Operation Varsity Blues

Money indeed gives the wealthy access to certain spaces that other people can’t have. An example of one such space is – Education. In today’s world, education has become a commodity; one can even say that it has become one of the major avenues for people to capitalize on. The recent college admissions scandal in 2019, Operation Varsity Blues proves the above statement to be true. 

The Varsity Blues controversy involved a criminal scheme to sway student admissions at numerous prestigious American institutions. The criminal mastermind behind this plot, Rick Singer, claimed that he unethically helped more than 750 families’ children gain admission to colleges. Singer used the competitive educational environment to his advantage and played on guarantee by giving assurance to willing parents about a secured future for their kids. 

One could question how Singer was able to carry out the admissions fraud at the top American institutions. According to the unsealed case proceedings, he accepted payments from willing parents to bribe exam administrators to enable cheating on college and university entrance exams. He also paid coaches of elite universities to nominate unqualified candidates as elite recruited athletes, facilitating the applicants’ admission. 

Both the athletic department and the admissions office take a coach’s word for the athletic caliber of the applicant that they are admitting. Rick Singer took advantage of this; he bribed the college team coaches to pretend that the applicants were athletes and got students with no real achievements in sports accepted into the best of universities as sports recruits.  Further, accommodations are provided for people with learning disabilities while taking university entrance exams. This was another one of the avenues that Rick Singer exploited. He fabricated medical conditions for his client’s children and often bribed that proctor to tamper with the scores to get the desired results.

“The criminal mastermind behind this plot, Rick Singer, claimed that he unethically helped more than 750 families’ children gain admission to colleges. Singer used the competitive educational environment to his advantage and played on guarantee by giving assurance to willing parents about a secured future for their kids.”

Now, the question that comes to mind is that Rick Singer was doing this for money but what caused the parents to take this poignant route?

In modern times, colleges have become a status symbol. Studying at an “elite institution” is no longer getting about quality education, it has become about bragging rights. Attending “prestigious” institutions is one way of quickly climbing up the social ladder. And this continues to serve as a vital incentive for parents to go to such extreme lengths as using the “back door” and indulging in bribery practices.

While the US feds have managed to shut down most of the “side doors” via Operation Varsity Blues, how do we curb the “back door” problem? Or better yet, can we do away with back doors altogether? The back door is when a particular university or educational institute agrees to give the applicant a second look for huge “donations” made to their pockets. While these back doors do not guarantee acceptance to the said college, it gives some applicants an edge over others owing to their vast wealth. This also curtails the relatively poorer candidates’ fair chance of getting into esteemed colleges and receiving a quality education. 

It was in the 1980s when magazines and other publications started ranking colleges on different parameters. It was only then that people started differentiating prestigious colleges from the supposedly non-prestigious ones. Consequently, colleges became extremely selective in admitting students. This was because, if a college adopted very selective and strict policies for accepting applications, it became more prestigious, and this enabled it to get a higher ranking. The creation of such a system of prestige among colleges poses a great problem in the admissions scandal. This is because even if we find a way to expose the ‘back door’, the colleges could always turn the narrative around and use it as leverage. They could use it to boost their rankings and prestige because if they were not as valuable, why would parents around the world potentially risk jail time and fill their pockets with millions of dollars in donations to get their children admitted? This makes the backdoor situation paradoxical in nature. 

The worldview is that colleges accept applications based on pure merit along with affirmative action with minorities for better representation of the underprivileged. However, it is rarely so simple.

The college fundraising department flags the candidates who make generous donations to various college programs and while this may not guarantee admission, it certainly increases their chances of getting in. Apart from this, universities also accept some applicants under their athletics recruitment scheme, one of the many programs that Rick Singer exploited. Under this program, they give priority to students who play niche sports like water polo, horseback riding, fencing etc. While some sports activities are much more accessible, niche sports activities are much more prevalent among the wealthy upper-class. This is because they have the funds to afford the same.  

Additionally, there have been several arguments about how standardized testing favours the rich. Admission counsellors and other resources pivotal to getting a good score on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT are expensive. A good test preparation coaching guaranteeing a 400-point improvement on these tests costs about $1200. This may sound like a good investment at first but one can only make the said investment if they have a disposable income to match the costs. This is where privilege and money play a vital role. Students who have access to such resources are more likely to score in the higher score brackets.

This also explains why quality education has become a “privilege” and is no longer an achievement; or even a basic human right for that matter. Additionally, it also highlights why educationalists have been urging to do away with the system of standardized testing altogether. 

However, to blame the same on the parents would be foolish. While they are a part of the problem, it is the universities and other educational institutions that have created a system with a plethora of loopholes and policies that favour kids belonging to particularly wealthy and privileged families. We cannot look down upon the rich for simply possessing wealth, however, we must hold the educational authorities accountable for valuing wealth over academic credentials. For the same reason, the focus of criticism should be the educational institutions that have opened up the avenues for such unethical activities to take place.

In my opinion, back door entrance to universities poses a much greater threat than the “side door” problem mainly due to the legalities involved. While side-door admissions are done through intermediaries such as Rick Singer, back-door admissions involve the college authorities themselves. Side-door admission scandals only implicate the lower-level administrative executives in stark contrast to back-door admissions which run up to the top-level authorities of colleges. If one was to compare both vis-à-vis the legalities, side door admissions are outright illegal. However, under back door admissions, college authorities only agree to review the application more leniently in exchange for generous donations. Also, there is no way through which law enforcement authorities can prove that such donations are tied to the admission of any underqualified candidate. Hence, back-door admissions are not only legal to a certain extent, but they are also unconcealed from the world.

Jared Kushner is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to the then-US President, Donald Trump. According to his school administrator, Jared did not have the merit to make it to Harvard; however, he was mysteriously admitted to the prestigious Ivy League.  It was later reported that his father Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 Million to Harvard University right before Jared got accepted. While this sounds alarming, no investigation took place to get to the bottom of the truth.

On the other hand, Olivia Jade, daughter of fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli and actress Lori Loughlin was a prominent name that popped up during the investigation of the Varsity Blues scandal. Her mother spent 2 months in jail after admitting to paying $500,000 to get Olivia into USC as a fake rowing recruit. 

While both sets of parents used their wealth and resources to get their children into prestigious colleges, only one of them got into legal trouble for it. The stark contrast between the consequences of both situations is alarming and makes one wonder if we can ever get rid of back-door admissions altogether? 

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