The behavior of the parents, coaches and other higher education professionals implicated so far in the college admissions scandal is deplorable. For those of you who may not have caught up on the news over break, on March 12, prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office of the District of Massachusetts indicted about 50 people connected to schemes to fraudulently. These included fraudulently applying for extended time or engaging surrogate test takers on the SAT and ACT college entrance examinations and admitting students to colleges as recruited athletes at NCAA Division I schools for sports they clearly were not skilled enough to play at that level.
There is no evidence that Connecticut College or any of its employees has been involved in wrongdoing of this magnitude in our admissions process. All of the schools listed as “Other Relevant Entities” in the racketeering indictment brought against 12 of the 50 initial defendants were Division I schools whereas Conn is a Division III school. However, it is still unclear which schools admitted students who committed fraud through test taking practices on the SAT and ACT. There’s a possibility that past or present students here or at similar small liberal arts colleges knowingly or unknowingly matriculated as a result of the part of this scandal related to fraudulent activity on tests.
The revelation of this scheme has also led to a national conversation about whether college admissions is truly the meritocratic system that most selective schools claim it is. While it is clear that outright bribery of employees of colleges is unacceptable in our society, the likelihood that parents who make or commit to making large tax deductible donations to schools will in turn have their children admitted to those schools has been well documented for nearly fifteen years. Daniel Golden’s 2005 book, The Price of Admission, documents how Charles Kushner pledged to donate $2.5 million over ten years to Harvard University. Not long afterward, his son Jared gained admittance to Harvard despite administrators at his high school firmly believing his academic record did not merit his acceptance there. Jared Kushner is now a prominent figure in US politics, he and his wife Ivanka Trump now serve as Advisors to the President of the United States.
Connecticut College’s Honor Roll of Giving from November 2018 states that parents of 18 students in the classes of 2018 – 2022 gave at least $10,000 to the College during the 2017-2018 fundraising period, and two of the aforementioned students in the Class of 2020 have parents who will be partially funding the $500,000 donation challenge that the College will be attempting to earn this week. It’s important to remember that it’s possible for a student to have both extremely generous parents and credentials that make one a strong candidate for a selective college. Additionally the generosity and investment of affluent parents and legacy families is ultimately what keeps Conn in operation and makes it one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. At the same time our admissions and advancement offices may be making a Faustian bargain with the perception that they give preferential treatment to applicants whose parents promise to be good philanthropic targets.
-Saadya
