For today’s Ivy On Celluloid, I’m going to look at the portrayal of higher education in the 2006 comedy, Accepted.

The plot of Accepted is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A high school slacker who’s rejected by every school he applies to opts to create his own institution of higher learning, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, on a rundown piece of property near his hometown.

The screenplay for Accepted has three credited writers: Adam Cooper (Exodus: Gods and Kings), Bill Collage (Assassin’s Creed, Allegiant), and Mark Perez (Game Night, The Country Bears).

Accepted was directed by Steve Pink, a writer and director who also worked on the films High Fidelity, Hot Tub Time Machine, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, and Grosse Pointe Blank, and the shows Santa Clarita Diet and Cobra Kai.

The cast of the film includes Justin Long (Tusk, Drag Me To Hell, Waiting…), Jonah Hill (The Wolf Of Wall Street, War Dogs, 21 Jump Street, Moneyball), Maria Thayer (State of Play), Blake Lively (The Town, The Shallows), Anthony Heald (Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs), Lewis Black (The Daily Show, Inside Out), and Kellan Lutz (The Legend of Hercules, Twilight).

The cinematographer for Accepted was Matthew F. Leonetti, whose shooting credits include Star Trek: First Contact, Santa’s Slay, The Butterfly Effect, Hard To Kill, Action Jackson, Red Heat, Weird Science, The Bat People, and Dragnet.

Accepted was edited by Scott Hill, whose other cutting credits include Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty, Here Comes The Boom, and Zookeeper.

In 2011, a loose Bollywood remake of Accepted was made, titled F.A.L.T.U.. It used many of the same elements as its predecessor, but changed the setting of the film. The world “faltu” in Hindi translates to “useless” in English.

Accepted was made on a budget of $23 million, on which it took in $38.5 million in its lifetime theatrical release. Taking into account advertising and post-production costs, the film probably wasn’t terribly profitable. Critically, the reception to Accepted was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds scores of 37% from critics and 72% from audiences, alongside an IMDb user rating of 6.5/10.

As far as college comedies go, this is one of the more bearable ones that I’ve come across. There is still a lot of crassness and sexism to be found, to be sure, but it didn’t make me as livid as a lot of other college comedy films.

When it comes to the portrayal of higher education in Accepted, this is a movie that deals with some issues that most college stories don’t necessarily touch on, like what the minimum requirements for a university are, what the purpose of higher education is, and what fraud looks like in this realm.

The story of Accepted takes place in the state of Ohio, though the specific location is fictitious. Harmon College, as it is portrayed, it not a real institution in Ohio, though it could be a stand-in for any number of the many universities and colleges in Ohio. Interestingly, there is a Harmon College that exists within the University of Central Missouri, but it isn’t an autonomous institution.

A number of other higher education institutions are mentioned but not seen in the film. Oddly, some of these are real universities, whereas others are not. For instance, B is rejected from “Ohio State College,” which is clearly meant as a fictional stand in for the Ohio State University. Rory, however, is rejected from the very real Yale University, and an unnamed character is shown celebrating an acceptance into Princeton University.

At one point, the topic of B’s admissions essay comes up. Apparently, his essay was themed around how he “doesn’t have a clue” what to do with his life, which his sister claims is part of why he failed to get accepted anywhere. Later in the film, it is shown that B is pretty good improvisational speaker, and is able to weave complicated deceptions and inspirational speeches from thin air. At his core, he is a gifted storyteller / huckster, which is a skill which might have helped him out with his essay. In an article in the US News & World Report, it is stated that individualism, likability, and vivid storytelling are all key components to a successful and effective admissions essay. Personally, I think that if B had channeled his existing skills, he might have been able to concoct a brilliant essay that would have possibly compensated for his insufficient grades. However, it sounds like he couldn’t muster any genuine passion for his applications, which probably came through in his writing. That – rather than just his topic of choice – likely contributed to his inability to stand out in the admissions review process.

In an early scene, B tries to break his rejection news to his parents by arguing that it is “financially irresponsible to go to college.” This is not an uncommon line of thinking, particularly as the cost of schooling has continued to rise, and success stories of tech industry drop-outs have circulated and enchanted countless budding entrepreneurs. However, his parents immediately shoot him down, with his father stating that:

Society has rules. The first rule is, you go to college. If you want a happy and successful life, you go to college. If you want to be somebody, you go to college.

This is an interesting example of a generational divide when it comes to perceptions of higher education. People who went to college decades ago probably still hold on to the belief that a college is a sort of guarantee of a high quality of life, and the absence of one is a guarantee of the opposite. There was definitely a time where achieving a college degree alone was enough to raise someone’s social status, when it was a far less common achievement. Now, however, it isn’t that simple. College is an opportunity for learning and connections that can eventually lead to more than that. It isn’t, by any means, a guarantee of success.

Something that has always bugged me about this film is the apparent absence of community colleges. In theory, any number of the South Harmon students could have gone to a community college, as they are generally open enrollment. Many students who don’t get into the school they want, or can’t afford the price tag, will take community college classes and later transfer to another institution. While this pathway is definitely not flawless, it has proven viable for more than a few students over the years, and is likely preferable to not taking classes at all. If acceptance (as opposed to rejection) is what South Harmon students were looking for, community colleges is where they could have found it.

B’s sister, who is apparently a pre-teen, is shown to be already preparing for college admissions despite her young age, in the hopes that she will “have a shot.” Their parents are supportive of this, which is becoming increasingly common. In the hopes of standardized test successes and any potential advantage in applications, children are beginning college preparation younger and younger.

One of the central characters of the film, Daryl, is said to be an all-state quality wide receiver. However, at some point, he winds up with a prohibitive injury, which leads to his promised football scholarship being reneged. Prior to the formation of South Harmon, he is left completely adrift, without any clear options.

This is a very real issue that faces college athletes: any injury could not only spell the end of their scholarship, but in some cases the end of a potentially lucrative career as well. A single injury can stand between multiple millions of dollars worth of contracts, and being left with nothing but immense debt and a vacancy where a college degree should be. Consider the story of University of Oklahoma basketball player Kyle Hardrick, who suffered an injury shortly into playing at the university:

As Hardrick tries to resume his career, he has been unable to obtain a medical hardship waiver, something he needs to regain a year of college eligibility. His family has been stuck with tuition bills since his scholarship was not renewed. And with those bills unpaid, he also can’t get his academic transcripts from Oklahoma to transfer to another school. “You believe that your child will be taken care of on and off that court throughout their college career,” said Valerie Hardrick, Kyle’s mother, at a congressional roundtable discussion last week. “My insurance does not cover all of Kyle’s medical bills.” With scholarships renewed on a year-to-year basis, stories like Hardrick’s emerge every year across the country.

In an article titled “The Most Evil Thing About College Sports” on Slate.com, Josh Levin writes:

An athletic scholarship is not a four-year educational guarantee. What few college sports fans—and not enough college recruits—realize is that a university can yank that scholarship after one, two, or three years without cause. Coach doesn’t like you? He’s free to cut you loose. Sitting the bench? You could lose your free ride to a new recruit. … [One] roster management strategy, seen often at Alabama, LSU, and other SEC schools, is to rescind a promised scholarship just before the student-athlete’s freshman year.

Daryl’s is not unlike the other stories described here. If anything, he is somewhat fortunate to have been injured prior to getting to college, when a lot of debt could have been on the line.

The character Rory in the film faced another rejection scenario – she applied to only one highly-selective college, and didn’t get in. In this case, her target was Yale University. In her words, her rejection was due to “too many rich kids with mediocre grades and well-connected parents this year” applying for admission this year, meaning there was no room for her. In 2017, Yale was among the most selective of colleges, accepting between 6% and 7% of applicants. Even with an immaculate application, there was no guarantee for Rory’s admission to the school. That said, there is a long history of elitism and admissions bias in the Ivy League and other top-tier institutions, so she is probably not entirely off-base with her assumption. Almost certainly, a child of a trustee of donor would have gotten preferential consideration over here, in one way or another.

When initially designing their fake college, this first steps the gang makes are to design fake acceptance letters, as well as a facade website. Some people might thing that this is beyond belief – surely people would just Google the school and look at the website, and immediately get fishy?

Recently, I read a fantastic book on fraud in higher education called Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over A Million Fake Diplomas. Shockingly, both fake degrees and entirely fake institutions are really common, and people fall for them absolutely all the time. A couple of examples of entirely fake institutions that conferred fake credentials for years were LaSalle University in Louisiana and Columbia State University, both of which took in millions upon millions of dollars in profits before being shut down. Records of fake universities even go back all the way to the 14th century:

So many new universities opened, the University of Paris begged the pope to stop them…because some of the newer ones, more interested in making money than offering education, got into the business of…selling admission…and eventually the selling of degrees themselves. Bear, J. & Ezell, A. (2012). Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over A Million Fake Diplomas. p. 34

Even more disturbing than how profitable and prolific fake universities are, is just how easy it is to get a hold of one of their degrees. In 1984, just to see how easy it really was, U.S. House of Representatives staff took $1800, and used it to buy a doctorate from the fake Union University in Los Angeles. The fake degree was written out to Rep. Claude Pepper, thus making him, nominally, “Dr. Pepper.” Taking it a step further, the staff members then made up their own fake university, and displayed to the House of Representatives how easy the process was (Bear & Ezell, p. 38).

The biggest difference between South Harmon Institute of Technology and most fake universities in real life is that “real” fake universities rarely, if ever, have a physical campus. Today, almost all fake universities utilize the internet as their primary platform, whereas they previously did a lot of their business over the phone through cold-calling. The audacity and impracticality of trying to pull off a false campus is clear from watching Accepted: the whole process is unbelievably complicated and tenuous. After all, imagine how much easier it would have been for B to concoct an online college: he wouldn’t have had to invest in a location, wouldn’t have had to improvise in his interactions with students, wouldn’t have had to deal with the liability of housing students, etc. However, this gets into another interesting aspect of the film – the guidelines for accreditation, as outlined in the climactic hearing with a state accrediting board.

As stated in the film, there are two sets of qualifications needed for SHIT to earn accreditation. First:

The state defines a college as a body of people with a shared common purpose of a higher education…that’s us, with the word ‘higher’ kind of loosely defined – B

As B notes, SHIT loosely qualifies as a college based on this definition. Thus, the team has to meet three additional stated requirements for accreditation – they have to prove that their college has a facility, a curriculum, and a faculty. While they ultimately provisionally pass accreditation by the skin of their teeth, there are a whole lot of problems with this whole process.

First off, the state does not accredit colleges. That work is done by independent accrediting agencies, such as the Higher Learning Commission or the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges. So, the entire basis of the hearing is bizarre and inaccurate.

Here is an example of the guidelines that an accreditation agency, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, uses. It has 9 general standards for accreditation, each of which has between 5 and 49 specific points beneath them. NEASC states that each of these standards “articulates a dimension of institutional quality”, and that “serious weaknesses in a particular area may threaten the institution’s accreditation.” There is, to be blunt, no chance that B and company could have weaseled their way through an actual accreditation process by one of these rigorous agencies. Their ad hoc institution simply could not meet these sorts of qualifications, given the amount of red tape and planning that would be necessary for the process.

In the film, the villainous President of Harmon College is shown to be planning an expansion of the campus into the impoverished surrounding area, in order to build a ceremonial gateway. This is something that actually happens as well – the University of Southern California, for example, recently expanded further into the low-income neighborhood of Inglewood, though it was in order to create more student housing.

Lewis Black’s character in Accepted was said to have once been a college Dean, but apparently “resigned” by sending bag of dog feces to his university’s president many years before the events of the movie. Regrettably, I wasn’t able to dig up any similar instances of over-the-top resignations of Deanships. However, in some ways, Black’s character’s opinions on and frustrations with the state of higher ed echo that of former MIT Dean Christine Ortiz, who left her Deanship in order to start an innovative, experimental university called Station1 that would forego traditional classes, classrooms, or departments.

The curriculum design that is shown at South Hampton is, to put it lightly, as bizarre as it is non-rigorous and disgusting. Some classes, as far as I can tell, consist of only leering at women, or learning skeevy pick-up artist tricks (“Hitting on Strippers” stands out). In fact, a huge number of the shown classes are centered on the study of “girls,” (not to be confused with women’s studies) as the primarily-male student body was able to design all of the course offerings. Other classes included real arts-based teachings, like wood carving, music, sculpting, fashion design, and the culinary arts, but most of the classes are shown to be effectively either nonsense, immensely creepy, or both.

One of the key selling points for South Hampton Institute of Technology in the film is that there are no traditional grades. In reality, there are some colleges that have tried to circumvent the stresses and anxieties that come along with traditional grading. Reed College, for example, records letter grades, but doesn’t release them to students. The rationale is that students can then focus on intellectual and academic pursuits instead of aiming for just a letter grade.

At one point, it is revealed that the student population of the South Harmon Institute of Technology is roughly 300. This is a very, very small student population, to the point that it would comfortably land among the smallest higher education institutions in the United States, most of which are seminaries or highly specialized art, music, or architecture schools.

As a film, I’m not a huge fan of Accepted. That said, I appreciate that it is different than most college movies, and deals with different issues related to higher education. It also actually feels like a movie that the cast and crew enjoyed making, which doesn’t always seem to be the case with these. Still, I feel like there was far more satiric potential with this movie than was ultimately tapped into by the production. As far as a recommendation goes, I think I can lightly recommend it, with a distinct caveat for the shallow, crass, sexist content of the school’s curriculum.