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Audit Finds University of California Admitted 64 Students Over More Qualified Applicants

Audit Finds University of California Admitted 64 Students Over More Qualified Applicants

“The audit investigated four campuses — UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Barbara”

The students who were admitted over others had ‘connections’ to donors and staff. Would it be fair to assume this happens at many schools?

NPR reports:

Audit: University Of California Admitted 64 Students Over More Qualified Applicants

The University of California was found to have admitted at least 64 students over more qualified applicants because of the students’ connections to university staff or donors, according to a California state audit released Tuesday.

The audit investigated four campuses — UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Barbara — from academic years 2013-14 through 2018-19 and found that the campuses failed to evaluate students fairly and to develop adequate and standardized admissions processes.

Auditors found that UC Berkeley admitted 42 applicants because of their connections to donors and university staff, including one example where a regent violated university policy by improperly advocating for a student. Most of these applicants were white and at least half had annual family incomes of $150,000 or more. These students do not include two already identified in the 2019 national college admissions scandal, according to the audit.

“The pervasiveness of this problem at UC Berkeley demonstrates that campus leadership has failed to establish a campus culture that values commitment to an admissions process based on fairness and applicants’ merits and achievements,” auditors stated in the document.

Of the 64, there were 22 applicants falsely admitted as student-athletes “as favors to donors and friends,” despite having little demonstrated ability and not participating on the teams long term. In some cases, the university seemed to admit applicants in exchange for promised donations to the athletic department, according to the audit.

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Comments

The Friendly Grizzly | September 24, 2020 at 12:24 pm

The students who were admitted over others had ‘connections’ to donors and staff. Would it be fair to assume this happens at many schools?

Yes. Ted Kennedy being a shining example. “Legacy” admissions. Admissions for the children of “good families”.

The difference though is that these are “state” schools as opposed to private schools.

This reminds of the Chicago Machine filling jobs: “I don’t want to see nobody that nobody sent.”

64 cases over five years? Actually that’s not a whole lot. The four schools together admit something close to 80,000 students a year. 64 is about 0.02% of that. It’s hard to conclude from these numbers that the UC school system is riddled with corruption.

    healthguyfsu in reply to tom_swift. | September 25, 2020 at 4:06 pm

    You really think more than one case is not corruption when it comes to fraudulent admissions? This doesn’t include affirmative action quotas or any other legal forms of scam admission.

I’m surprised they only found 64. I would have guessed more like 10-100 times that many.

Well over half of the students admitted to Harvard are chosen over more qualified students. They get a leg up through race, legacy, donor relations, athletics, regional distribution, and religion. If you are Black, a Kennedy, an Obama, an athlete, come from Wyoming, or named Muhammad you have an advantage.

If you are a middle-class kid at the top of your class at Brooklyn School of Science & Technology and named Ginsburg, your chances are much less.

    Dantzig93101 in reply to OldProf2. | September 24, 2020 at 8:12 pm

    That puzzled me, too, until I realized that they did not include affirmative-action and “diversity” admissions in the total.

    healthguyfsu in reply to OldProf2. | September 25, 2020 at 4:04 pm

    Yep, 64 is just fraud scammers, not even the legal scammers, which would probably be better expressed in a percentage since it involves so many students.

On the uptick, those students will not end up with a worthless certificate and a load of debt in a state that disrespects them.

    healthguyfsu in reply to NotKennedy. | September 25, 2020 at 4:07 pm

    These students won’t have debt. Mommy and daddy paid a crap ton for them to get in illegally. Do you really think precious snowflake jon and jane are going to have to take out loans?