ver the past two days, a far-reaching college admissions scandal has dominated the headlines. An FBI investigation, comically named “Operation Varsity Blues,” uncovered that parents (including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin) paid around $25 million to a consultant to illegally guarantee their children spots in elite universities.
William “Rick” Singer, founder of a college counseling company, charged parents tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to doctor student test scores. Singer also collected millions of dollars as payment for bribing university coaches and administrators to falsely designate their students as recruited athletes. Unsealed court documents reveal that officials at eight elite universities are implicated in the scandal, including Georgetown, the University of Southern California, Stanford, Yale, and Wake Forest University.
Many columnists have been quick to point out that this case is only a particularly brazen and illegal instance of rich parents exploiting their wealth to give their children a leg up in the college admissions process. There are many legal means by which the wealthy give their kids a better shot at getting into top schools, from paying big for test preparation services to making sizable donations.
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