Posted on 03/13/2019 1:36:28 PM PDT by Steely Tom
Only Professor Dershowitz's words here:
Nobody can diminish the importance of this, involving as it does, some of the major, major universities in the country. Look every individual who's charged should be presumed innocent. We have to wait and hear the evidence, but this involves the most elite universities, coaches, the SAT, the ACT, this is really one of the great scandals of the twenty-first century. Having said that, I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. Remember, this doesn't involve the super- super-rich. The super-super-rich buy buildings for the university. They donate hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. They don't have to worry about their kids getting in.
This involves the very rich, the people who can't quite afford to give a building, but can afford to spend five or six million dollars, and once this investigation is complete, we will see that although this person, Singer, if the allegations are true, went over any possible line, and did clearly commit crimes and apparently he's pleading guilty, that in some respects this is a matter of degree, that we will see other mini-scandals, involving contributions to universities, coaches who are prepared to stretch the rules…
Look, at bottom, you know the fault of this lies in the fact that we've abolished grades at universities, in many parts of the country, nobody fails anymore cause if we went back to the situation that occurred when I started teaching at Harvard, almost sixty years ago, this couldn't work, because these students would fail out. It didn't pay for them to come into a college because they wouldn't make it through if they didn't have the academic resources to make it.
But today, nobody fails, and today, nobody gets bad grades, nobody even gets C's, and in many universities they've abolished grades, so there's no way of testing whether they are qualified or competent once they get into college, many just sail through, because of the way universities have decided to treat their students.
So, I think we will see this as the tip of a very, very deep iceberg.
Look, I don't believe there should be special slots for athletes. Colleges are not supposed to be about athletics. Athletics are supposed to be collateral, but today kids who aren't qualified, or minimally qualified, get in because they're a good quarterback or a good soccer player. That's the beginning of the problem, now this case doesn't involve that, this case involves overt cheating, and particularly on the SATs, and bribery, and so it crosses a line, but I think once this investigation unfolds, we'll see that there's more to this than just the really bad at one end of this spectrum, that it's a continuum.
This is RICO, racketeering, it involves an enterprise, obviously the Singer company is the enterprise, and through the enterprise they committed these crimes of bribery, of fraud, of cheating. And RICO carries a very, very significant criminal sentence. It also has civil liability, and we're going to see this thing spread.
Questions are whether the kids who got in should have their diplomas revoked, what if they got A-plusses, and what if they did very, very well. It involves obviously the coaches, each of whom is presumed innocent, some of whom took the money for themselves, according to this indictment, some of whom shared the money with the university. The real question is how high up in the university does this go, and how high up in the SAT and ACT does this go.
You know, I hope it doesn't bring about the result of abolishing the SAT or abolishing the ACT, that would be a terrible mistake, it would mean that kids get into a university based on who their parents are, their personalities, collateral factors like race and other issues. We still need standardized testing, but now we've seen this standardized testing being corrupted itself, so this is a major, major scandal, it involves every aspect of admissions to universities.
I hope I'm right, by saying Harvard isn't involved, because at least at the moment, the university that I taught at for fifty years doesn't seem to be involved though the university I went to, Yale Law School, does seem involved.
It's just such a tragedy. It's a tragedy for kids who didn't get into college because other kids cheated their way into college. It's a tragedy for innocent people at these universities, who will now be suspect, and so we have to carefully look at the evidence and make sure that the presumption of innocence remains, but that if there is evidence of guilt, the guilty are punished.
This one part (above) just isn't true. Students do still fail classes, although they usually "drop" or "withdraw" in time to avoid the "F" on the transcript.
Unless he's talking only about the "top" universities... (?)
Hillary Clinton as the biggest violator of pay to play of all time is laughing her azz off. She triple dog dares anyone to go after her and the Clinton Crime Syndicate. I guarantee Chelsea horse teeth was never smart enough to get into anywhere she applied nor is she worthy of any of the degrees paid for.
I’d hazard a guess that, based upon his records at the Military School he attended, his stature as a leader there, etc., he sailed into Wharton on his own, like the aircraft carrier, USS RONALD W. REAGAN.
I noticed that MIT and CalTech were not involved.
Yale Law School was not involved, Yale undergraduate school was.
That reminds me ..has obama released his college records yet?
Good point. Then again, colleges like MIT are dream colleges only to students who actually want to learn something.
Yes, it's hard to believe thugs in the FBI and DOJ are doing a criminal investigation that isn't political for their 'friends' in the Democrat Party.
I have a professor friend at USA and he says that the university software grading system, that he has to use, will not allow a fail to be entered.
For a liberal he’s usually spot on.
One of those Hollywood actresses paid a bribe of $500,000 to get her kid into USC.
1. You'd have to be retarded to pay that kind of money just to have your child admitted to a university. You could pay your way through an undergraduate program and BOTH medical school and law school for the kind of money these dopes were pissing away.
2. USC must look at this and be thinking of ways to admit more wealthy kids whose parents are willing to pay that much money to get their kids into the school.
I dunno.
I once paid $300 bucks per person to get into a club, that if I had waited another I would have gotten in for $50 per.
Sometimes it’s worth it....
Oh, and the club sucked. I left after 30 minutes.
I highly doubt anyone is going to investigate the circumstances of PDJT’s acceptance at Wharton....50 years ago. And why do you doubt his father donated money to Wharton? Maybe he did. How do you think the Kennedy’s got into Harvard? The Bushes into Yale? etc. etc. Rich people donating money to get their offspring into top schools has been happening for quite awhile.
After these revelations, any company that is serious about hiring the best employees will administer its own tests to job applicants, and it will forget about whatever colleges applicants may have attended or if they attended college at all.
Look, at bottom, you know the fault of this lies in the fact that we’ve abolished grades at universities, in many parts of the country, nobody fails anymore cause if we went back to the situation that occurred when I started teaching at Harvard, almost sixty years ago, this couldn’t work, because these students would fail out.
- -
And there is the problem. The feedback loop has been deliberately broken. Now you just show up and you get a degree.
Well, in a way the scandal is a good thing as it exposes the crime and fraud that is “higher education”.
CNN’s Don Lemon ties Donald Trump to college admissions cheating scheme.
Yes, but going open-loop is so liberating.
Of course going open-loop inevitably leads to going non-linear, which is also interesting and can be the source of lots of news stories.
QUOTE: For some reason this story makes me want to watch Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield again.
“Phil. In Mr. Melon’s defense, it was a really big check.”
Companies are doing that now, especially in the computer science field. They found that a college degree doesn't mean you're prepared for the job.
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