They are developing people in an institution that has a responsibility to guide and teach them. If the best solution the institution can come up with is to expel them to cover its own butt in the cases where the students were just duped - well, it makes me want to look for opportunities to make life harder for that institution and dismantle the reputation it's willing to sacrifice students to protect. Meanwhile, I'm going to increase my alumni donation just for not being a part of this.
hah no, they are selling a prestige marker. You don't have to develop as a person to get a college degree and the institution doesn't have a 'responsibility' to guide or teach anyone. To have responsibility, there would need to be institutional accountability for a failure to guide or teach and nothing of the sort exists. The entire idea that college sells education is a misnomer - they sell degrees with value based only on reputation. I'd like it to be different, but it's not, and the only way to protect the value of the degree is to take it from every kid who got their entrance by fraud.
I do like the idea of letting them retain their credits though. Let them try and get in somewhere else, then transfer all the work they did to someone else who will sell them a new degree.
I was an architecture major in undergrad. Evidently we had very different college experiences.
If you'd had a string of bad teachers who failed to teach you anything, what was your recourse with the institution? There was none. How could you prove to me that you learned anything about architecture based on your studies? The degree claims to be a proxy for that, but unless I know enough to quiz you thoroughly, I just have to take the institution's word for it. Will they show me aggregate post-graduation success rates for architecture graduates? Nope. I just have to rely on their reputation, which is what sold you in the first place as you also had no way to judge whether your education would be good apart from the reputation.
Everything you learned about architecture was orthogonal to getting the degree. You could have maximized your free time and skated through with a 2.0 and gotten your degree and the reputation you bought would be identical to graduating in the top 1% of your class.
I'm sorry you picked a bad place to learn for the degree you chose, but applying your experience to everyone else's experience, and denying them when they tell you you are wrong, is just flat out goosery and you should be ashamed for doing that.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
They are developing people in an institution that has a responsibility to guide and teach them. If the best solution the institution can come up with is to expel them to cover its own butt in the cases where the students were just duped - well, it makes me want to look for opportunities to make life harder for that institution and dismantle the reputation it's willing to sacrifice students to protect. Meanwhile, I'm going to increase my alumni donation just for not being a part of this.
hah no, they are selling a prestige marker. You don't have to develop as a person to get a college degree and the institution doesn't have a 'responsibility' to guide or teach anyone. To have responsibility, there would need to be institutional accountability for a failure to guide or teach and nothing of the sort exists. The entire idea that college sells education is a misnomer - they sell degrees with value based only on reputation. I'd like it to be different, but it's not, and the only way to protect the value of the degree is to take it from every kid who got their entrance by fraud.
I do like the idea of letting them retain their credits though. Let them try and get in somewhere else, then transfer all the work they did to someone else who will sell them a new degree.
I was an architecture major in undergrad. Evidently we had very different college experiences.
If you'd had a string of bad teachers who failed to teach you anything, what was your recourse with the institution? There was none. How could you prove to me that you learned anything about architecture based on your studies? The degree claims to be a proxy for that, but unless I know enough to quiz you thoroughly, I just have to take the institution's word for it. Will they show me aggregate post-graduation success rates for architecture graduates? Nope. I just have to rely on their reputation, which is what sold you in the first place as you also had no way to judge whether your education would be good apart from the reputation.
Everything you learned about architecture was orthogonal to getting the degree. You could have maximized your free time and skated through with a 2.0 and gotten your degree and the reputation you bought would be identical to graduating in the top 1% of your class.
I'm sorry you picked a bad place to learn for the degree you chose, but applying your experience to everyone else's experience, and denying them when they tell you you are wrong, is just flat out goosery and you should be ashamed for doing that.
You are rather missing his point. A degree does not distinguish the good student from the bad. It's not that you can't learn at a university, it's that your degree does not actually say whether you did or not. Every student who graduates pays the same price and gets the same looking degree.
They are developing people in an institution that has a responsibility to guide and teach them. If the best solution the institution can come up with is to expel them to cover its own butt in the cases where the students were just duped - well, it makes me want to look for opportunities to make life harder for that institution and dismantle the reputation it's willing to sacrifice students to protect. Meanwhile, I'm going to increase my alumni donation just for not being a part of this.
hah no, they are selling a prestige marker. You don't have to develop as a person to get a college degree and the institution doesn't have a 'responsibility' to guide or teach anyone. To have responsibility, there would need to be institutional accountability for a failure to guide or teach and nothing of the sort exists. The entire idea that college sells education is a misnomer - they sell degrees with value based only on reputation. I'd like it to be different, but it's not, and the only way to protect the value of the degree is to take it from every kid who got their entrance by fraud.
I do like the idea of letting them retain their credits though. Let them try and get in somewhere else, then transfer all the work they did to someone else who will sell them a new degree.
I was an architecture major in undergrad. Evidently we had very different college experiences.
If you'd had a string of bad teachers who failed to teach you anything, what was your recourse with the institution? There was none. How could you prove to me that you learned anything about architecture based on your studies? The degree claims to be a proxy for that, but unless I know enough to quiz you thoroughly, I just have to take the institution's word for it. Will they show me aggregate post-graduation success rates for architecture graduates? Nope. I just have to rely on their reputation, which is what sold you in the first place as you also had no way to judge whether your education would be good apart from the reputation.
Everything you learned about architecture was orthogonal to getting the degree. You could have maximized your free time and skated through with a 2.0 and gotten your degree and the reputation you bought would be identical to graduating in the top 1% of your class.
I'm sorry you picked a bad place to learn for the degree you chose, but applying your experience to everyone else's experience, and denying them when they tell you you are wrong, is just flat out goosery and you should be ashamed for doing that.
You are rather missing his point. A degree does not distinguish the good student from the bad. It's not that you can't learn at a university, it's that your degree does not actually say whether you did or not. Every student who graduates pays the same price and gets the same looking degree.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
They are developing people in an institution that has a responsibility to guide and teach them. If the best solution the institution can come up with is to expel them to cover its own butt in the cases where the students were just duped - well, it makes me want to look for opportunities to make life harder for that institution and dismantle the reputation it's willing to sacrifice students to protect. Meanwhile, I'm going to increase my alumni donation just for not being a part of this.
hah no, they are selling a prestige marker. You don't have to develop as a person to get a college degree and the institution doesn't have a 'responsibility' to guide or teach anyone. To have responsibility, there would need to be institutional accountability for a failure to guide or teach and nothing of the sort exists. The entire idea that college sells education is a misnomer - they sell degrees with value based only on reputation. I'd like it to be different, but it's not, and the only way to protect the value of the degree is to take it from every kid who got their entrance by fraud.
I do like the idea of letting them retain their credits though. Let them try and get in somewhere else, then transfer all the work they did to someone else who will sell them a new degree.
I was an architecture major in undergrad. Evidently we had very different college experiences.
If you'd had a string of bad teachers who failed to teach you anything, what was your recourse with the institution? There was none. How could you prove to me that you learned anything about architecture based on your studies? The degree claims to be a proxy for that, but unless I know enough to quiz you thoroughly, I just have to take the institution's word for it. Will they show me aggregate post-graduation success rates for architecture graduates? Nope. I just have to rely on their reputation, which is what sold you in the first place as you also had no way to judge whether your education would be good apart from the reputation.
Everything you learned about architecture was orthogonal to getting the degree. You could have maximized your free time and skated through with a 2.0 and gotten your degree and the reputation you bought would be identical to graduating in the top 1% of your class.
I'm sorry you picked a bad place to learn for the degree you chose, but applying your experience to everyone else's experience, and denying them when they tell you you are wrong, is just flat out goosery and you should be ashamed for doing that.
You are rather missing his point. A degree does not distinguish the good student from the bad. It's not that you can't learn at a university, it's that your degree does not actually say whether you did or not. Every student who graduates pays the same price and gets the same looking degree.
Nah, that's not really true. I'm in an applied math program hoping to become an aerodynamicist. If I have a 3.0 at graduation there are many sectors that are closed off to me because I obviously did not learn the math as well as as I could have.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
I think the part where the people doing the bribing and cheating are getting arrested, fired, etc. is a bit of a deterrent there.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
If you have a string of bad teachers who fail to teach you, you can take it up with, in order, the Chair of the department, then the Dean of the college, then the Ombudsman, then the vice provost, then the provost, and ultimately the President.
This has been the policy at every University I've worked at, adjusting for positions which may or may not exist (my University doesn't have an Ombudsman or vice provost, so students go straight to the provost).
They are developing people in an institution that has a responsibility to guide and teach them. If the best solution the institution can come up with is to expel them to cover its own butt in the cases where the students were just duped - well, it makes me want to look for opportunities to make life harder for that institution and dismantle the reputation it's willing to sacrifice students to protect. Meanwhile, I'm going to increase my alumni donation just for not being a part of this.
hah no, they are selling a prestige marker. You don't have to develop as a person to get a college degree and the institution doesn't have a 'responsibility' to guide or teach anyone. To have responsibility, there would need to be institutional accountability for a failure to guide or teach and nothing of the sort exists. The entire idea that college sells education is a misnomer - they sell degrees with value based only on reputation. I'd like it to be different, but it's not, and the only way to protect the value of the degree is to take it from every kid who got their entrance by fraud.
I do like the idea of letting them retain their credits though. Let them try and get in somewhere else, then transfer all the work they did to someone else who will sell them a new degree.
I was an architecture major in undergrad. Evidently we had very different college experiences.
If you'd had a string of bad teachers who failed to teach you anything, what was your recourse with the institution? There was none. How could you prove to me that you learned anything about architecture based on your studies? The degree claims to be a proxy for that, but unless I know enough to quiz you thoroughly, I just have to take the institution's word for it. Will they show me aggregate post-graduation success rates for architecture graduates? Nope. I just have to rely on their reputation, which is what sold you in the first place as you also had no way to judge whether your education would be good apart from the reputation.
Everything you learned about architecture was orthogonal to getting the degree. You could have maximized your free time and skated through with a 2.0 and gotten your degree and the reputation you bought would be identical to graduating in the top 1% of your class.
I'm sorry you picked a bad place to learn for the degree you chose, but applying your experience to everyone else's experience, and denying them when they tell you you are wrong, is just flat out goosery and you should be ashamed for doing that.
You are rather missing his point. A degree does not distinguish the good student from the bad. It's not that you can't learn at a university, it's that your degree does not actually say whether you did or not. Every student who graduates pays the same price and gets the same looking degree.
Every job I have applied to that needed my degree, and all the jobs my students apply to require you to state your college GPA so while you're right, you're also very wrong.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They wouldn't have even been there to 'earn' a degree if not for fraud.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think that the right would try that angle and be struck down at every turn because you can't punish someone for not breaking a law (yes I know, but I'd hope that in this case legality would stand)
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
Remove the degree, let them transfer the credits. That's the only option for what you are talking about. Letting them keep the degree, especially given the kind of institutions we are talking about here, is letting them benefit from the fraud.
In order to save face the institutions should do these things for each case
Any incoming freshmen should have their admittance rescinded.
Any current students found to have participated in the fraud be expelled.
Any remaining current students on an sort of probation should be suspended.
Any students in good standing placed on academic probation and kept there until graduation.
Anyone with a degree quietly allowed to keep it.
All institutions should look hard at exactly how much extra consideration a second string alternate for the rowing team gets.
We should consider the utility of 'private testing locations'.
I think its important to remember that their crime isn't bribing their way into a top school, but instead underpaying and bribing the wrong people. If these parents had be Ultra Wealthy instead of merely Very Wealthy this wouldn't be a scandal at all. Their biggest crime is forgetting their place and trying to obtain a privilege reserved for their betters.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Considering (some of) the students haven't done anything illegal...
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Does the Constitutional protection against ex post facto laws include forbidding universities from upholding the standards of their credentials? Because we aren't talking about passing laws against criminal or civil behavior for future court action. We're talking about revoking credentials because they were awarded based on "invalid" criteria.
But again, the legalism is just a cover for how this punishing a student for actions in which they were ignorant and blameless is gross and reactionary. The fact that it also strengthens a narrative and series of court cases currently underway by the right wing is just the cherry on top.
In order to save face the institutions should do these things for each case
Any incoming freshmen should have their admittance rescinded.
Any current students found to participating in the fraud be expelled.
Any remaining current students on an sort of probation should be suspended.
Any students in good standing placed on academic probation and kept there until graduation.
Anyone with a degree quietly allowed to keep it.
All institutions should look hard at exactly how much extra consideration a second string alternate for the rowing team gets.
We should consider the utility of 'private testing locations'.
I think its important to remember that their crime isn't bribing their way into a top school, but instead underpaying and bribing the wrong people. If these parents had be Ultra Wealthy instead of merely Very Wealthy this wouldn't be a scandal at all. Their biggest crime is forgetting their place and trying to obtain a privilege reserved for their betters.
That's the other aspect that bothers me. We are seeing multiple reports that indicate that, yes, university admissions are a shit show from top to bottom. If you are rich and donate to the "Chancellors wants a new Beemer every year" fund, you get some special attention. If you are really rich and donate to the "Chancellor needs a new palace to hold galas in" fund, your kid gets in even if they've never cracked a book in their lives.
We should be talking about how to throw open classes so that everyone gets a chance to earn a spot if they can do it like a community college or how to make transferring classes easier, eliminate state preferences, use the community college model for admissions, increase grants and funding for school counselors, shunt donations into foundations separate from university governance, fire the advancement departments, anything except preserving the status quo. Screaming about the merely rich paying off the wrong people to commit illegal fraud when the legal route is just to open your checkbook really wide seems to miss the larger context.
They are developing people in an institution that has a responsibility to guide and teach them. If the best solution the institution can come up with is to expel them to cover its own butt in the cases where the students were just duped - well, it makes me want to look for opportunities to make life harder for that institution and dismantle the reputation it's willing to sacrifice students to protect. Meanwhile, I'm going to increase my alumni donation just for not being a part of this.
hah no, they are selling a prestige marker. You don't have to develop as a person to get a college degree and the institution doesn't have a 'responsibility' to guide or teach anyone. To have responsibility, there would need to be institutional accountability for a failure to guide or teach and nothing of the sort exists. The entire idea that college sells education is a misnomer - they sell degrees with value based only on reputation. I'd like it to be different, but it's not, and the only way to protect the value of the degree is to take it from every kid who got their entrance by fraud.
I do like the idea of letting them retain their credits though. Let them try and get in somewhere else, then transfer all the work they did to someone else who will sell them a new degree.
I was an architecture major in undergrad. Evidently we had very different college experiences.
If you'd had a string of bad teachers who failed to teach you anything, what was your recourse with the institution? There was none. How could you prove to me that you learned anything about architecture based on your studies? The degree claims to be a proxy for that, but unless I know enough to quiz you thoroughly, I just have to take the institution's word for it.
I didn't have bad teachers that failed to teach me anything, but if I did I could lodge formal complaints with the Dean of their Department. Also, the State licensing board does know enough to quiz people on it. In fact that is their sole job. Accompanied by verifying NCARB credits and the years worth of professional experience necessary before qualifying for the Architect Registration Exam.
Will they show me aggregate post-graduation success rates for architecture graduates? Nope. I just have to rely on their reputation, which is what sold you in the first place as you also had no way to judge whether your education would be good apart from the reputation.
Everything you learned about architecture was orthogonal to getting the degree. You could have maximized your free time and skated through with a 2.0 and gotten your degree and the reputation you bought would be identical to graduating in the top 1% of your class.
No, I actually couldn't. Major courses required a minimum 3.0 to advance. Being incapable of calculating the structural load of a building quite simply means I wouldn't have graduated. All of the architectural knowledge that I learned was quite directly related to my ability to graduate with that degree. In fact roughly half the students in 'intro to architecture' subsequently changed majors or dropped out. Nor would I likely be able to pass licensure if I was that bad at the relevant coursework. (I won't know thanks to the housing collapse causing me to seek a different profession.) Also, I had to submit my GPA/transcripts to the firms I was applying to.
This seems to be rather tangential to paying someone to lie about my abilities in water polo and wear a false mustache while proctoring the ACT to get admitted to a school I might not otherwise qualify for.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Considering (some of) the students haven't done anything illegal...
But they were the beneficiaries of an illegal act. You don’t get to keep stolen property just because you weren’t the one that stole it. Even if you didn’t know. At least I think that’s how that works, maybe I’m wrong.
The admission is part of the degree. The coursework is irrelevant if it’s built on a foundation of fraud.
If you have a string of bad teachers who fail to teach you, you can take it up with, in order, the Chair of the department, then the Dean of the college, then the Ombudsman, then the vice provost, then the provost, and ultimately the President.
This has been the policy at every University I've worked at, adjusting for positions which may or may not exist (my University doesn't have an Ombudsman or vice provost, so students go straight to the provost).
This is something I’ve asked Arch about! And did! I have no idea as to its effectiveness as it was towards the end of my course but I most definitely had options in how to deal with an abysmal teacher.
My college is about as non prestigious as can be and I’ve definitely learned a ton. Which is important because I’m going to need those grades and experience for starting my master’s.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
+3
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
To the best of your knowledge.
Hence why crimes committed on someone else's behalf are an interesting area of law. actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea etc.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Considering (some of) the students haven't done anything illegal...
I'd argue that they're the recipient of a good (the admissions spot) that was obtained by fraud.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
This is only true for a select subset. Anyone who submitted anything false is responsible for it, even if their parents wrote up their application for them.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Considering (some of) the students haven't done anything illegal...
I'd argue that they're the recipient of a good (the admissions spot) that was obtained by fraud.
The law requires return of stolen goods, in order to make the original owner whole. But an admissions spot can't be returned that way, because you can't prove who it would have gone to. As such, there's nobody to make whole.
Admissions isn't a good, but a service already performed. If someone pays for housecleaning with a bad check, the remedy does not involve messing the house up.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
This is only true for a select subset. Anyone who submitted anything false is responsible for it, even if their parents wrote up their application for them.
Yup, and I've said that they are guilty and the schools should be okay with expelling them for willfully and knowingly committing fraud. I'm pushing back against the maximillist "Hang them all" rhetoric when we have evidence that some of the students were as ignorant of the fraud as the schools themselves.
I'm also focusing on how all of this is building a precedent for removing Affirmative Action from university admissions, and how the next obvious step is questioning the validity of the degrees obtained by minorities. We know this because the cases are in the courts and the questioning is already being done in right wing circles, but since the American right wing has a deep and abiding love of the Constitution and due process, we will never have to worry about that.
Also, the idea that a degree earned through your effort is "property" that can be revoked for reasons that are no fault of your own also gnaws at me.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
The extent of their ignorance seems to vary. With more than a few instances of screaming red flags, and at least one with the kid cc'd on the email chain.
I read this article, and though I don't agree with it all the way, I kind of like its admission of the limits of the admissions meritocracy. Colleges have always sucked at selecting good people.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
The extent of their ignorance seems to vary. With more than a few instances of screaming red flags, and at least one with the kid cc'd on the email chain.
Plus, if you buy a stolen car from someone, even if you didn't know it was stolen, the police will confiscate it and you get nothing. You don't get to benefit from a crime just because you didn't know a crime was going on.
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
This is only true for a select subset. Anyone who submitted anything false is responsible for it, even if their parents wrote up their application for them.
Yup, and I've said that they are guilty and the schools should be okay with expelling them for willfully and knowingly committing fraud. I'm pushing back against the maximillist "Hang them all" rhetoric when we have evidence that some of the students were as ignorant of the fraud as the schools themselves.
I'm also focusing on how all of this is building a precedent for removing Affirmative Action from university admissions, and how the next obvious step is questioning the validity of the degrees obtained by minorities. We know this because the cases are in the courts and the questioning is already being done in right wing circles, but since the American right wing has a deep and abiding love of the Constitution and due process, we will never have to worry about that.
Also, the idea that a degree earned through your effort is "property" that can be revoked for reasons that are no fault of your own also gnaws at me.
Yeah, revocation of earned degrees is not something I would support. Unfortunately they basically 'got away with it'. Students currently enrolled, however, strike me as different. Sort of akin to statutes of limitations, but not really.
+1
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
The extent of their ignorance seems to vary. With more than a few instances of screaming red flags, and at least one with the kid cc'd on the email chain.
Plus, if you buy a stolen car from someone, even if you didn't know it was stolen, the police will confiscate it and you get nothing. You don't get to benefit from a crime just because you didn't know a crime was going on.
But while a car is property, an education is not.
I don't understand how we can keep conflating the two.
If I received a stolen car from a parent and used it to work for Uber, do you get to confiscate all of my earned income from that job?
The feds found out about the bribery thanks to Morrie Tobin, an investor currently under investigation in a pump-and-dump stock scheme. He was approached by a Yale soccer coach soliciting a bribe in exchange for getting his daughter into Yale.
Hell hath no fury like a rich dude with dirt on other people trying to get his sentence reduced.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
Considering (some of) the students haven't done anything illegal...
I'd argue that they're the recipient of a good (the admissions spot) that was obtained by fraud.
The law requires return of stolen goods, in order to make the original owner whole. But an admissions spot can't be returned that way, because you can't prove who it would have gone to. As such, there's nobody to make whole.
Admissions isn't a good, but a service already performed. If someone pays for housecleaning with a bad check, the remedy does not involve messing the house up.
Getting admitted to the university is a one-time thing. However that one-time thing allows you to continue to attend classes there on an ongoing basis. You might not get your house re-messified if you bounce a check to your housekeeper, but you shouldn't expect them to show up next month to clean for you.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Lean on the criminal nature all you want, but do you really want to set the precedent that, say, a student admitted under affirmative action policies could have their degrees revoked if those policies showed they “stole” their place in class. When the entire admission process is as ganked as it is legally, this is some deep conservative crab bucket thinking.
Revocation is a big deal. Be very careful how gleeful you get when you support it.
but those policies are legal ....
The right wing is currently arguing that they aren't. It's a central policy of theirs.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
The extent of their ignorance seems to vary. With more than a few instances of screaming red flags, and at least one with the kid cc'd on the email chain.
Plus, if you buy a stolen car from someone, even if you didn't know it was stolen, the police will confiscate it and you get nothing. You don't get to benefit from a crime just because you didn't know a crime was going on.
But while a car is property, an education is not.
I don't understand how we can keep conflating the two.
If I received a stolen car from a parent and used it to work for Uber, do you get to confiscate all of my earned income from that job?
Lots of really gross American ideas spring from the way we frame things through the lens of property law.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
edited March 2019
The policy I would enact would be such:
-- If you are a freshmen who was admitted through fraudulent means, you are expelled.
-- If you are a sophomore or higher, the university will perform an investigation into if you were acting in good or bad faith with regards to the application/admissions process. In addition, as a student you will have to provide references of support from university staff which speak to your character.
-- If you have graduated from that university, even if you were admitted through fraudulent means, you keep your degree because you ultimately earned it akin to everyone else.
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I'm sorry you picked a bad place to learn for the degree you chose, but applying your experience to everyone else's experience, and denying them when they tell you you are wrong, is just flat out goosery and you should be ashamed for doing that.
oh I know, but you can't retroactively take back a degree that was earned legally. These degrees in these cases were earned through fraud.
The problem is that you haven't proved the students bear any guilt.
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You are rather missing his point. A degree does not distinguish the good student from the bad. It's not that you can't learn at a university, it's that your degree does not actually say whether you did or not. Every student who graduates pays the same price and gets the same looking degree.
No they don't. Honors are a thing.
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I'm not sure that matters if the whole process was illegal from the start. If the moral of the story is "someone else can cheat and bribe you into prosperity and you win" than what's to stop others? Normally you'd think that laws and admission standards would, but if the degrees are allowed to stand ....
Nah, that's not really true. I'm in an applied math program hoping to become an aerodynamicist. If I have a 3.0 at graduation there are many sectors that are closed off to me because I obviously did not learn the math as well as as I could have.
I think the part where the people doing the bribing and cheating are getting arrested, fired, etc. is a bit of a deterrent there.
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No. This is not what I'm saying at all. No one has demonstrated that they earned their degrees through fraud. That they gained entry to the college under false pretenses is orthogonal to whether or not they successfully completed the requirements for the degree once inside.
People have this idea that once you get into somewhere like USC, that they hand you a degree after four years, and not only has no one backed it up, no one has also provided evidence that the students have done anything to violate academic policy once in the University.
A degree is more than "get into school, sit in class for four years, get degree." If they passed all their classes, regardless of major, they can keep their degrees.
There need to be punishments for the initial fraud, but removing degrees or expulsion is not one of them unless it can be demonstrated that the students were complicit in the initial fraud, which many weren't, according to news reports.
I'd suggest, as someone else did in thread, a review of their academic performance for all students admitted under fraud, a written apology, and letters of support from three faculty, with at least one being outside their major area in order to keep their degree and/or enrollment.
The point is "If the degrees are allowed to stand..." works really well as the next line of attack after "Affirmative Action is illegal", which is working its way through the courts now. If the precedent is established that a blameless student who is performing in their classes can be expelled and their degrees revoked, then the precedent is set that "student guilt" is not actually relevant. Right now, the degree of guilt that the student shares is crucial to determining whether their classes are invalid.
This is a pretty big precedent. And if you think I'm reaching, realize that the reason a lot of this information is coming out about the donor privileges in cases like Jared Kushner is because of a right wing case to eliminate Affirmative Action. They are making the larger case about the "validity" of millions of people's degrees, and if you think they would never push it to the next level, then you haven't been watching the American right wing.
Hopefully, the universities involved will adhere to their duty to care about the students' well-being and avoids the reactionary mob response.
This has been the policy at every University I've worked at, adjusting for positions which may or may not exist (my University doesn't have an Ombudsman or vice provost, so students go straight to the provost).
Every job I have applied to that needed my degree, and all the jobs my students apply to require you to state your college GPA so while you're right, you're also very wrong.
They wouldn't have even been there to 'earn' a degree if not for fraud.
I think there's a big difference between something that was illegal when you did it, and something that was judged to be illegal (unconstitutional, really) after the fact. Like all the difference in the world.
I think that the right would try that angle and be struck down at every turn because you can't punish someone for not breaking a law (yes I know, but I'd hope that in this case legality would stand)
Remove the degree, let them transfer the credits. That's the only option for what you are talking about. Letting them keep the degree, especially given the kind of institutions we are talking about here, is letting them benefit from the fraud.
Any incoming freshmen should have their admittance rescinded.
Any current students found to have participated in the fraud be expelled.
Any remaining current students on an sort of probation should be suspended.
Any students in good standing placed on academic probation and kept there until graduation.
Anyone with a degree quietly allowed to keep it.
All institutions should look hard at exactly how much extra consideration a second string alternate for the rowing team gets.
We should consider the utility of 'private testing locations'.
I think its important to remember that their crime isn't bribing their way into a top school, but instead underpaying and bribing the wrong people. If these parents had be Ultra Wealthy instead of merely Very Wealthy this wouldn't be a scandal at all. Their biggest crime is forgetting their place and trying to obtain a privilege reserved for their betters.
Considering (some of) the students haven't done anything illegal...
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Does the Constitutional protection against ex post facto laws include forbidding universities from upholding the standards of their credentials? Because we aren't talking about passing laws against criminal or civil behavior for future court action. We're talking about revoking credentials because they were awarded based on "invalid" criteria.
But again, the legalism is just a cover for how this punishing a student for actions in which they were ignorant and blameless is gross and reactionary. The fact that it also strengthens a narrative and series of court cases currently underway by the right wing is just the cherry on top.
That's the other aspect that bothers me. We are seeing multiple reports that indicate that, yes, university admissions are a shit show from top to bottom. If you are rich and donate to the "Chancellors wants a new Beemer every year" fund, you get some special attention. If you are really rich and donate to the "Chancellor needs a new palace to hold galas in" fund, your kid gets in even if they've never cracked a book in their lives.
We should be talking about how to throw open classes so that everyone gets a chance to earn a spot if they can do it like a community college or how to make transferring classes easier, eliminate state preferences, use the community college model for admissions, increase grants and funding for school counselors, shunt donations into foundations separate from university governance, fire the advancement departments, anything except preserving the status quo. Screaming about the merely rich paying off the wrong people to commit illegal fraud when the legal route is just to open your checkbook really wide seems to miss the larger context.
I didn't have bad teachers that failed to teach me anything, but if I did I could lodge formal complaints with the Dean of their Department. Also, the State licensing board does know enough to quiz people on it. In fact that is their sole job. Accompanied by verifying NCARB credits and the years worth of professional experience necessary before qualifying for the Architect Registration Exam.
No, I actually couldn't. Major courses required a minimum 3.0 to advance. Being incapable of calculating the structural load of a building quite simply means I wouldn't have graduated. All of the architectural knowledge that I learned was quite directly related to my ability to graduate with that degree. In fact roughly half the students in 'intro to architecture' subsequently changed majors or dropped out. Nor would I likely be able to pass licensure if I was that bad at the relevant coursework. (I won't know thanks to the housing collapse causing me to seek a different profession.) Also, I had to submit my GPA/transcripts to the firms I was applying to.
This seems to be rather tangential to paying someone to lie about my abilities in water polo and wear a false mustache while proctoring the ACT to get admitted to a school I might not otherwise qualify for.
But they were the beneficiaries of an illegal act. You don’t get to keep stolen property just because you weren’t the one that stole it. Even if you didn’t know. At least I think that’s how that works, maybe I’m wrong.
The admission is part of the degree. The coursework is irrelevant if it’s built on a foundation of fraud.
This is something I’ve asked Arch about! And did! I have no idea as to its effectiveness as it was towards the end of my course but I most definitely had options in how to deal with an abysmal teacher.
My college is about as non prestigious as can be and I’ve definitely learned a ton. Which is important because I’m going to need those grades and experience for starting my master’s.
They violated policy in the acceptance process which requires you to claim, under threat of law and expulsion, that everything you submitted to the school is true.
Hence why crimes committed on someone else's behalf are an interesting area of law. actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea etc.
I'd argue that they're the recipient of a good (the admissions spot) that was obtained by fraud.
No, "they" didn't. Their parents did and kept them ignorant of the entire process. They attended the school under good faith, participated in classes in good faith, and hopefully the school will recognize them as an innocent that they need to protect.
This is only true for a select subset. Anyone who submitted anything false is responsible for it, even if their parents wrote up their application for them.
The law requires return of stolen goods, in order to make the original owner whole. But an admissions spot can't be returned that way, because you can't prove who it would have gone to. As such, there's nobody to make whole.
Admissions isn't a good, but a service already performed. If someone pays for housecleaning with a bad check, the remedy does not involve messing the house up.
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Yup, and I've said that they are guilty and the schools should be okay with expelling them for willfully and knowingly committing fraud. I'm pushing back against the maximillist "Hang them all" rhetoric when we have evidence that some of the students were as ignorant of the fraud as the schools themselves.
I'm also focusing on how all of this is building a precedent for removing Affirmative Action from university admissions, and how the next obvious step is questioning the validity of the degrees obtained by minorities. We know this because the cases are in the courts and the questioning is already being done in right wing circles, but since the American right wing has a deep and abiding love of the Constitution and due process, we will never have to worry about that.
Also, the idea that a degree earned through your effort is "property" that can be revoked for reasons that are no fault of your own also gnaws at me.
The extent of their ignorance seems to vary. With more than a few instances of screaming red flags, and at least one with the kid cc'd on the email chain.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Plus, if you buy a stolen car from someone, even if you didn't know it was stolen, the police will confiscate it and you get nothing. You don't get to benefit from a crime just because you didn't know a crime was going on.
Yeah, revocation of earned degrees is not something I would support. Unfortunately they basically 'got away with it'. Students currently enrolled, however, strike me as different. Sort of akin to statutes of limitations, but not really.
But while a car is property, an education is not.
I don't understand how we can keep conflating the two.
If I received a stolen car from a parent and used it to work for Uber, do you get to confiscate all of my earned income from that job?
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/operation-varsity-blues-scam-tipster-college-admissions-808418/
The feds found out about the bribery thanks to Morrie Tobin, an investor currently under investigation in a pump-and-dump stock scheme. He was approached by a Yale soccer coach soliciting a bribe in exchange for getting his daughter into Yale.
Hell hath no fury like a rich dude with dirt on other people trying to get his sentence reduced.
Getting admitted to the university is a one-time thing. However that one-time thing allows you to continue to attend classes there on an ongoing basis. You might not get your house re-messified if you bounce a check to your housekeeper, but you shouldn't expect them to show up next month to clean for you.
Lots of really gross American ideas spring from the way we frame things through the lens of property law.
-- If you are a freshmen who was admitted through fraudulent means, you are expelled.
-- If you are a sophomore or higher, the university will perform an investigation into if you were acting in good or bad faith with regards to the application/admissions process. In addition, as a student you will have to provide references of support from university staff which speak to your character.
-- If you have graduated from that university, even if you were admitted through fraudulent means, you keep your degree because you ultimately earned it akin to everyone else.