Students File Class-Action Lawsuit Over College Admissions Scandal
“never informed that the process of admission at USC was an unfair, rigged process”
This scandal is going to be so bad for higher education. We’re only at the beginning, and I fear it’s going to get so much worse.
USA Today reports:
2 Stanford students file first class-action suit in largest college admissions scam
Two Stanford University students are suing the University of Southern California, Yale, the University of California Los Angeles and other institutions in a class-action lawsuit over a massive admissions cheating case involving affluent parents suspected of paying bribes to get their kids into top schools.
But the chances of the defendants prevailing might be difficult, experts say.
In the federal complaint, Erica Olsen and Kalea Woods say they were denied a fair opportunity to gain admission to their choice of a top college, and that their Stanford degrees were devalued by criminal racketeering charges leveled by federal prosecutors.
Olsen, from Henderson, Nevada, said she had “stellar” standardized test scores and athletic talent, but was rejected by Yale after paying her roughly $85 application fee.
“Had she known that the system at Yale University was warped and rigged by fraud, she would not have spent the money to apply to the school,” the lawsuit states. “She also did not receive what she paid for – a fair admissions consideration process.”
Woods, from San Diego, said in the complaint that she was an exceptional student and athlete, but when applying to enter the University of Southern California “was never informed that the process of admission at USC was an unfair, rigged process, in which parents could buy their way into the university through bribery and dishonest schemes.”
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Comments
Time to form a REIT (real estate investment trust) specializing in (soon-to-be) former college campuses.
Anyone who does not understand that that there are a relatively small number of applicants whose admission is greased is too stupid and naïve to be admitted to a decent college in the first place.
It always has been this way. It always will be this way. The child of the guy who donated $5 million towards the construction of a new science building is an automatic admission. But the vast majority of the students admitted are admitted based on some form of merit (academic or athletic) or racial preference or legatee status.
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!”
They call them grads, but also state that they are still students at Stanford. But nowhere are the degrees sought or held revealed. This might have some bearing how the marketplace values them. For example, how can a degree in one of the many “Something Studies” be worth less than it already is because of questionable admissions 4 years ago?
Do these school somehow identify the fraudulently admitted students so they get easier classes and easier tests, thus ending up with a degree lite?
I recall in the past that there was a similar suit against colleges who were taking applications even though they had established criteria by which those applications would never be reviewed. I believe that they had a strict cut-off for SAT/ACT scores, yet still took the application money ($80 a pop?) even though the person was never informed ahead of time that they had no chance.