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Articles on College admissions scandal

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Big education tests come with serious side effects, research shows. YanLev/Shutterstock.com

Large-scale education tests often come with side effects

While large-scale education assessments, such as the PISA, are meant to show how education systems are faring around the world, evidence shows these assessments come with a host of problems.
Students’ home and family backgrounds will be factored into their SAT scores. Monkey Business Images/www.shutterstock.com

The SAT’s new ‘adversity score’ is a poor fix for a problematic test

The College Board is adding a new ‘adversity score’ to the SAT to take students’ socioeconomic backgrounds into account. Will the move correct long-standing disparities in the college entrance exam?
William “Rick” Singer, front, is alleged to have helped some families secure fake learning disability diagnoses. Here he exits U.S. federal court in Boston after he pleaded guilty to charges in a nationwide college admissions bribery scandal, March 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

U.S. college admissions scandal means more skepticism of genuine invisible disabilities

Abuses of disability diagnoses cheat students with disabilities who are now more likely to face skepticism about their diagnoses.
Human beings want more even if it comes at the expense of others. svershinsky/Shutterstock.com

What causes greed and how can we deal with it?

Some parents were recently charged with paying bribes for their children’s admission to top colleges. Religious thought can help us understand what drives such greed and also provide ethical guidance.
Actress Felicity Huffman was one of the celebrities involved in the recent US college admissions scandal. Etienne Laurent/AAP

Aussie parents are under pressure to buy their kids academic advantage too

Caregivers using privilege to buy their children’s way into, and through, education is not a Hollywood anomaly, nor the domain of elites. The middle class have been doing it in Australia for decades.
Actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, were charged with fraud and conspiracy along with dozens of others in a scheme that according to federal prosecutors saw wealthy parents pay bribes to get their children into some of the nation’s top colleges. (AP Photo)

Subsidized privilege: The real scandal of American universities

The real scandal in U.S. higher education is that it’s the most expensive system in the world, being subsidized by the working and middle class who increasingly can’t afford public colleges.
Bubble-wrapping children doesn’t work. They need to experience mild adversity, to know how to overcome it when they inevitably face it in life. (Shutterstock)

From playground risks to college admissions: Failure helps build kids’ resilience

Paying to get your kids into prestigious universities is an example of a ‘bulldozer parenting’ trend, which reduces exposure to failure and can lead to mental health difficulties.
Clockwise from top left, Georgetown University, Stanford University, Yale University, and University of California, Los Angeles. AP

Why meritocracy is a myth in college admissions

Even if wealthy parents don’t resort to the kind of illegal tactics in the recent college cheating scandal revealed by the FBI, the college admission process still favors the rich, scholars argue.

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