Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Felton. Welcome to the first episode of our show.
Speaker 1: Before we kick off the season, I wanted to share
Speaker 1: a little bit about myself. I teach constitutional law at
Speaker 1: Harvard and I write a column for Bloomberg Opinion. I
Speaker 1: really wanted to do this show because I love going
Speaker 1: to the deepest part of any subject to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what's really happening underneath the news stories that
Speaker 1: we read about every day. It's not always easy, and
Speaker 1: it does take time, but it's also very satisfying. I
Speaker 1: hope the conversation we're going to have now and the
Speaker 1: ones that we'll have in the future will give you
Speaker 1: the same sense of satisfaction. I want these to be
Speaker 1: useful to you to help you figure out something really
Speaker 1: new that gives you a different perspective on the issues
Speaker 1: and the debates that are out there, whether it's politics,
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform, or even some of the really sensational
Speaker 1: stories in the news, like our first topic, the college
Speaker 1: admissions scandal. After dozens of wealthy parents were indicted for
Speaker 1: bribing college admissions officials to get their kids into highly
Speaker 1: competitive universities. I could not stop thinking about the story. First,
Speaker 1: as someone who lives and breathes academia myself, I was
Speaker 1: amazed that such an elaborate scheme could exist and be
Speaker 1: as successful as it was, given how heavily structured and
Speaker 1: bureaucratic college admissions usually is. Yet someone was able to
Speaker 1: corrupt the system systematically. I also wondered about the officials
Speaker 1: who are responsible for sorting through the thousands of applications
Speaker 1: and making judgment calls about each candidate at elite schools.
Speaker 1: How do they make sense of the scandal and its fallout?
Speaker 1: More importantly, when you're dealing with that many people trying
Speaker 1: to get into your school, what is the best approach
Speaker 1: to make sure that those who deserve a spot actually
Speaker 1: get one. Today, we're extremely fortunate to have with us
Speaker 1: Asha Rangapa. Asha has been the Dean of Admissions at
Speaker 1: the Yale Law School, not only one of the finest
Speaker 1: law schools in the country, maybe the finest law school,
Speaker 1: but maybe not by coincidence, the one that Asha happened
Speaker 1: to have gone to and that I happened to have
Speaker 1: gone to. She teaches at the Jackson Institute for Global
Speaker 1: Affairs at Yale. She's been a lawyer, a Fulbright scholar,
Speaker 1: and most unusually an FBI special agent. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that makes Asha the only person in the world who's
Speaker 1: both been the dean of admissions at a major university
Speaker 1: and also simultaneously someone who investigates crimes. Asha, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Thank you for having me Asha.
Speaker 1: I want to start with the background to this scandal
Speaker 1: that everyone's been talking about, run roughly by a ringleader
Speaker 1: called William Singer, who helped people both cheat on the
Speaker 1: SACT tests and also, at a more profound level of cheating,
Speaker 1: enabled students to appear to be varc athletes when they weren't,
Speaker 1: and did this in connection with various admissions officers. And
Speaker 1: I want to start by asking you about the testing
Speaker 1: side of this case. How did Singer pull off cheating
Speaker 1: in this highly regulated area of testing. Well, it appeared
Speaker 1: that he had effectively bribed proctors who administer the SAT
Speaker 1: and then also arranged with parents to I think in
Speaker 1: some cases, if not all, be able to get certain
Speaker 1: accommodations to be able to take the test alone in
Speaker 1: a room, after which the proctor would then correct the
Speaker 1: exam and put in the right answer. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very astonishing. So as a result, today, when an admissions
Speaker 1: officer college or a law school is looking at an application,
Speaker 1: typically there won't be any notation of whether the person
Speaker 1: had extra time at all. And maybe that's good from
Speaker 1: the standpoint of fairness from the standpoint of people who
Speaker 1: are genuinely disabled, but it might not be good from
Speaker 1: the standpoint of people who are able to gain the
Speaker 1: system and gain extra time. That's right, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think that this is just a side again that
Speaker 1: I know sort of secondhand because it's it's administered through
Speaker 1: these testing services. But you know, I think it's probably
Speaker 1: fairly rare to be able to gain the system, just
Speaker 1: because I think typically these testing services are reluctant we
Speaker 1: begin with, I mean, grants these accommodations. I would have
Speaker 1: thought exactly the same thing Asha until I read about
Speaker 1: this scandal. I Mean, one of the fascinating things about
Speaker 1: the scandal is that the person who ran it seemed
Speaker 1: to think the easiest part he actually outsourced this part
Speaker 1: to the parents. You know, he held their hands, he
Speaker 1: held the kids hands, he wrote applications. But when he
Speaker 1: came to getting the accommodations, he just said, go to
Speaker 1: your doctor and get an accommodation. And it seems like
Speaker 1: all of these people whose kids then cheated on the
Speaker 1: SAT or the ACT did get accommodation. So it may
Speaker 1: be the depending on the doctor. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1: And it sounds as though, I mean, I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert on this at all, but it sounds as though
Speaker 1: the testing services accepted a doctor's note, which why shouldn't they, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you keep what's interesting here is that you know,
Speaker 1: each at each stage of evaluation, you're really defer. You're
Speaker 1: you're relying on the integrity of the process that is
Speaker 1: providing you with the documentation. So the admissions dean is
Speaker 1: going to rely on the test and that the test
Speaker 1: was administered fairly and under you know, circumstances that are
Speaker 1: relatively equal to all the people taking them. The testing
Speaker 1: services are relying on the fact that when they get
Speaker 1: doctor's notes, that they are doing that objectively and under
Speaker 1: the you know, ethical obligations of their profession to only
Speaker 1: provide diagnoses for people who are actually who warrant them.
Speaker 1: And so we just see this breakdown at every stage
Speaker 1: here in the scandal that really allows for a corruption
Speaker 1: of really kind of this entire framework that everything stands on,
Speaker 1: and it is I think, again, relatively few people. But
Speaker 1: it then, as you note, Noah, just really calls into question, like,
Speaker 1: how what can we trust here? You know, Asha, when
Speaker 1: you were describing that everyone trusts in everyone in the process,
Speaker 1: and then when people start systematically lying, the thing begins
Speaker 1: to fall apart. I was immediately reminded of the mortgage
Speaker 1: backed securities crisis. Yeah, where everyone thought to themselves, well,
Speaker 1: the person who gathers the information on the mortgage application
Speaker 1: must be telling the truth, and then the person who
Speaker 1: then bought them mortgage backed security said well, we're collecting mortgages,
Speaker 1: they're all full of true information. And then when they
Speaker 1: all were false, we were suddenly all underwater. Is this
Speaker 1: that kind of a crisis in your view for admissions generally?
Speaker 1: Is system that capable of being corrupted by the rich?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, Noah. Again. I mean, we'll see
Speaker 1: how many people come out of these indictments, but right
Speaker 1: now it's about fifty people relatively speaking. When we are
Speaker 1: looking at the number of college applicants, I think that
Speaker 1: this one entity which was you know, spread out among
Speaker 1: many different schools. I don't think could corrupt the entire system.
Speaker 1: But as I learned in the FBI, and as we
Speaker 1: were told, often perception is reality. So it actually doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter if it is corrupted. In fact, it's whether
Speaker 1: people believe that the system is fair and that they
Speaker 1: can get a fair shake. You know this is true.
Speaker 1: You and I are both lawyers. This is true the
Speaker 1: justice system. It doesn't matter if you know it's only
Speaker 1: one judge that goes off the rails or does something
Speaker 1: on ethical when that becomes publicized. That is how people
Speaker 1: view the administration of justice generally, and I think that
Speaker 1: that is as big of a problem perception in terms
Speaker 1: of legitimacy as as what is happening. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think what you just said, Ash is kind of profound,
Speaker 1: and it speaks to your genuinely unique perspective on this.
Speaker 1: You might be the only person in the world who's
Speaker 1: both been an FBI agent and also investigating crimes and
Speaker 1: also an admissions officer. So you know, had you been
Speaker 1: that the FBI, this would have been your case. I
Speaker 1: suppose the question I want to ask you is when
Speaker 1: the FBI officers agents and the prosecutors who put this
Speaker 1: case together, federal prosecutors and the FBI put this case together,
Speaker 1: they must have known that by bringing Singer to justice
Speaker 1: and also indicting some celebrities, let's let's not pretend that's irrelevant,
Speaker 1: some celebrity parents here, that this would be a national
Speaker 1: story at page one story, and they must have known
Speaker 1: that it would effectively cast some doubt on the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of the admissions process, even if it just involves, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty odd people to begin with. Should that or would that?
Speaker 1: I guess in the first question is would that have
Speaker 1: been a consideration for the FBI agents and the prosecutors
Speaker 1: working on this case, or would they have just said,
Speaker 1: who cares what the consequences are, We're going to go
Speaker 1: after a bad actor. Yeah, I don't think the perception
Speaker 1: of the system would have been a consideration. I think
Speaker 1: because the counter veiling, you know, consideration is to also
Speaker 1: send a signal to the people who are engaging in
Speaker 1: this behavior that we will follow the money, and we
Speaker 1: will follow it to Beverly Hills, we will follow it
Speaker 1: to the hedge funds of New York, and we will
Speaker 1: find you. And what's really interesting here, Noah, is that
Speaker 1: in this indictment, you know, these prosecutors charge this as
Speaker 1: a rico conspiracy. This is a racketeering conspiracy, which is
Speaker 1: harder to prove than a regular conspiracy. A statute designed
Speaker 1: to go against the mafia. It's it's a statute designed
Speaker 1: to go against the mafia, and interestingly, it's a statue
Speaker 1: that was designed to go after the top of the
Speaker 1: food chain, the godfather, the don And what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is that in this case they used the godfather, the
Speaker 1: guy at the top, to basically flip and catch the
Speaker 1: parents at the bottom. Well do you think he was
Speaker 1: the guy at the top, Singer? I mean, he's certainly
Speaker 1: the person who put the plan together. He's the thread
Speaker 1: that holds the case together. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it wasn't his money at a fundamental level. I mean,
Speaker 1: was he out there seducing the parents or were they
Speaker 1: showing up and asking him to get their kids into school.
Speaker 1: I think it was a little of both. So you're right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't his money, and I think that that's why
Speaker 1: they inverted the pyramid here to go after the people
Speaker 1: who were really trying to abuse their wealth and privilege.
Speaker 1: But what he was doing was running and we can
Speaker 1: talk about this because I did see legal versions of
Speaker 1: this that I had to address when I was at
Speaker 1: Yale Law School. He was essentially running and admissions consulting service.
Speaker 1: And this is you know these services out there. They say, look,
Speaker 1: I'm going to help your kid. I'll advise them on
Speaker 1: what to do, I'll look over their essays, i will
Speaker 1: give them all kinds of assistance to get into the
Speaker 1: best schools possible. And so I think you had many
Speaker 1: people coming and paying lots of money for these services.
Speaker 1: And then along the way, kind of like a conman does,
Speaker 1: he starts testing the waters and says, you know, here's
Speaker 1: you know, if you really want a guaranteed option, there's
Speaker 1: this for this amount of money, the side door option,
Speaker 1: whether it was the athletes or the SAT scores, and
Speaker 1: would test the waters, and I think for people who
Speaker 1: were intrigued by it, he would then follow through. So
Speaker 1: it does seem like some part of his business was
Speaker 1: doing kind of quote unquote legitimate and again I have
Speaker 1: issues with that admissions consulting, and then he would lead
Speaker 1: kind of the more unethical people down the path to
Speaker 1: outright bribery and front wow. So when you're sitting as
Speaker 1: an admissions director and you see an application, could you
Speaker 1: tell whether there was a consultant in the background coaching
Speaker 1: or were the good ones so good at their job
Speaker 1: that they could hide their efforts to improve an application? No,
Speaker 1: you can't tell. I mean, listen, you're you're looking at
Speaker 1: these You're evaluating people on paper. And unless you are
Speaker 1: an admissions office that has the bandwidth to do things
Speaker 1: like individual interviews, and most admissions offices don't. For the
Speaker 1: volume of applications they receive, you are really, again, trusting
Speaker 1: that this person is providing you with an accurate reflection
Speaker 1: of their own work, just as you do as a professor.
Speaker 1: You know, you want them to providing their own candidacy.
Speaker 1: And I have to tell you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: much in the way of testing either. You know, I
Speaker 1: occasionally get a student paper and think, huh, I'm suspicious.
Speaker 1: I think this might be a plagiarized paper. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a software package, believe it or not, that we
Speaker 1: can run the papers through to see if maybe they're plagiarized.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty good, but it's not perfect. And it's
Speaker 1: all we've got, you know, otherwise, unless I happen to
Speaker 1: know a source that the person is quoting from. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got no way of knowing. So you're you're right,
Speaker 1: A lot of education does rest on trust. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: A sorry, yeah no. And so you know, for me,
Speaker 1: when I first started as the den of admissions at
Speaker 1: Yale Law School, that was in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, the admissions landscape had changed so
Speaker 1: much from when I applied. I mean, I had no
Speaker 1: clue what I was doing when I applied to college.
Speaker 1: By the way, would you would you tell us that story?
Speaker 1: You talk about that in your I know you're CNN
Speaker 1: contributor and you wrote a terrific article for CNN about
Speaker 1: the scandal where you reflected on your own experiences. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that? Yeah, you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up in southern Virginia, and Virginia is a state that
Speaker 1: has fabulous schools, so most people, you know, go to
Speaker 1: school in state, and I went to a pretty average
Speaker 1: public school. You know, this was just not a place
Speaker 1: where people went to Ivy League schools. And I got
Speaker 1: a brochure for Princeton from Princeton in the mail and
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this looks like a really pretty campus.
Speaker 1: I want to apply. And you know, my parents are
Speaker 1: immigrants from India. They had no idea how all of
Speaker 1: this works. I used to study book to study for
Speaker 1: the l set. I'd more or less walked in cold
Speaker 1: to take it. And I just mailed in my sorry
Speaker 1: the set. And you know, I mailed in my application
Speaker 1: into this black hole and just figured somebody was going
Speaker 1: to look at it. And you know, I was pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised to hear back maybe there were these services, consulting
Speaker 1: services and guide, you know, people who helped you back then.
Speaker 1: But I definitely didn't have any access to those. And
Speaker 1: does that mean that an admissions officer looked at your application,
Speaker 1: looked at where you'd gone to school, looked at your parents,
Speaker 1: knew what their occupations were, and said, this is just
Speaker 1: a very smart candidate who didn't get all the prep
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna build that into our assessment of
Speaker 1: the application. In other words, isn't there some complicated process
Speaker 1: whereby admissions officers try to figure out they read between
Speaker 1: the lines. This is separate from question of trust. They
Speaker 1: try to figure out whether a very well packaged candidate
Speaker 1: has self packaged or been packaged by a consultant. Isn't
Speaker 1: that part of the what a good admissions officer actually does. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: there is some skepticism in the job, and I think
Speaker 1: this is where things like letters of recommendation really make
Speaker 1: a difference. You know, there was a local lawyer who
Speaker 1: ran our you know, mood court program at my high
Speaker 1: school who wrote me a recommendation. He actually got a
Speaker 1: note back from the dean of admissions, who he's met,
Speaker 1: a great letter. Yeah, he said, this was really helpful.
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, they just took a chance on me.
Speaker 1: And so when I became dean of admissions and suddenly saw, wow,
Speaker 1: you can pay five, ten, fifteen, forty thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: get people to help you not only apply to college,
Speaker 1: but to graduate school and law school in medical school,
Speaker 1: I was I was not pleased because for me, as
Speaker 1: a decision maker, I need to be able to do
Speaker 1: exactly what you just said, be able to assess each
Speaker 1: person on their own merits, taken to account all of
Speaker 1: the different factors that went into their application, including their background,
Speaker 1: and you know, knowledge of the process. So I actually
Speaker 1: added two questions to the Yale Law School application as
Speaker 1: a result of learning about this, I first added a
Speaker 1: question asking the applicant to disclose whether or not they
Speaker 1: received any assistance in preparing their application. Terrific question, and
Speaker 1: they just you know, and it's open ended. It says,
Speaker 1: if yes, just please explain. And the other was whether
Speaker 1: they were able to take a test preparation course, which
Speaker 1: I think is more common now. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you felt, you know, where you were in high school.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were super expensive at the time. I know,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe that they were that common back in then. No,
Speaker 1: I went to a private Jewish high school where, believe me,
Speaker 1: they were everyone was obsessed with college admissions. They started
Speaker 1: talking about it with us literally when we were twelve,
Speaker 1: and nobody took a a prep course for the SAT.
Speaker 1: That would have been considered very, very strange and you
Speaker 1: would have had to have been very rich to do that,
Speaker 1: and that just wasn't in people's consciousness. But now I
Speaker 1: recognize that it's it's ubiquitous. Yeah, it's ubiquitous, and so
Speaker 1: on that side, it is almost the flip, like I
Speaker 1: kind of want to know if people didn't because sometimes
Speaker 1: it could be a result of, you know, lack of
Speaker 1: access so why don't. I mean, I think that's fascinating
Speaker 1: what you did, and I think it's great. One question
Speaker 1: that I have is why don't colleges take it a
Speaker 1: step further? Why don't they say to students, listen, we
Speaker 1: need you to promise us as part of your application
Speaker 1: that you haven't been advised by a consultant, and then
Speaker 1: if you lie, we'll kick you out if we find
Speaker 1: out about that. I mean, if it's really unfair, and
Speaker 1: it seems like it really is unfair that richer kids
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to be counseled on their production of
Speaker 1: their application, and you know, if we know that that
Speaker 1: breaks the basic idea of fairness. And if it's really
Speaker 1: hard for admissions officers to tell whether someone has been
Speaker 1: properly packaged in that way or not, why not just
Speaker 1: why not just ban it? I mean, I understand that
Speaker 1: the test prep industry is harder to get around because
Speaker 1: you know, what if you sat at home and you know,
Speaker 1: did practice tests, and is that really so different? Or
Speaker 1: what if you did an online course that might be
Speaker 1: hard to test but to distinguish, but the actual consultancy,
Speaker 1: why not just ban it? I agree with you, Noah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but I have to tell you I got
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback when I included those questions on
Speaker 1: the law schoo application. From whom who pushed back on you? Well,
Speaker 1: I think some of Frankly, some of my colleagues from
Speaker 1: other colleges were surprised. Um. I think because they thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, they were like, what if it dissuades people
Speaker 1: from applying us? What did you tell them when I
Speaker 1: asked you that you said, I don't care at Sale
Speaker 1: Law School. I am pretty much. I mean, look, I
Speaker 1: think that you know, I have deep affection for Yale School.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very special place, and I think
Speaker 1: it's it's worth knowing who people are authentically. But what
Speaker 1: about what about all the other colleges and institutions, I
Speaker 1: mean who some of them are competing for applicants. So
Speaker 1: is it your sense that one reason more colleges don't
Speaker 1: do this is that they actually want the rich candidates
Speaker 1: whose parents buy them packaging, and so they wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to discourage those people from applying. I mean, if that's true,
Speaker 1: it's important for us to understand that that's true. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think it's because it's not just they want
Speaker 1: them because they are rich, but because you know these
Speaker 1: are Look, I think that these are coming from places,
Speaker 1: you know, the top private schools like they are. This
Speaker 1: is standard practice at the top, you know private schools
Speaker 1: and people where where they are literally being groomed from
Speaker 1: ninth grade. But can we be I mean, can we
Speaker 1: be a little more brutal on these institutions that we
Speaker 1: both love and care a lot about. I mean, in fact,
Speaker 1: having some rich applicants is important for the colleges, not
Speaker 1: only because most colleges and universities can't afford to give
Speaker 1: financial aid to everybody, so they need some people who
Speaker 1: pay the full rack rate, but also because colleges and
Speaker 1: universities and you know they pay my salary to so
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not claiming to be in any way
Speaker 1: example from this, they live on donations, and rich parents
Speaker 1: are more likely to be able to make meaningful donations.
Speaker 1: So isn't there, in fact, just a systematic preference at
Speaker 1: a broad level, not for every individual applicant to be rich,
Speaker 1: but for some rich people to go to the colleges.
Speaker 1: I think that's possible. I would say, probably more for
Speaker 1: the former reason you mentioned than for the latter. The
Speaker 1: idea that they need some people to pay full freight.
Speaker 1: So probably apart from the richest, richest universities that have
Speaker 1: tremendous endowments, with colleges and universities that might be running
Speaker 1: on a tuition driven model, do they do need people
Speaker 1: who can pay to come. They don't. They can't afford
Speaker 1: to give the kind of financial aid on the donor front.
Speaker 1: I honestly feel like, and again I mean, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at this from a graduate school, so you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know how it works at the college university level.
Speaker 1: I think that there can be a trade off. Right
Speaker 1: in my experience having talked to people that I've admitted
Speaker 1: and who have graduated and gone on to do amazing things,
Speaker 1: it's the people who are more the most grateful for
Speaker 1: the opportunity to be at a place, and particularly when
Speaker 1: they go on to become incredibly successful and have that
Speaker 1: gratitude and affection for the school that become I think
Speaker 1: the biggest supporters and donors and patrons of those institutions.
Speaker 1: So I think, as I mean, that's definitely true, there
Speaker 1: are we definitely know, incredibly generous alums who feel that,
Speaker 1: you know, the institution made them and are very loyal.
Speaker 1: But we also know people who make big donations to
Speaker 1: institutions because generation after generation of family members attended the school.
Speaker 1: And that's surely part of it. I mean at my
Speaker 1: own university at Harvard, where as part of a lawsuit
Speaker 1: by Asian Americans alleging discrimination in the admissions process, a
Speaker 1: lot of deep tales at the admissions process we're disclosed
Speaker 1: in open court. We learned about a VIP list, which
Speaker 1: was a special list under the control of the deans
Speaker 1: of admissions that was not for athletes. And we're going
Speaker 1: to come to athletes shortly, not for underprivileged kids, you know,
Speaker 1: but rather for the children of the very influential and
Speaker 1: in many cases very rich, and they were put on
Speaker 1: a special list and they had a huge advantage in admissions.
Speaker 1: I mean, that certainly exists at the university levels as
Speaker 1: we now we now know and presumably if that can
Speaker 1: be justified, and I don't think it can, but if
Speaker 1: it could be, it would be on the idea that
Speaker 1: you know, you need you need people and make donations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that if their institutional model is built on, you know,
Speaker 1: some degree of reliance and continuity with with those people,
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, so yeah, I mean so to Again,
Speaker 1: to go back to this whole idea, they don't want
Speaker 1: to make those people. I think I don't think they
Speaker 1: want to alienate those people because they are probably the
Speaker 1: most likely to use the kind of services that are
Speaker 1: going to package you know, their children in the best
Speaker 1: way possible, and especially if they are people who are
Speaker 1: familiar with this world and know what you know, what
Speaker 1: what these colleges are sensibly looking for. Again, very different
Speaker 1: from the clueless applicant from you know, Arkansas, who doesn't
Speaker 1: know a single person who has ever gone to an
Speaker 1: Ivy League school. You know, they're able to polish up
Speaker 1: their applications in a way. And to go back to
Speaker 1: why the colleges don't, I think that they're It would
Speaker 1: ruffle the feathers, or it would it would, you know,
Speaker 1: rattle the system as it exists. I think I don't
Speaker 1: think it would be fatal, but I think it would
Speaker 1: be a huge change. Speaking of rattling the system, to me,
Speaker 1: the sort of profound philosophical issue that underlies this whole
Speaker 1: debate is merit. You know, is merit a real thing?
Speaker 1: Is it a thing that we can actually measure? Because
Speaker 1: we like to talk about it as though it were.
Speaker 1: You know, who are we admitting the students who are meritorious,
Speaker 1: who fit the criteria that we're looking for, and who
Speaker 1: produce diversity in a in a class taken as a whole.
Speaker 1: And if that's real, then we're talking about problems that
Speaker 1: the margin. You know, people who who cheated the system
Speaker 1: by pretending to have merit that they didn't have, And
Speaker 1: we could try to fix that by prosecuting those people.
Speaker 1: Are doing a better job of sussing out who are
Speaker 1: the people who are overstating their their abilities and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe remembering that if you take a prep prep course,
Speaker 1: your test scores will be different. Those are all fixes
Speaker 1: assuming we believe in the underlying idea of merit. But
Speaker 1: the hard question is is merit real? Is it for real?
Speaker 1: And I guess I want to ask you, as someone
Speaker 1: who's been deep down inside the process, do you believe
Speaker 1: in it? Do you believe that there is a thing
Speaker 1: called merit that you and other admissions officers can find? Wow?
Speaker 1: That is a really hard quest. Shit. Um, I think
Speaker 1: at its core, yes, but I think it really requires
Speaker 1: a few different things. Um. Number one, it really requires
Speaker 1: I think a human, thoughtful review of each person's application.
Speaker 1: I think it also means acknowledging that everyone has their
Speaker 1: own subjective idea of what constitutes merit. So when you
Speaker 1: concentrate the decision making power into one person or three people,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is you are going to, I think
Speaker 1: get consciously or unconsciously just a particularly a certain kind
Speaker 1: of bias towards what is meritorious, but somewhat at odds
Speaker 1: should just to interrupt for a second with the with
Speaker 1: the whole idea that, yeah, exactly. I mean if merritt,
Speaker 1: if you and I and another person you know, all
Speaker 1: sit at a desk and we're given us three files
Speaker 1: and we each reach a different conclusion on merit, then
Speaker 1: that doesn't feel like merit. That seems like getting struck
Speaker 1: by lightning, or you know, good good luck, or a
Speaker 1: value that is open for debate, Like if we were
Speaker 1: all asked who's attractive, we'd all have a different view
Speaker 1: of perhaps of who is attractive. But merit is supposed
Speaker 1: to be something that can be measured. We have tests
Speaker 1: which are supposed to be the same test for everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that that I might disagree with that.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that you're right that we have
Speaker 1: come to understand merit as being numbers. And this is
Speaker 1: why people get obsessed with the essay to or else
Speaker 1: heat and GPAs and all of this stuff, because that
Speaker 1: feels good to us, right, Like that's something measurable. And
Speaker 1: if the test is administered fairly, and you know, these
Speaker 1: people have taken classes like you have, you can be
Speaker 1: reduced to a number, which then tells everybody, compared to others,
Speaker 1: how meritorious you are. And I believe some of these
Speaker 1: reverse discrimination lawsuits are kind of based on this idea.
Speaker 1: They idea is that the numbers don't lie. That's the
Speaker 1: numbers don't lie. Um, of course we know in real
Speaker 1: life isn't always true, but at least if they work right,
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to lie. But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: to go back to what we were saying earlier about
Speaker 1: the taking the chances and looking at the context. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, do you look at someone who worked their
Speaker 1: way through college? Um, do you do you evaluate that
Speaker 1: uh in in a different way, or you know, do
Speaker 1: you take that into account differently than from someone who
Speaker 1: really was able to take you know, is a very
Speaker 1: accomplished musician and was lived in New York City and
Speaker 1: was able to, you know, take classes at Juilliard UM
Speaker 1: and end up in you know, a symphony orchestra or something. UM.
Speaker 1: Those are the difficult questions that you come to UM
Speaker 1: because it's impossible to find a way to you know,
Speaker 1: you you have to become. There is a subjectivity to
Speaker 1: evaluating those UM because they're just not as to apples.
Speaker 1: So your example of the Juilliard trained musician raises the
Speaker 1: other grand issue that is in play in this college
Speaker 1: admission scandal, and that is athletics, elite athletics, which in
Speaker 1: its way is not unlike training at Juilliard, many long
Speaker 1: hours of intense training the best coaches or teachers and
Speaker 1: emerging as a as a leading competitive member of your
Speaker 1: of your chosen extracurricular activity at sometimes at the national level.
Speaker 1: And as we know, one of the things that that
Speaker 1: singer did that's most scandalous is he recruited admissions officers
Speaker 1: or senior administrators at universities including USC including Stanford, including Whisper.
Speaker 1: Whisper because you work there and I went there Yale,
Speaker 1: and he corrupted them or they agreed to be corrupted,
Speaker 1: and they marked students as elite athletes deserving of recruiting
Speaker 1: even though the students in some cases had never even
Speaker 1: played the board. So that raises right away the problem
Speaker 1: of whether sports should matter at all in college admissions.
Speaker 1: And I know that, at least based on my own experience,
Speaker 1: is a law student can't be that my basketball talents
Speaker 1: were any factor to my admission. And based on the
Speaker 1: other people players and I played with, some of them
Speaker 1: were very good, but that doesn't seem like why they
Speaker 1: got in. So I understand this is not as much
Speaker 1: an issue in law school, but at the college level,
Speaker 1: should elite sports be treated as a separate category of admissions?
Speaker 1: You know, I have to be honest now, I just
Speaker 1: don't know enough about this. And again I think that
Speaker 1: this gets into things like the economic model on which
Speaker 1: a lot of some institutions are based. College sports is
Speaker 1: I think, a moneymaker at many places, and you know
Speaker 1: it could it also fosters some of that alumni you know,
Speaker 1: connection and attachment to those institutions, which can then you know, funnel,
Speaker 1: which then bolsters their development base for donors and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think it's really woven into, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the entire system that some of these universities are built
Speaker 1: on and I should it be. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: certainly I have a great overview of it, and I
Speaker 1: think you're absolutely right. Yeah. I mean again, I think
Speaker 1: this comes to you know, these are the things that
Speaker 1: we believe our meritorious. I mean, our culture believes, like
Speaker 1: no one really has ever questioned that the way that
Speaker 1: they have questions, say affirmative action, um, you know, and
Speaker 1: I think there's been some questions on the other side
Speaker 1: of say legacy status and stuff. But like you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that uh, you know, athletic recruitment is a
Speaker 1: part of college um and and can really give you
Speaker 1: um advantage has I think has always been linked to
Speaker 1: an idea that that developing that excellence in a sport
Speaker 1: is is actually noteworthy. And so I tend to agree
Speaker 1: with you that that it is noteworthy and that it
Speaker 1: is worthy. Although it's worth noting that the Oxford and
Speaker 1: Cambridge model from the UK is that they give zero
Speaker 1: weight to athletics at all, and they actually still have
Speaker 1: some elite athletes who managed to get in, but that
Speaker 1: they don't wait at all. But admittedly that's a different
Speaker 1: country and in a different system. But what I was
Speaker 1: going to say, sorry, go ahead, Well, you are a
Speaker 1: road scholar, right, I was, And the roads also places,
Speaker 1: or at least it used to. It absolutely does, and
Speaker 1: luckily for me, not everybody had to be had to
Speaker 1: be an athlete. There was, you know, there there was
Speaker 1: Corey Booker there to uh, you know, an actual an
Speaker 1: actual division one tight end, a legitimate, legitimate player to
Speaker 1: even out the people who who are more bookworms. But
Speaker 1: but you know, I think that it's reasonable to weigh
Speaker 1: athletic prowess as one element in admission. But what the
Speaker 1: Singer scandal shows is that at a lot of colleges,
Speaker 1: including the best colleges in the country, you could get
Speaker 1: admitted on a totally different track. If you were an athlete,
Speaker 1: your application did not You didn't even get admitted at
Speaker 1: the same time, on the same day as everybody else.
Speaker 1: There was an earlier admissions deadline, and there was a
Speaker 1: completely parallel process where coaches were given by admissions offices,
Speaker 1: which means by administrations a certain number of guaranteed slots.
Speaker 1: And that's what they managed to exploit. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think you know, one interesting question is why did people
Speaker 1: with a million bucks to get their kids into college
Speaker 1: not just make a million dollar donation to the college
Speaker 1: or their choice. And I think the answer is no
Speaker 1: college would guarantee them admissions, even for a million dollars.
Speaker 1: But by going through this quote unt illegal side door,
Speaker 1: they were guaranteed admissions because the coaches had admission slots
Speaker 1: that they owned. Yeah, I mean, do you think we
Speaker 1: could agree that that is maybe a bad idea. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's definitely raises the question of oversight. Like so, you know,
Speaker 1: presumably these coaches were given these slots because they alone
Speaker 1: have the expertise to assess whether someone is the best
Speaker 1: baseball player in the country, something that maybe the admissions
Speaker 1: team would not be able to assess. And so if
Speaker 1: that is the basis on which you're going to give
Speaker 1: like a significant advantage, then you have to have somebody
Speaker 1: in that position who can evaluate that. Just like if
Speaker 1: if let's use music as an example, that were the
Speaker 1: other if that were instead of sport, what were you
Speaker 1: were doing, you would have to have somebody who understands,
Speaker 1: you know, musical proficiency and technical ability to evaluate that. No,
Speaker 1: I know, and you know, it's sort of interesting. We
Speaker 1: haven't really gotten a clear sense of this, but some
Speaker 1: of the coaches seem to have taken the money in
Speaker 1: exchange for giving away slots to use for their programs.
Speaker 1: So in some cases they seem to have been given
Speaker 1: money themselves, the old fashioned form of corruption, I bribe
Speaker 1: you to give me one of your slots. But some
Speaker 1: of them seem to have taken a lot of the
Speaker 1: money in the form of donations to their program. So
Speaker 1: in a sense they were saying they probably were doing
Speaker 1: just what you're saying. Oh, they were trying to particular
Speaker 1: their best team, but they thought to themselves, well, I
Speaker 1: also need equipment, right, and I also need support from
Speaker 1: my team, So I'm going to take half a million
Speaker 1: dollars as a donation to my program and use that
Speaker 1: this year in lieu of a particular slot. So the
Speaker 1: cash was also in that sense of benefit. Some of
Speaker 1: them may really have been doing exactly what you said,
Speaker 1: trying to put together the best team they could, but
Speaker 1: they just weighed the cash more heavily than their particular candidate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess this gets too. I mean, why, maybe
Speaker 1: you know this better than me. I don't know that
Speaker 1: we've gone to institutions where sports are the moneymaker for
Speaker 1: the school, but I mean, you know this is again,
Speaker 1: this is kind of all the incentives that are built up.
Speaker 1: And I want to also just throw in here before
Speaker 1: we run out of time, that US News is another thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can ignore how incentives play a role
Speaker 1: in how people value certain things, and then that kind
Speaker 1: of permeates the whole system. So with US News, for example, colleges, okay,
Speaker 1: hugely important to the life, which is most colleges and
Speaker 1: universities in the United States, and um, you know, most
Speaker 1: people don't realize that. I mean, the US News formula
Speaker 1: is fairly arbitrary. They can choose to wait things at
Speaker 1: certain things highly or not. And what they wait very
Speaker 1: highly are l sets in GPA. Now, as we've just noted,
Speaker 1: maybe that makes sense. Maybe those are the only objective
Speaker 1: criteria of merit and they should be weighted. But what
Speaker 1: what then happens is that it becomes a frenzy to
Speaker 1: get the highest l SAT score to do, you know,
Speaker 1: to make sure that that it disincentivises students actually from
Speaker 1: taking harder classes because they don't want to get a
Speaker 1: lower grade UM. And it also drives great in it
Speaker 1: drives great inflation, UM. And it also makes it so
Speaker 1: that many colleges and universities can take into account kind
Speaker 1: of the full picture and take the risks on people
Speaker 1: that are incredibly compelling, and maybe they don't feel like
Speaker 1: the test score is truly predictive of what this person
Speaker 1: is capable of, but it could impact their overall average,
Speaker 1: which would then drop them two points, you know, two
Speaker 1: slots and the rankings, and then that makes them lose money.
Speaker 1: And I mean, all of these domino effects that happen,
Speaker 1: and I think that that also is sort of driving
Speaker 1: it in a way. We'd have to dissect it more
Speaker 1: on the athletic side. But when it becomes the moneymaker
Speaker 1: or the you know, reflection of that school's value, that's
Speaker 1: when you start having perverse incentives and people start being
Speaker 1: able to exploit. I mean, you're really you're really uncovering
Speaker 1: here a whole cycle, Yeah, where the colleges and universities
Speaker 1: want to score high on the US News ranking so
Speaker 1: they can get the best students, so that they can
Speaker 1: score high on the US News ranking. The students want
Speaker 1: to do well so that they can go to the
Speaker 1: niest US News and ranked colleges so they can get jobs,
Speaker 1: so they can make money, so they can donate it
Speaker 1: back to the colleges so that they can whole start
Speaker 1: the whole process all all over again. And I guess
Speaker 1: the question is, does this whole complicated process that is
Speaker 1: very characteristic of the United States is it working? Is
Speaker 1: it ultimately serving the interests of the society, which is
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to do? And you know, what is
Speaker 1: your what is your bottom line answer on that deep question.
Speaker 1: I think that you know this scandal, um, and I
Speaker 1: I can talk about law school for sure. I think
Speaker 1: that we have started to move into an area where
Speaker 1: it is not serving the population. And you know, just
Speaker 1: tuition alone, the fact that you know, law school graduates
Speaker 1: are graduating with the debt that's equivalent of a mortgage
Speaker 1: where even the highest size, yes, and even the highest
Speaker 1: paying law firm jobs can't sustain necessarily these uh, these debts, um,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that this has long term
Speaker 1: implications for for these schools. Uh. You know. They they
Speaker 1: make it so that students might be less likely to
Speaker 1: give back. They might say, hey, I paid you know,
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars to go there. I don't owe
Speaker 1: you any money anymore, um, or to to go into
Speaker 1: profess you know, go down paths that that aren't suited
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, you know you're there, Noah, you
Speaker 1: see how all? Yeah? Um, and so you know, the
Speaker 1: question is who needs to take the lead to sit
Speaker 1: down and say this is not working and here are
Speaker 1: the things that are really driving this off the rails,
Speaker 1: and we are going to change it. Um. I frankly
Speaker 1: think that that belongs to the elite schools themselves. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the people. It's the ones at the top that
Speaker 1: I think can afford to, for example, drop out of
Speaker 1: the rankings and just say we're not doing we're not
Speaker 1: playing anymore. Out of the game. Yeah, we're out of
Speaker 1: the game. I mean, you know, if Harvard did that
Speaker 1: and they dropped, I don't think the students would stop.
Speaker 1: I don't think students would have stop applying to Harvard.
Speaker 1: I really don't. Um. You know, at some point somebody
Speaker 1: has to call the bluff. And um. You know, same
Speaker 1: thing with with tuitions and uh, you know all of
Speaker 1: these other incentives that are you know, we have there
Speaker 1: are some schools that are now dropping um stardized tests. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so I think we're starting to see some
Speaker 1: movement in that direction. Um. And you know, anything like
Speaker 1: that I mean, think about it. If if if schools drop
Speaker 1: standardized tests there, the US news is going to have
Speaker 1: to find another way that's true. And then the great
Speaker 1: challenge will be when the tests are dropped, have we
Speaker 1: made things fairer right? Or have we made it harder
Speaker 1: for for kids like you who had great scores and
Speaker 1: who use those scores as a signal to their colleges
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I'm really smart, you know, and admit me, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: And I think that's the trade off. Trade Offs are
Speaker 1: the name of the game. And this very very, very complicated.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've no answers in this conversation except well,
Speaker 1: I think you're I think you're right. But I think
Speaker 1: this is the stage of life where we should be
Speaker 1: asking the deep questions and we should be using a
Speaker 1: scandal like this as a way to say, does merit work?
Speaker 1: You know? Do these rankings help us? And asking those
Speaker 1: questions can be the first age to trying to solve
Speaker 1: the problem as you as you were just suggesting, and
Speaker 1: that was going to require some experimentation. Yeah, I'm incredibly
Speaker 1: grateful to you for your super honest and deep answers
Speaker 1: and explanations. Josh, I thank you so so much, Matt.
Speaker 1: Thank you. This was a great conversation and I appreciate
Speaker 1: you having me on. I live my whole life surrounded
Speaker 1: by the idea of merit. I teach students. They seem great.
Speaker 1: I have colleagues, they seem great. So it's natural to
Speaker 1: assume that we're surrounded by the best people the heart
Speaker 1: is working the ones who deserve to be there the most.
Speaker 1: The thing about this college admission scandal is it makes
Speaker 1: you stop and ask is merit for real? Just the
Speaker 1: fact that people seem good doesn't mean that there aren't
Speaker 1: other people out there who are as good, or maybe
Speaker 1: actually better, And the playing field that we imagine existing
Speaker 1: to choose the people who are most meritorious probably isn't
Speaker 1: fair in the first place. It's not just a question
Speaker 1: of how rich people cheated to get their kids into
Speaker 1: fancy schools. It's the question, at the more basic level
Speaker 1: of why the system overall favors people who are well
Speaker 1: off over people who start with less means and might
Speaker 1: actually be more talented. Maybe the system just doesn't produce
Speaker 1: the merit that we imagine that it does. On top
Speaker 1: of that, I have the strong feeling that we have
Speaker 1: not heard the last of this case. Are these all
Speaker 1: the people that the FBI has on tape, cheating and
Speaker 1: lying and scheming to get their kids into Nancy schools?
Speaker 1: I seriously doubt it. Deep Background is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Gane Coott, with
Speaker 1: engineering by Jason Gambrell and Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is
Speaker 1: Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis GERA
Speaker 1: special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Noah R Feldman. This is Deep Background