question archive Essay: 2 page essay on the passage below
Essay: 2 page essay on the passage below
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Essay: 2 page essay on the passage below.
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In March 2019, news broke that the FBI had uncovered a scheme in which 50 wealthy parents had paid a combined $25 million dollars to get their children admitted to elite universities like Stanford and Yale between 2011 and 2019. The list of people charged included celebrity parents Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, as well as high-profile executives, attorneys, university athletic coaches, an expert test-taker, and standardized testing professionals.219
At the center of the scandal was William “Rick” Singer, a college-prep consultant who had masterminded the operation under the cover of his federally registered 501(c)3 charity, Key Worldwide Foundation.220
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HOW DID IT WORK?
Singer used several strategies to bolster the parents’ chances of snagging prestigious university spots for their kids. One tactic was to direct the parents to a psychologist who would evaluate their children for learning disabilities. Singer suggested parents tell their kids to “be stupid . . . be slow . . . be not as bright” in order to receive a diagnosis that would permit the students to have extended or unlimited time as well as an individual room for the ACT and SAT college entrance exams.221 For some students, this was enough to improve test scores.
Parents who wanted additional help made sizable “charitable donations” to Singer’s nonprofit—between $15,000 and $75,000 per test—to have an expert test-taker, now identified as Mark Riddell, complete exams for their kids. This ploy had parents traveling to one of two centers where exam administrators Igor Dvorskiy and Niki Williams would be waiting to pocket $10,000 per test to allow Riddell to either take the exams himself, correct the kids’ responses, or feed them the correct answers as they were testing. Riddell also earned approximately $10,000 per test. Many of the children who benefited were unaware of the test-cheating scheme.222
Other maneuvers included Singer creating phony athletic profiles for the students, then paying bribes to college coaches for spots on their team rosters. In one case, parents paid Singer $1.2 million to secure their daughter’s admission to Yale. Singer created a fake athletic profile for the girl, sent it to Yale soccer coach Rudolph “Rudy” Meredith, and, after she was admitted, cut Meredith a check for $400,000.223
GUILTY AS CHARGED
At some point during the investigation, Singer, Riddell, and Meredith agreed to become “cooperating witnesses” for the FBI. They wore wire taps that recorded their conversations with wealthy parents, and they turned over incriminating e-mails related to the scheme. The three agreed to enter guilty pleas and to cooperate fully with the investigation in exchange for what they hoped would be more lenient sentencing.224
Singer pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, money laundering conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.225 He told U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel, “I am absolutely responsible for it,” adding that “I put everything in place. I put all the people in place and made the payments directly.”226
Actress Felicity Huffman was the first parent sentenced in the admissions scandal. She pleaded guilty to fraud, and the court ordered that she serve a 14-day jail term, pay a $30,000 fine, and complete 250 hours of community service. John Vandemoer, the former Stanford University sailing coach who had accepted a total of $610,000 in bribes, pleaded guilty to racketeering. The court ordered that he serve one day in prison, spend two years on supervised release, and pay a $10,000 fine.227 As of this writing, real-estate executive Toby MacFarlane has received the longest prison sentence of anyone involved. The court sentenced MacFarlane to six months in prison, two years of supervised release, 200 hours of community service, and a $150,000 fine for paying $450,000 for athletic spots at USC for his son and daughter.228
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
In spite of their guilty pleas, are Singer and these parents, coaches, and administrators the only ones responsible for the largest college admissions scandal in Department of Justice history? It is likely that systemic factors played a role as well.
Many of the parents involved cited the intense pressure surrounding college admissions that plagues both students and parents. Indeed, a lucrative industry of test preparation and tutoring has blossomed in response to this pressure. In spite of research that shows no substantial link between a person’s undergraduate degree–granting institution and their subsequent successes, many parents hold tight to the belief that their kids can only truly succeed if they have a degree from an exclusive school.229 Sadly, the academic achievement race often starts as early as kindergarten, with more and more teachers leaving the teaching profession rather than participate in overly structured, rigorous, testing-focused environments that they believe are akin to child abuse.230
And what about the broader system of college admissions? Are current admissions criteria doing a good job of selecting the most promising and most deserving students? Studies suggest that standardized test scores don’t predict much more than first-year grades and retention rates, but SAT and ACT scores remain the gold standard in admissions decisions across the spectrum of colleges and universities. Other factors that play a role in students’ chances of getting into their school of choice include whether they attended a private high school, their family socioeconomic status, and their gender (females often are victims of discrimination in the college admissions process).231
When asked how she felt about the scandal, Mia M., a student at Martin Luther King High, said, “We have created a mentality that we must be the best at all costs. Grades are valued over integrity, and alternative facts prevail over truth. Constant comparisons make us become desperate to be perfect.” Alex Lee, a student at Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC, expressed his sadness over the scandal, saying, “I feel sorry for everyone in this situation. The parents, because they feel as if this is the only way to create happiness for their children, the students because some had no idea, and especially those students who worked so hard and got pushed out by those with more money to spare.”232
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Who Is to Blame for the College Admissions Scandal?
Over the past few years, the college admission scandal has caused a fuss over the media. The stories written in different journals and newspapers vary. The fraudsters are uniquely identified in every scenario, but it is the same old; the more the money, the more the influence. I would blame the federal government’s perspective on education. The U.S. government cannot emphasize enough the importance of education in success (Barnard, 2019). It has created a notion that the best education is found in the best schools. Therefore, the students and the parents feel the pressure to join elite universities at all costs and at the expense of other things that matter, such as integrity.
Additionally, parents want their children to succeed and believe that an exclusive school degree would get them there. The social pressures given to the parents to offer their children the best education is detrimental. Parents are willing to strain their pockets to ensure their children are successful. They also believe that happiness results from success; hence, they pay enormous amounts to maintain it. Unfortunately, research disapproves of such association, saying no significant relationship exists between an individual’s success and the institution they attended (Lowers & Associates, 2019). Such myths have caused many parents to go the extra mile, such as creating fake athletic student profiles so they could get admitted. In this case, the students are ignorant and do not have the slightest idea of the corrupt admission system. According to the case, some hardworking individuals did not get admitted because their spaces were bought. It is important to advocate for more student participation in their education life and increase their awareness t make informed decisions for their future.
The text’s context displays a misunderstanding of what role education plays in society. Some myths have significantly perpetrated the society that it has corrupted a system meant to establish equality. When the most privileged get to study in the best schools while those who genuinely deserved the positions are kicked out, the bridge between the haves and the have-not continues to widen. Therefore, stakeholders (students and parents) need to realize the importance of education and its role in society (Lowers & Associates, 2019). Strategies such as equalizing the admissions process regardless of previous schools will save parents the hustle to secure positions. The academic profession requires serious restructuring to include more liberty for the professionals and students (Lowers & Associates, 2019). Instead of engaging in a test-focused, an overly rigorous and over-structured system believed to exacerbate child abuse, teachers are leaving.
In this case, the students are the victims of their parent’s actions. The parents are using the individualistic ethical approach guided by the principle of working to ensure best interests are covered in the long run, which ultimately should be each person’s self-interest (Riazifar, 2015). However, this is flawed because the parents’ best interests may not be the child’s self-interest. Therefore, the parents’ actions are rationalized by the fact that education is in the child’s self-interest because of the need to succeed and fulfill their goal.
