark said:
No one does except him, the schools he went to and the officials who work/worked there, and maybe a few others.

I'm basing my statement on his actions, which to me indicate an idiot who probably got C's at best.
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What the public know is the grades Trump wasn't among the top academic performers in his class. His name is conspicuously absent from the listed names of students who graduated with honors. He thus was not the "excellent student" he claims to have been.
  • Was Trump really a top student at Wharton? His classmates say not so much

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While many folks are focused on the college admissions aspect of the matter, the thing that should concern one is the illegal conduct: the mail/wire fraud, racketeering, defrauding the US, and the conspiracy to commit such criminally culpable acts.

Plain and simple, as go private colleges and university, the notion that it's illegal to "finagle" one's way into admission is hardly illegal, however unethical it may be.
 
Xelor said:
Red:
Though your sarcasm was intended, people of means donate for reasons such as that you posited. That they do doesn't mean their doing so doesn't also come with certain perquisites. One'd be greatly naive to construe that both things -- charity and the perqs -- don't coexist in the minds of certain donors, and it'd be equally naive or cynical to think one or the other is absent in the minds of certain donors.
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Valid point, but as long as the donations of the wealthiest class on the planet is not enough to provide the services that poor get in other developed countries, it shows that the wealthy in the US are incapable of offering better solutions through their ideology of using charities to address social problems. And this reflects the fact that even though there is in the minds of some donors some form of willingness to help those in need, it is not enough to provide superior outcomes compared to the "socialist" policies of other developed counties.
 
trouble13 said:
Your position [is] that it isn't a very big deal that parents are using their wealth to pay for their kids to cheat their children's applications to get them accepted.
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Context is "everything." If the parents do so in the right way, I don't have a problem with their using their wealth to secure their kids' admission. The way(s) the parents involved in the matter for which they've now been indicted was not among the right ways, and I don't condone the parents' having used such modes to get their kids admitted to the respective schools.
 
Xelor said:
Context is "everything." If the parents do so in the right way, I don't have a problem with their using their wealth to secure their kids' admission. The way(s) the parents involved in the matter for which they've now been indicted was not among the right ways, and I don't condone the parents' having used such modes to get their kids admitted to the respective schools.
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In other words, you have a problem with meritocracy...
 
AlphaOmega said:
Lets see...elizabeth warren cheats and claims to be a minority to get an unfair advantage over people who actually were minorities....leftist actors cheat to get their kids unfair advantages over others who deserved it. Both have the audacity to claim Trump is the dishonest one. Are we seeing a pattern yet dems?
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What?
 
Xelor said:
Context is "everything." If the parents do so in the right way, I don't have a problem with their using their wealth to secure their kids' admission. The way(s) the parents involved in the matter for which they've now been indicted was not among the right ways, and I don't condone the parents' having used such modes to get their kids admitted to the respective schools.

pamak said:
In other words, you have a problem with meritocracy...
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How you arrived at that inference is what it is...You just keep thinking your "other words" aptly summarize my above remarks....
  • A person's remarks about what they don't object to in no way indicates what they condone.
 
AlphaOmega said:
Lets see...elizabeth warren cheats and claims to be a minority to get an unfair advantage over people who actually were minorities....leftist actors cheat to get their kids unfair advantages over others who deserved it. Both have the audacity to claim Trump is the dishonest one. Are we seeing a pattern yet dems?
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They cheat and use fraud in elections, why stop at that?
 
Xelor said:
How you arrived at that inference is what it is...You just keep thinking your "other words" aptly summarize my above remarks....
  • A person's remarks about what they don't object to in no way indicates what they condone.
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If you do not object to parents using their wealth to secure their kids' admission to universities, you essentially condone the practice of having certain kids beat their competitors by using to their advantage their family's wealth instead of using solely their intellect and performance. Is this meritocratic?
 
Xelor said:
Red:
???
  • Did you go to college?
  • What specific "they" (designate a job title) do you have in mind?
  • Did you not notice that coaches were "in" on the gig? What do you think was going on? The football coach was sneaking in students as members of the crew team and praying the crew coach wouldn't notice, or vice versa?
These were universities, not swanky boarding schools or any other kind of institution that educates minors. (And FWIW, part of what's "prep" about prep school is their willingness to let students flunk out.)

As for whether a student of any prior academic background is struggling or not, nobody is going to notice such a thing because once one's admitted, nobody's who's teaching them is interested enough in their high school performance to bother looking to begin with.

The central administration won't notice anything until their exception processing software programs tell them to send the student notice that they're either suspended or expelled for academic reasons, or that the student's performance is exceptional enough to have earned him/her some sort of plaudit. It's college. The students are adults. Nobody is mollycoddling them. If they perform, they perform; if they don't, they don't. It's all up to the student and the consequences of doing either appear "out of the blue" and without warning. One gets all the warning one is going to get when one matriculates and if one accepts scholarships or other financial aid, when one "signs on the dotted line."
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You seem to be taking my criticism personally. Is there something you want to share?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
If it were a rich parent giving a PRIVATE university a million dollars in exchange for allowing their kid who didn't quite make the cut to be admitted there would be no problem with that. However, this would be with the university, not thru a fraud against the university that didn't see a penny. It also should be illegal if a public university in part paid for by the government.
 
Xelor said:
Yep. College is like the rest of adulthood. One's got to perform on one's own, and unless one materially over-underperforms, nobody's going to notice.
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You tell that to helicopter parents.
 
Another angle to be outraged...

Prosecutors allege that Singer instructed parents to donate funds to a fake charity he had established as part of the scheme. Most of the parents paid at least $200,000, but some spent up to $6.5 million to guarantee their children admission to top universities, authorities said. The parents were then able to deduct the donation from their income taxes, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

link...​
 
Xelor said:
What are "helicopter parents?"
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Those who argue with high school coaches about the composition of the team to make sure that their sweethearts play as much as possible regardless of what the coach thinks.
That's another big issue in the US education...Essentially the public subsidizes US professional teams by creating and supporting an infrastructure that develops the new generation of professional athletes. I mean soccer is very popular in Europe too and the professional teams there are all about money, but to my knowledge Europeans do not link their education system so close to professional sports. Barcelona and Real will not use public education funds to develop the future stars of soccer.
 
Xelor said:
What are "helicopter parents?"
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hel·i·cop·ter par·ent
nounINFORMAL

plural noun: helicopter parents

  • a parent who takes an overprotective or excessive interest in the life of their child or children.
    "some college officials see all this as the behavior of an overindulged generation, raised by helicopter parents and lacking in resilience"

 
pamak said:
There are plausible scenarios which can explain such change. It may be injuries, or personal problems which contributed to a loss of focus, etc. Besides, there are many students who did not earn their entrance as a result of their high sat scores or athletic skills. Many kids of alumni secure a position inside else universities because of their parents' academic performance. Such kids usually graduate with an average of "C" (see Bush).
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The last time I looked, legacies at some elite universities had higher GPAs than other students. The top two men in the class ahead of me in College were both legacies and both earned BS/MS diplomas. One earned Masters at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then a Harvard Law Degree. The other guy had a BS/MS in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, a masters in some liberal arts as Rhodes Scholar and then a PhD. He is a professor at Yale Medical school. Another top student in that class-her father was an alum, Clerked for one of the Supreme Court Justices. In fact, IIRC, 8 of the 15 or so junior Phi Beta Kappa selections were legacies. The top student in the class two years ahead of me is a legacy, she is the Daughter of the former Chairman of the NY Liberal Party. She earned a masters as a Rhodes Scholar and then went to HLS. She was a top rated federal prosecutor before joining a major league law firm.
 
Xelor said:
What are "helicopter parents?"
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A "helicopter parent" is one hovers, one who is excessively focused on his or her child's education, activities, and/or social life. And "child" is important; I never thought I'd live to see the day when this became a thing at the college level. It is, though, with parents phoning profs to ask about grades and class performance when FERPA prevents such a conversation (and sometimes appearing out of nowhere at the prof's office) and also deans.

So while there are many mature students, including 15 and 16-year olds, and many more who are age-appropriate immature, there are also some who are cases of arrested development who are a burden to deal with.

From Psychology Today:

Only a few studies have examined the effects of helicopter parenting. It is a relatively new cultural phenomenon, at least on a large scale (there have always been overbearing parents, but they were a rarity, and we used to laugh at them). It takes time to realize that something fundamental in parenting has shifted and time for scientists to suspect that it may cause problems, and more time for them to pinpoint and define the elements of intrusive parenting so that they can then study its effects. That is just now happening. Leading the charge is Chris Segrin of the University of Arizona, along with Michelle Givertz of Cal State at Chico and Neil Montgomery of Keene State College.

...Now that there are validated criteria defining overparenting, other researchers can study its effects. In the meantime, the latest study by Chris Segrin and colleagues shows that overparenting young adults breeds narcissism and poor coping skiils. Helicopter Parenting—It's Worse Than You Think | Psychology Today
 
Jack Hays said:
hel·i·cop·ter par·ent
nounINFORMAL

plural noun: helicopter parents

  • a parent who takes an overprotective or excessive interest in the life of their child or children.
    "some college officials see all this as the behavior of an overindulged generation, raised by helicopter parents and lacking in resilience"
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A wonderful counter to helicopter parents is former NY DN writer Lenore Skenazy ("the world's worst mom")
 
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