For those looking to get into the “business” the growth area is paying for kids research opportunities. Much harder to detect fraud since it is a collaborative process. It would likely take an oral exam to determine if the student really earned the second author position on a published paper.
For the athletic recruitment auditing, making the coach explain why someone that they supported during admissions isn’t on the team would stop some. If the coach is willing to tank the roster, that is difficult to stop. Internal fraud is the hardest to police.
^Although they could easily claim an injury. At least it would indicate that someone was paying attention.
Here’s good breakdown of which kids probably did and did not know about the Operation Varsity Blues fakery.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/college-admissions-scandal-what-every-kid-knew.html
Not every athlete plays on a club team and certainly not on an elite one. My daughter was a legit recruit and I don’t think her name appeared in any newspaper or online article. Tournaments? No way they had anything online (most were OOS). People just aren’t that interested in a 14 year old kicking a ball or swinging a racket. The Loughlin kids went to a tiny private school in LA. The LA Times wasn’t writing about their school, or about the club teams they were reported to row for.
USC should have had a tighter leash on its AD/asst ADs. The school didn’t want to know, so it ignored the issue. It was raking in the money. For the teams who have benefited from the cash payments, there have been NO athletic penalties. Not from the schools and not from the NCAA. They haven’t lost scholarships or had to forfeit games. Those who received the bribes have been fired, but that was a personnel issue and I’m sure a chemistry dept head who took a bribe would also be fired.
Some examples have been given already by various in this thread. These include recruited athletes (particularly less well known ones), those claiming very high level achievements (that should have been noticed somewhere), those claiming current low-SES challenges but did not apply for FA, etc…
The school’s local sports league and the local association of rowing clubs would be places to start if admissions wanted to start verifying such a recruited athlete’s participation and achievement in the sport.
It’s difficult times verify some sports participation. Also easy to fake if that’s the gambit.
I’ve been told that almost retail theft is done by the insiders. Seems to me the same goes for cheating in admissions
Google.
There’s a reason it’s worth almost $1,000,000,000,000.
Recruited athletes at a school like USC should have a digital footprint that a cursory Google search would uncover. My son has a 0.00% chance of getting even a courtesy look from USC, but, if you type his name into a Google search the first dozen things that come up are about him. I actually find it a bit creepy.
Schools became lazy and far too trusting of their coaches. Dishonest people will always find a way to take advantage of blind spots and loopholes.
Back in the day, I wanted to make sure certain colleges knew the ECs were real, so I sent in proof in the form of newspaper articles about them and asked counselors to mention the veracity in their reports. I figured extra material could always be tossed out and would not hurt.
Every regatta posts result, most including the first initial and last names of the kids in the boats.
Marymount (LL’s daughters’ HS) High School rowing:
https://www.mhs-la.org/news-detail?pk=839413
I googled the name of one of the first boat kids + rowing and there were at least a dozen pre-college links to regattas and erg times.
@twoinanddone’s child’s situation withstanding, it would be unusual for a recruited athlete to play neither club nor varsity and most clubs put tournament pictures or other information online.
So maybe the onus should be on the applicant to supply documentation, and not on the admissions officer looking at thousands of papers. Presumably the appplicant would have the quickest and easiest access to club records or other proof.