The news was as absurd as it was predictable. It was both laugh-out-loud funny and dead serious — a logical development in the long-running auction of prestige that casts America’s upper crust as the bidders, and elite colleges as the fast-talking salespeople.
In time it would prompt higher education to ask itself big questions. But on the morning of March 12, 2019, after federal prosecutors unveiled a racket in which families bought their children tickets into the hallowed halls of elite higher education, the questions were less brainy, more breathless.
They took how much in bribes?
They used Photoshop to do what?
Wait, Aunt Becky from Full House?
The scheme unveiled by federal prosecutors was easy to understand, in part because the man at the center of it — a consultant named William (Rick) Singer — provided a helpful metaphor. “What we do is we help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school,” Singer said. To do that he built “side doors” into elite colleges. By exploiting two weak points in the admissions pipeline — the security of SAT and ACT tests, and the ability of coaches and athletics administrators to virtually guarantee admission — Singer gave his clients what they wanted: a guarantee.
Until federal prosecutors got wind of the scheme, and set about assembling a criminal case against Singer and his clients, in an investigation dubbed Operation Varsity Blues. The indictment, unsealed on March 12 and giddily covered by outlets from TMZ to The New York Times, contained details that begged disbelief.
But the fallout would far transcend the short-term shocks of the moment. Here are three key questions about the year since the admissions scandal broke:
1. Who in higher ed was held responsible?
For starters, former university employees — coaches, mostly — who were charged with crimes. One year later, five of the 11 former employees have pleaded guilty, while five others have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors implicated a former University of San Diego coach in the scheme, but didn’t charge him with a crime.
Below is a list of the employees, their former job titles, and where their legal cases stand:
Tied to the scandal, the implicated institutions — the Universities of California at Los Angeles, San Diego, Southern California, and Texas at Austin, as well as Georgetown, Stanford, Wake Forest, and Yale Universities — pledged to strengthen their admissions processes. For instance, USC said that it would have all athletes’ admissions files reviewed by three separate people, and that it would audit team rosters.
It’s unclear the extent to which the institutions paid a reputational toll. News of the scandal broke largely after student applications for the 2019-20 class of students had concluded, but those application numbers show — not surprisingly — that students did not pass up the universities’ offers of admission in large numbers when it came time to enroll.
And application numbers for the 2020-21 class, which might reflect whether the scandal had tainted the universities’ brands, are not yet available.
The scandal also didn’t seem to have a marked effect on the institutions’ standing on higher ed’s most ubiquitous marker of prestige: the U.S. News national rankings of universities. Every institution involved slid no more than two slots on the much-watched list from 2018 to 2019. That is, except for the University of San Diego — the institution most peripherally associated with the scandal, which dropped six places to a tie for 91st.
2. Which part of higher ed came under the most scrutiny?
Not surprisingly, it was college admissions.
In late January, about 150 college-admissions officers, researchers, and counselors gathered for a conference in a swank hotel in Los Angeles about three miles from USC, the epicenter of the scandal. The theme of the conference was “reclaiming public trust in admissions and higher education”; they talked openly about whether their industry was in crisis and what to do about it.
Dozens of people, including famous actors, college coaches, and a university administrator, have been charged by federal prosecutors for their alleged roles in an admissions-bribery scheme involving Yale, Stanford, and other elite institutions.
We need to “tell our stories better,” some admissions officials said, making the case that scandals like this one had dominated the narrative, but so much of what they do is to foster equity in higher education.
“We need to do our jobs better,” others countered. They saw the Varsity Blues scandal not as an aberration, but as an extreme example of what wealthy, well-connected families will do in order to secure spots for their children at top-ranked universities. In this case, they cheated on the SAT, for example, but more-privileged applicants have long been able to pay for SAT tutors. And it’s long been assumed that admissions officers make decisions in full awareness of how much the parents of applicants have donated or are capable of donating to the institution.
“Is it possible to be both an agent for change and an institutional officer?” Jerome A. (Jerry) Lucido, the conference’s organizer and director of USC’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice, asked attendees. “Isn’t it at the heart of the enrollment manager’s dilemma?”
Admissions is in crisis, that argument goes, not because the scandal shocked anyone but because it didn’t. Lucido urged colleagues to be more clear and transparent with the public about what they do and to create a firewall between fund raising and admissions. He and others suggested that admissions officers at different universities would have to help one another out of the crisis by cooperating rather than competing.
It’s not the competition for students, admissions professionals said, but the competition for higher rankings that has fueled the crisis. When more applicants and lower admission rates are rewarded, it’s no wonder the system isn’t perceived as equitable.
And it simply isn’t. That much has been made clear. As Davidson College’s president, Carol Quillen, told USA Today recently: “The big takeaway for me was there is no public confidence in the integrity of higher-education admission.”
3. Did other colleges act?
After news of Operation Varsity Blues broke, The Chronicle asked 20 of the most selective universities whether they planned to add more oversight to athletics recruiting in admissions. (Most of the colleges were not named in the investigation, and several colleges named in the investigation were not included in that list.) Four campuses — Dartmouth College, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University — directly responded yes, outlining their plans.
We followed up this spring, asking how that process went. None of the four universities’ deans of admissions agreed to an interview. But here’s what we learned:
Yale: Last year the university said its athletics director would review coaches’ proposed recruits before they were sent to admissions and would examine carefully each case of a recruited athlete’s not making a team.
President Peter Salovey published additional planned steps in August. They included reviewing the credentials of athletic recruits, interviewing athletes who didn’t participate in their sport or left it early, and informing coaches that fund raising “is not part of their job,” among other things.
Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, told The Chronicle in an email that each of the steps described by Salovey had “been successfully implemented.” He said he would be available to assess the university’s results this summer, after the current admissions cycle has ended.
Penn: Eric J. Furda, dean of admissions, did not respond to The Chronicle’s requests for an interview.
Last year Furda pledged to establish “checks and balances” to document and audit the recruitment of athletes. He also raised the possibility of vetting or verifying a random sampling of all applications, not just athletes’, or examining materials more closely if there are “inconsistencies” in applications.
Johns Hopkins: Through a spokeswoman, David Phillips, vice provost for admissions and financial aid, did not respond to interview requests. Last year he said through a spokeswoman that the university planned to exert more oversight over how students are designated as athletic recruits in admissions. He said Hopkins would review its processes and “ensure they are sufficiently protective” against fraud.
Dartmouth: Lee Coffin, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid, declined an interview request through a spokeswoman. Last year the university said the athletics office would formalize protocols for administrative approval of each recruit. Annually, the college said, officials would review all recruited athletes “to ensure that they appear on the appropriate team roster.”
Dartmouth’s spokeswoman, Diana Lawrence, told The Chronicle in an email that the new protocols were going “smoothly.” Each recruit’s athletic credentials are “reviewed and approved by the appropriate sport supervisor before being designated for support in the admissions process.”
“As you might remember, a comprehensive review of the last six incoming recruiting classes found no instances of potential fraud, but this new protocol adds an extra layer of protection going forward,” she continued in an email. “Once all the spring sport rosters are finalized, we’ll be able to conduct the annual review of all athletic recruits in the first-year class to ensure the efficacy of this process.”
Dan Bauman contributed reporting.
