Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Pay to Play ?

The college admissions scandal has got everybody talking these days. My personal reaction to the details is . . . LOL! To me it is incredible that multiple parents over a nine-year period have paid $25 million to get their children into certain “elite” colleges  (Pay to play!) As an aside note that most of these extravagant, “money is no object” parents are from California, but this is a topic for another day.

I asked my son, “What is the difference between these shenanigans and the so-called legacy admissions? With legacy, prospective students are given priority if either parent, or perhaps a grandparent, or aunt/uncle graduated from the school . . . of course a donation to the school is implied, and the more the donation, the better the legacy! Having legacy significantly increases the prospective student’s chance that he/she will gain admission to the school to about 34%, compared to a 6% chance for the run of the mill student applicant, assuming the same GPA, test scores, etc. My son answered, “The major difference is that with legacy, the ‘donation’ goes directly to the school – there is no middleman payoff, and thus no criminality.”

This leads to an interesting ethical question ? What if these uber rich parents had  offered the $25 million over nine years directly to the schools in exchange for having their little darlings admitted? This would be an upfront pay-to-play without any deceit, and thus no criminality. From the university’s perspective, what difference does one extra student make ? It could then use this money so that underprivileged and/or minority students would be able to afford these elite, expensive schools. Would not everybody benefit ? (Pay, so that someone else could play ?)

If you were a university president would you accept this money, so that multiple less fortunate students would be able to attend your elite university for free ? Ethical ? What do you think ?


The other side of this issue is: How important is it that one go to an “elite” college ? Does one have an equal chance for success if he/she goes to a non-elite college ?
For many years my answer to this question has been, ”No, not necessary to go to an elite college, and yes one’s chance os success depends much more on the individual, then on the school attended.  I asked a bunch of my friends which college they attended. Keep in mind that all of these individuals are now successful or have already achieved success in their lives.. Only one of these individuals had attended Harvard . . . the same number as attended Illinois Valley College, Loyola Marymount, Air Force Academy, University of Florida, DePaul, University of Pittsburg, University of Wisconsin, Cal State Long Beach, University of Colorado, College of St. Thomas, Cleveland State, Tulane, Northwestern, and San Diego State. Even though all but a few of them presently live in California, I did not discover that any of these successful individuals had attended Stanford or U.S.C., (As an aside, in the past, I knew only one guy that went to U.S.C. for certain, and he wasn’t a success.) Interestingly two of the most successful guys in my survey did not graduate college (but that is a topic for another day).

Many years ago I had to hire people to work in my department. What I thought was critical was not where they went to school, but rather if they seemed like they had a good work ethic and would get along with myself and my coworkers. Years after I had hired them, my initial impression was confirmed as I found no correlation between the college they had attended and their successful acclimation to our work environment. Although I did not specifically ask them, it is possible that some of their parents were from California, but I am quite certain that they had not paid for their children to play.

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