Former State Secretary of Education Paul Reville called the college admissions scandal just one example of the many ways privileged students and parents can game the admissions system on Boston Public Radio Wednesday.
Last week, the country was shocked when 50 people, including celebrities Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, were indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for participating in and benefiting from a college admissions scheme that got the children of wealthy parents into elite colleges through bribery, cheating on college admissions test, and lying about athletic prowess. Reville, who also runs the Education Redesign Lab at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, said the scandal reveals the “sort of deep, long line of privilege that has always been there.”
“The advantaged have always found a way to further advantage their children,” Reville said.
Reville told BPR that wealthy parents regularly and legally donate large sums of money to colleges to create advantages for their children, pointing to the$2.5 million donation Jared Kushner’s father gave Harvard before Kushner was accepted in the school.
“This goes on all the time,” Reville said
Wealthy legacy students also have an unfair advantage, Reville said. “At Harvard, we have 14 percent of the admitted class are legacies. That’s a form of privilege right there.”
“There are all kinds of ways to game the system, and people with a lot of social capital, people with a lot of advantage, have always known this and do everything they can,” he continued.
Reville is worried how the recent flood of stories on the inequality within the college admissions process could have a lasting detrimental impact on prospective college students.
“The message that we are sending to young people as they aspire to go to college… this is probably the worst thing of the whole thing, thinking the deck is rigged and it doesn’t really matter,” he said.
