The college admissions cheating scandal: news and updates

When people find out I used to work as a dean of admissions at an elite liberal arts university, they want to gab about the wealthy and famous, bribes and scandal, the boogeyman of affirmative action. People want soap opera storylines.

Rarely do they ask about why the admissions process exists as it does, the ideals and values that shape these processes and why they might be worthy of contemplation.

Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, officially pleaded not guilty on April 29 to taking part in the college admissions scandal that has left 50 people facing federal fraud charges after an FBI investigation into an elaborate scheme to get their children into elite universities. Despite Loughlin’s plea, her connection to the explosive news story — that she and Giannulli allegedly bribed University of Southern California officials with $500,000 to get their daughters, including influencer Olivia Jade, into USC — seems to have already damaged her reputation.

Loughlin’s professional life has been rocked in the fallout of the scandal: The Hallmark Channel darling starred in two of the network’s long-running TV and movie series, the fan-favorite drama When Calls the Heart and the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries series Garage Sale Mystery, along with seemingly countless Christmas movies.

Jail began to get crowded on Saturday Night Live: The show skewered a number of recent high-profile arrests in a cold open featuring Lori Loughlin, Michael Avenatti, Julian Assange, and Tekashi 6ix9ine bragging about their crimes.

Loughlin, played by Kate McKinnon, tries to one-up her cellmates (played by Chris Redd, Kenan Thompson, and Kyle Mooney) with tales of her “loco” crimes, explaining she “paid 500 grand to get my daughter into USC.”

Of the scores of people who allegedly took part in a wide-ranging college admissions scam to get the children of wealthy parents into top-ranked colleges, 14 of them will plead guilty to bribery and mail fraud charges, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

According to the Department of Justice, 13 parents, including actress Felicity Huffman, and one former college tennis coach have accepted plea deals, though their sentences are yet to be determined.

The least surprising revelation of the great American college bribery scandal that came to light a couple of weeks ago is that elites are willing to spend truly extraordinary amounts of money to get their kids into brand-name schools — by any means necessary, in this instance.

Actress Lori Loughlin spent some $550,000 to get her daughter, Olivia Jade, into the University of Southern California. A Yale soccer coach got $400,000 to falsely claim a student as a recruit. And now the 50 indictees in the case are working their way through federal court.

It’s been one week since federal authorities announced that 50 people — including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman — participated in a massive scam focused on getting wealthy children accepted to elite universities.

The scandal has sparked an intense discussion about wealth, privilege, and access to America’s most selective schools. But the ongoing fallout, and other recent stories about race-conscious admissions at Harvard and growing racial disparities in New York City’s selective high schools, provide a chance to examine a larger issue: how racial, educational, and economic inequality and discrimination collide to create a system where low-income students of color — particularly black and Hispanic students — struggle to access a quality education.

A massive college cheating scandal was uncovered this week. Dozens of wealthy parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, have been accused of using bribes to get their children into exclusive colleges. I read the list of the 50 defendants and noticed something: Nearly all of them appeared to be white.

As a researcher who studies race and elite universities, I know that when many Americans hear “college fraud,” they associate it with people of color. Whether that’s black students getting into school solely because of affirmative action or Asian-American students pushed by merciless “tiger moms” to do whatever it takes, popular stereotypes around race tend to fuel the idea that people of color are “cheating” their ways into elite schools.

When the Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday that dozens of people were accused of participating in a scam to bribe and lie their kids’ way into colleges, one question kept coming up: why?

These parents — actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, casino executive Gamal Abdelaziz, and vineyard owner and Democratic donor Agustin Huneeus among them — were generally wealthy. Their kids did not need a degree from a selective college in order to support themselves — Loughlin’s daughter Olivia, for her part, didn’t particularly want to go to school. So why risk criminal charges just to get your child into college?

In the first paragraph of the affidavit explaining the college fraud scandal that broke Tuesday, one sentence in particular stood out to me. Of the 33 parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, who were accused of engaging in elaborate bribery schemes to get their kids into elite schools, several of the parents allegedly “extended time for their children on college entrance exams ... including by having the children purport to have learning disabilities in order to obtain the [necessary] medical documentation.”

As someone who is disabled, my blood boiled. I thought about all of the shame and embarrassment I had felt for needing, and sometimes using, accommodations for the ESPA, GEPA, ACT, LSAT, and bar exam. While I am no longer ashamed about needing accommodations, I do feel deep contempt for the people abusing these accommodations so they can succeed in a system that is built for them.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced charges against 50 people, including a handful of famous actors, for allegedly participating in an elaborate scheme to get their children into top colleges. According to court documents, the parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars — and in some cases, more than a million — to fake their children’s SAT and ACT scores, help them pose as successful athletes, and generally fudge their applications so they’d get into schools of their choice.

As Vox’s Jane Coaston wrote, there’s a simple explanation for the cheating scandal: The parents who were allegedly involved wanted to get their kids into the colleges of their choice, but their kids didn’t have what it takes to get there on their own. Another question, however, is why these parents may have turned to bribery and fraud when the wealthy have so many legal resources for padding their kids’ applications.

The college admissions scandal that started with a wide-ranging investigation of wealthy parents paying to fraudulently get their kids into colleges and ended with indictments against actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, among others, has caused an uproar, and understandably so.

As I wrote on Tuesday:

The details of the revelations that wealthy parents allegedly paid a consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to portray their children as successful athletes, thus giving them a leg up in elite college admissions, are enticingly, delightfully juicy. (Jane Coaston’s explainer has some of the best anecdotes, including students being portrayed as top recruits in sports they’d never even played.)

But underneath the celebrity gossip and the choice anecdotes is the inescapable conclusion that the whole business of being admitted to elite colleges in America in 2019 — and make no mistake, it is a business — is corrupt all the way down.

Fifty people, including Full House actress Lori Loughlin and actress Felicity Huffman, are facing federal fraud charges after an FBI investigation into an elaborate scheme to get their children into elite universities.

The Department of Justice, which announced the charges Tuesday, says Loughlin, Huffman, and dozens of others allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes to get their children admitted to Yale, Stanford, and other schools.