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There have always been rumors of individuals who have cheated to get into college. Sometimes it was through paying off people when you took the test (under the table – highly illegal and in many cases never proven) or wealthy families paying the university of their choice a lot of money to ignore grades and to just accept a student.
However, finally, some light has been shed on one situation and justice has been served.
As reported by NBC, “Hollywood actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman are among 50 people charged in a $25 million college entrance exam cheating scheme.”
Essentially what happened was people paid off others to accept students even if they didn’t qualify – such as getting athletic scholarships even if they had no talent, getting into highly competitive universities even if they didn’t stack up.
Yale and Stanford University are just two if the elite colleges that were caught up in this.
Operation Varsity Blues, as the FBI operation is called, uncovered a network of extremely wealthy families who paid an individual to help get their kids into schools and even have people take the college exams for their kids. Bribing college officials was also a part of this.
Between $200,000 and $2.5 million was used to bribe individuals (NBC, 2019).
Personal Thoughts
I’m quite happy that something has been done about this and it has been brought to light, but this is just one of many cases. There’s been rumors for years about this kind of stuff happening, however in this case, the individual running the scheme got caught and the FBI did a fantastic job.
When people do this, pay off individuals and fudge test scores, it screws the whole system up for everyone else. Individuals who work hard and put money into the system do not get an equal return. Additionally, colleges who accept these payouts hurt themselves over time if they accept too many ‘dumb’ individuals. Their average GPA will drop and that can hurt their reputation.
Sadly though, when college are caught up in this, they generally don’t have it effect them for too long. People will forget because elite schools will always be elite schools.
However, this is a step in the right direction.
Cheating is always wrong. It’s one thing to cheat on an answer for a test but it’s another to cheat through your whole college career and lie about what you know.
I can tell you, I wouldn’t want a surgeon working on me knowing that he got into Harvard because his parents paid Harvard to accept him. I’d want someone who got in from working long hours and giving up sleep so that they could learn the hard way.
