College Admissions: Singer's Side Door
The Front Door is Legitimate. The Side Door is Fraud. What About the Back Door?
Here's what happened (I'm sure we're well aware by now):- Wealthy parents paid William Singer to arrange for their kids to get into prestigious colleges.
- Singer did this by in a variety of ways, notably by having the kids take their standardized tests in "controlled" settings, where their answers would be edited after submission to guarantee high scores, and by bribing college sports coaches to take the kids as "recruits" -- in some cases kid had never even played the relevant sport.
- The FBI found out and now some famous people and college administrators are in big trouble.
Singer sums up the crime in one quote: “There is a front door which means you get in on your own, The back door is through institutional advancement, which is ten times as much money. And I’ve created this side door in.”
Most agree that Singer's side door is wrong. But what about the back door of donating vast sums of money to an institution to increase the admissions chances of one's child? There has been significant discussion in the media coverage of this story that critiques the back door as just another unfair but legal mechanism through which the haves gain advantages over the have-nots.
However, I argue that the back door is legitimate and a completely different beast from the side door. When a significant financial contribution is made to a university, all students, regardless of class or wealth, stand to benefit. Without the donation-fueling incentives that a back door provides, all students would be worse off and have access to fewer resources. "Institutional advancement" really does advance the institution, helping all students and stakeholders of that institution.
But upon close examination, aside from this purely utilitarian calculus, there is a more fundamental justification for the legitimacy of the back door: property rights. Let's look at a general case: You create a product and have full ownership of it. Now you want to give ownership of it to someone else (sell it, give it away, whatever you want to do with it). You should have and indeed do have full control over how that ownership is transferred.
In this case, the university has created a product that it has full ownership over: seats to study at the university. Now, most seats are allocated for academic rigor and holistic competence. Some are allocated for athletic merit. A few others are allocated for those who make contributions to "institutional advancement" (the back door). All of this is fine -- the university can theoretically give out its seats in whatever way it wants, through whatever criteria it chooses. If the university wanted to allocate seats to those who demonstrated extreme mediocrity or poor performance, then that would be fine also as it is the university's right to do so. The back door is legitimate as it is simply a university exercising its property rights.
Contrast this to Singer's side door. The side door is fraud. If a university is lied to and misled to believe that a candidate has greater academic merit than he or she actually does, leading to the university awarding a seat to that candidate, then the university has been defrauded. The side door is fraud.
However, I argue that the back door is legitimate and a completely different beast from the side door. When a significant financial contribution is made to a university, all students, regardless of class or wealth, stand to benefit. Without the donation-fueling incentives that a back door provides, all students would be worse off and have access to fewer resources. "Institutional advancement" really does advance the institution, helping all students and stakeholders of that institution.
But upon close examination, aside from this purely utilitarian calculus, there is a more fundamental justification for the legitimacy of the back door: property rights. Let's look at a general case: You create a product and have full ownership of it. Now you want to give ownership of it to someone else (sell it, give it away, whatever you want to do with it). You should have and indeed do have full control over how that ownership is transferred.
In this case, the university has created a product that it has full ownership over: seats to study at the university. Now, most seats are allocated for academic rigor and holistic competence. Some are allocated for athletic merit. A few others are allocated for those who make contributions to "institutional advancement" (the back door). All of this is fine -- the university can theoretically give out its seats in whatever way it wants, through whatever criteria it chooses. If the university wanted to allocate seats to those who demonstrated extreme mediocrity or poor performance, then that would be fine also as it is the university's right to do so. The back door is legitimate as it is simply a university exercising its property rights.
Contrast this to Singer's side door. The side door is fraud. If a university is lied to and misled to believe that a candidate has greater academic merit than he or she actually does, leading to the university awarding a seat to that candidate, then the university has been defrauded. The side door is fraud.
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