In Texas, We Try to Indict Whoever Finds the College Admissions Cheating
JIM SCHUTZE | MARCH 18, 2019 | 4:00AM
We don’t even yet know how much of it is true, but the $25 million college admissions bribery scandal described in a federal indictment in Massachusetts last week has already ignited a firestorm of blame-laying, which should fill my heart with joy.
The blame game, after all, is my personal sport. I’ve always thought it should be in the Olympics. But I don’t know. Some of this stuff is all over the place.
The New York Times took note last week that some of the alleged cheating involves parents who paid smart kids to take SAT exams for their own less smart kids. The
Times headline was, “Is the College Cheating Scandal the ‘Final Straw’ for Standardized Tests?” The suggestion was that colleges and universities may have to cut back on standardized testing because some people are cheating on the tests.Really? It’s the test’s fault? How about instituting even more standardized testing, making the tests even tougher but cutting back on cheating? Isn’t that a more direct path to the problem?
Some of the cheating scandal has touched the University of Texas in Austin, and
The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit online news service,
reported last week that Gov. Greg Abbott was in a righteous lather about it:
“As far as the University of Texas is concerned — but I will expand this to every university in the state of Texas — it’s important for every university to go back and re-evaluate, to study and to investigate their admissions processes to make sure that nothing like this either is happening or can happen,” Abbott told a news conference last week, according to the
Tribune.
Remind me when I fly somewhere to pocket some extra barf bags from the plane so I’ll have them on hand next time I have to read
The Texas Tribune. Are you kidding me? Four years ago Dallas businessman Wallace Hall, a member of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, uncovered evidence, confirmed in a later third-party investigation, of deep-rooted admissions cheating at UT Austin and the UT law school. Abbott, then Texas attorney general, banded together with a pack of angry baying wolves in the Legislature to shut Hall up and prevent him from exposing the full extent of the scandal to the public.