College Admissions Scandal Exposes Insecurity In Some Rich Folks

Pay for play, or rather, pay for admission, has been around higher education for years. Everyone knows that at the elite (and even below the elite) levels, money buys access.

That doesn’t make it right, and that is a conversation that we absolutely should be having.

But the brazen nature of the scheme that today saw the indictments of around 50 people drop, including fashion designer Massimo Giannulli; actress Lori Loughlin, his wife; and actress Felicity Huffman, is staggering.

We are talking straight cash, homie.

Boatloads of cash in some instances.

Huffman paid $15,000 for assurance of admission by having a fake proctor oversee the administration of her daughter’s SAT exam.

Loughlin and Giannulli paid $500,000 (!) to get their daughters into the University of Southern California. They had them designated as members of the rowing crew. They don’t row.

All told, over the course of 7 years, $25,000,000 was taken in by the government’s main cooperating witness, who owned the consulting business at the heart of this case.

There is wholly a lot going on with this case, and a lot of it is absurd on its surface. Several of the bribe takers have been fired today including an administrator and a coach at USC and a coach at Stanford. It is worth reading through the complaint filed by the federal government because it is bananas.

The people who were indicted today are not just the three I named; they are the biggest names. But there are CEOs, business owners…even a member of the faculty at USC was busted.

The machinations involved here weren’t driven by the students. The scam involved the parents, and that is where the blame lays. The insecurity, the desire that fueled this scheme was driven by the parents in most respects.

It could be not wanting to deny something to their child. It could be native insecurity about their child not measuring up. It could be desiring to live vicariously though the wholly bought and paid for success of their child for getting into Yale or USC or Georgetown.

The level of insecurity that is on display here is refreshing in some respects and sad in most of them. I think there is a larger point that is going to get buried beneath the jokes and the allegations, though. And that point is that we need to focus less on obsessing over the “elite” institutions of higher education.

The framing of the conversations we have around higher education need to change and be more inclusive of all institutional types instead of obsessing over what amounts to a tiny proportion of the institutions in this country.

The dialogue, to me, needs to be centered more around fit. Now, that fit can take on different forms, as it depends on what one wants to prioritize. It could be program/major fit, campus climate and culture, activities, etc.

We need to be encouraging high school students and their families to factor in a variety of things instead of just the name on the gate. If a quality education is what you seek, that education can be found at many different institutions.

Spend less time obsessing about where you’re going and focus instead on what you are going to do there.