“Higher education policies have always favored the elite,” said Mary Clare Amselem, a higher education policy expert at Heritage. | Win McNamee/Getty Images education Admissions scandal reveals why America’s elite colleges are under fire Bribery scandal, affirmative action lawsuits show cultural turn against selective universities.

Elite colleges already serve as some of President Donald Trump's favorite targets. Their fat endowments took a hit in the 2017 GOP tax law. A sweeping admissions cheating and bribery scandal the FBI uncovered Tuesday is the latest blow to the nation’s most expensive and selective American universities, which are also battling allegations of misusing race in deciding who will be invited to enroll.

The charges that were unveiled — that dozens of wealthy and famous parents were able to literally write a check to push their children’s way into some of America’s best schools — are certain to confirm the suspicions of many: that the “tried and true” method to successful college admissions, as the ringleader in the scheme put it, is money. Many colleges enroll more students from the top 1 percent of earners than the bottom 60 percent combined. The frenzied race for admissions took on an ugly aura.


“It just exposed that old secret that money buys a lot,” said Anthony Jack, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “We have this understanding that to make it into these places is somehow about how much work you’ve done or how much you’ve expressed yourself through test scores or essays or extracurriculars. It really is not. Rich people, especially rich white citizens, have been doing this for a long time. This is just very public.”

A top Trump administration adviser, Kellyanne Conway, took aim at the scandal in a tweet: "@LoriLoughlin & @FelicityHuffman indicted for lying and buying spots in college. They worried their daughters are as stupid as their mothers."

The federal charges come as American confidence in higher education has shown signs of erosion in recent years, with many in the era of Trump believing colleges are catering to the wealthy and indoctrinating students with left-leaning ideas. And notably, they emerge as Harvard and the University of North Carolina defend their use of race in admissions — which the Trump administration has gone after —to combat the type of privilege on display in the massive admissions scheme.

As William Singer, who ran a sham college counseling company that bribed college coaches and administrators and helped students cheat on college entrance exams, told one parent involved: “There is a front door which means you get in on your own. The back door is through institutional advancement, which is 10 times as much money. And I’ve created this side door in.”

Singer, who has plead guilty to a string of charges, was the mastermind in allegedly bribing coaches and college administrators — with about $25 million in payments over seven years — and paying off college entrance exam administrators to allow students to cheat on their tests.

Dozens of wealthy parents — including "Desperate Housewives" star Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin of "Full House" fame and her husband, clothing designer Mossimo Giannulli — were indicted. Coaches at Georgetown, USC, UCLA, the University of Texas and other schools face charges, as well. Officials said the investigation continues and more individuals could be charged, possibly including students. Officials also said, however, that some students were not aware of their parents' manipulation of the process.

The celebrities' involvement gained additional attention and Donald Trump, Jr., mocked them on Twitter. He resurfaced a 2016 tweet by Huffman asking “What are your best ‘hacks’ for the back-to-school season?” and said, “I’m learning some new ones as we speak. Stay tuned.”

The scandal calls into question everything from admissions preferences for children of alumni and athletes to the weight admissions officials give to how well students do on tests like the ACT and SAT, which have long been shown to favor wealthy students.

"No question that this still-unfolding scandal will further undermine the credibility of ACT and SAT scores and boost the test-optional movement," said Bob Schaeffer, a longtime critic of the standardized tests who runs a group called FairTest. "How can an admissions office tell which scores are legitimate, which are pumped up by expensive test-prep steroids (legal if ethically questionable), and which are simply fabricated?"

Colleges were on the defensive. Yale University, whose former women’s soccer coach was accused of accepting a bribe to help a student get admitted, painted itself as the victim.

“As the federal charging document makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by its Women’s Soccer coach, who is no longer at the university,” a university spokesperson said in a statement.

Schools that got wrapped up in the wrongdoing, including Georgetown, USC and Yale, have issued statements saying they are cooperating with authorities. Representatives of college associations reacted with horror.

“This is an unfortunate example of the lengths to which people will go to circumvent and manipulate the college admission process, particularly to gain admission to highly selective colleges,” said Stefanie Niles, National Association for College Admission Counseling president and vice president for enrollment and communications at Ohio Wesleyan University.

“If these allegations are true, they violate the essential premise of a fair and transparent college admissions process," Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, the leading higher education lobbying group, said in a statement. "This alleged behavior is antithetical to the core values of our institutions, defrauds students and families, and has absolutely no place in American higher education."

The NCAA said the allegations are "troubling and should be a concern for all of higher education.”

The scandal drew condemnation from across the political spectrum. It riled pundits at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank influential with the Trump administration.

“Higher education policies have always favored the elite,” said Mary Clare Amselem, a higher education policy expert at Heritage. “What’s apparent is that our higher education system has become less of a place that encourages students to pursue an education with real-world skills. Congress could change this by limiting the federal government’s out-of-control lending for student loans and dismantling the accreditation monopoly that allows this outdated college system to fester and grow.”

On the other end, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which has defended universities’ use of race in admissions in court, said the incident is a “reminder” of why affirmative action should be permitted in admissions.

"We demand greater accountability and transparency in the admissions process on behalf of the thousands of exceptional applicants of color who seek admission to our colleges and universities each year and yet have their qualifications called into question as the result of race-conscious admissions,” Kristen Clarke, the group’s president, said in a statement.

The charges have reopened criticism of a long-practiced legal way to pay your way into college: Through big donations and lifelong giving.

“It’s not surprising one of the pillars on which this case was founded was because it was easy to get students in through athletics,” Jack said. “Everybody wants to focus on black students or Latino students or race-based affirmative action, but we forget legacies get a boost and there’s no moral argument for it. Athletes get a boost and there’s no moral argument for it. Both of those arguments are financial. Both of those arguments are about the dollar.”

Harvard's admissions chief in the course of a trial on the use of race in admissions last year admitted to adding children and relatives of donors to his list of potential students he tracks closely, even if he didn't know whether they would otherwise be strong applicants.

Harvard was not involved in Tuesday's charges, but is defending its use of race in admissions in a lawsuit that drew the backing of Trump’s Justice Department. The Justice Department is also investigating the use of race in admissions at Yale, and is reportedly probing early decision admissions policies by at least seven elite colleges.

Singer, according to the charging documents, acknowledged legal ways to get admitted but told his clients it wasn't as certain to work.

“Because the back door, when you go through institutional advancement, as you know, everybody’s got a friend of a friend, who knows somebody who knows somebody but there’s no guarantee, they’re just gonna give you a second look,” he said. “My families want a guarantee.”

Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University — a public school singled out by Giannulli as one he did not want his daughter to attend — lashed out at the colleges that have brought this on themselves.

“What we’ve gotten to now is that certain schools have so advanced the notion of selectivity and elitism that they grant aristocratic status by attendance, which is actually different than even the outcome of the graduate. It’s a corrupting force,” Crow said.

“This is the latest fruit of the tree of elitism. The tree of elitism says there are only a few branches with their excellent fruit, therefore you have to be able to do anything, anything to get on those branches.”