When “Operation Varsity Blues” speaks to a generation

All over the news, you cannot miss the latest scandal “Operation Varsity Blues” that broke on Tuesday – naming approximately 50 individuals in the biggest college admissions cheating plot to date. With Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin being brought into the direct spotlight, the scandal unveils both bribery and test cheating ploys with large cash pay-outs. This enabled the children of celebrity and high net worth individuals to be admitted into the elite of elite colleges including Yale, Stanford, USC and others. Under the guise of false athletics, pay-offs for hired test-takers and falsified special needs reports for additional test time and privileges, the students involved were able to acquire admission into their selected (or rather their parents selected) Universities of study.

Unfortunately, we currently live in a society where the fruits of our labor do not necessary correlate with our abilities and talents. Social media has been a driver in major elections, events (Fyre festival), and programs of higher education. The ability to fact check often gets dropped to the wayside in place of a meme, a funny headline or a Twitter rant. Young adults are pursuing careers in becoming a Youtuber, Influencer, and other various social media driven endeavors. The return of the pyramid scheme is also back in full force where you cannot go a day without being solicited to for a new product or service. So where does that leave higher education?

Throughout the decades, the emphasis on obtaining college degrees have vastly increased along with amount of graduates receiving advanced degrees. With that, there is a clear level of dilution and instead of standards for admission increasing, many institutions have been left decreasing their admissions requirements in order to continue to create a rise of admission. While this may not be the case for the elite of the elite, it has often been a wonder as to the correlation between high net worth individuals and ivy league programs. Do they all just have better early education opportunities? More tutors? More opportunity and access to improvement? Or do they have an in? Under this investigation we may be able to see just how deep the corruption of the system of higher education goes when it comes to college admissions and preferential treatment.

While certainly the system has been gamed for a long time– it will be interesting to see how the schools respond to this case. Right now there are no pending charges against the Universities themselves, but rather just the major players in the case. However, when other scandals break the question always remains – who knew, and for how long?