Getting fired or expelled = punishment. Not being hired or accepted = you aren't owed anything.

In My Humble Opinion
41

One reason to expel the student is because the goal of the cheating parent ***WAS ***to have their offspring attend the “right” school with the “right” crowd and gain the benefit of that experience. And some of these parents, if *that *is not denied them, may conclude “it was worth it”. The student is not being punished by the school, s/he is suffering the consequences of the parent’s conduct.

Now, sure, with every disciplinary action, what affects your future opportunities should not be the mere fact of having been dismissed/expelled/relieved, but rather the *reason *for it. But many a future employer/school will look badly upon the subject without distinguishing cases. That still should not keep you from protecting your institution’s rules.

42

I already answered question 1. My post was in response to the contention that someone should get a break because they put a lot of effort in.
Do try to keep up.

43

Another reason to expel this student is to deter future scam artists. Perhaps an unscrupulous parent might be willing to risk jail time if they believe a school wouldn’t expel their kid once the scam was uncovered. But if expulsion becomes the standard consequence of these acts, then the stakes are raised a whole bunch.

44

I’m sorry, I assumed your post was in response to the post you actually quoted when you responded.

45

I feel like this is sort of like when parents take out credit cards in their 18-year old child’s name and then run up huge debts. It’s horrific, but the only way to get the debt discharged is for the children to report it.

In this case, it’s like the parents used the kid’s name and social security number to borrow money to buy a car, then gave the car to the kid. It’s going to be heart-wrenching when the kid realizes what happens and they repossess the car, but it’s the parents who are to blame, not the lender.

46

So, for cases that have nothing to do with what I was talking about, you disagree. So why bother quoting me at all?

47

You mean this one?

Post 6 was my answer to the OP. I didn’t think I needed to repeat it.

48

Another way of looking at it - when someone is “not hired” they simply may be not the best fit (in the opinion of the choosers) than someone else. Perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be what happens when someone is selected as the sole candidate and rejected - sort of like ex-Judge Bork being selected for the Supreme Court but not making the cut. (Even then, there’s some debate how much that was punishment for his role in Saturday Night, and how much for his unappreciated viewpoint.) But generally, being expelled or fired is specifically a punishment. Rarely is “not selected” a definite punishment, many times it is simply “you are not who we are looking for” with no moral judgement. There is no special wording for indicating the rejection was on moral not qualifications grounds.

49

Let’s try this a little differently.

Person A lies on their rental application to Apartment Building Awesome. The landlord discovers the deception and refuses to rent to them. Person A goes to live at Apartment Building Mediocre.

Person B lies on their rental application to Awesome. The landlord does not discover the deception and rents to them. Person B moves into the apartment, and pays his rent every month. Landlord discovers the deception and, legally, evicts Person B from the apartment one week after the reveal.

Are these two scenarios practically equivalent? Do A and B go through an equal amount of inconvenience resulting from their deceptive actions? I think not, because A had a place to live lined up if Awesome didn’t work out. B, having chosen Awesome, rejected the offer by Mediocre, and now has nowhere to live.

The fact that the two scenarios are different doesn’t necessarily say anything about whether or not B should be given a break, but it does explain why some would see B as being punished while they don’t see the same for A. B is going through a very different life experience than A, and not in a good way.

50

I agree that they are different. I don’t consider the hardship that someone brings upon themselves as the result of being found lying a justification for going easy on them.
In fact, those able to foresee the consequences of being found out might be less likely to lie in the first place.

51

“The guy was deprived of his ability to go to a different school because he was let into this one.”

Well boo fucking hoo. Shit happens. Try getting another job after you get fired for lying your way into a job, getting caught, and getting fired. The kid has to go to a community college, or a less prestigious school? My guitar gently weeps.

Hey, the kid did learn something for $6.5 million; this wasn’t a total loss. I was an adjunct community college professor teaching computer classes and tried my damndest to be a good, fair, understanding teacher, even with zero training in education. But I caught people cheating - obviously blatantly cheating, where other teachers looked at the evidence and started laughing and saying it was obvious. There was weeping and wailing and whining and “it isn’t FAIR!”.

Excuse me, but these are college students; it isn’t high school any more. They can grow up, accept responsibility for their own actions, and take heir lumps. I suppose it’s conceivable the student didn’t know her parents coughed up $6.5 million to get her into college, but I find it unlikely. I liken it to being caught as a crewman on a pirate ship. You may be the nicest pirate who ever lived, never hurt anyone yada yada yada, but you’ll decorate a lamp-post nonetheless.

One last note: I checked and Stanford is a private college; they can do whatever the hell they want within the letter of the law, same as your typical business is privately owned. Even state universities and colleges have rules, and the Big Book Of Rules at those schools usually say their word is law on campus. Don’t like it? Again, this isn’t a public high school; no one is forcing anyone to go, and if a person doesn’t want to follow The Big Book Of Rules, they don’t have to attend or step on campus. That’s freedom, cobber!

Our entire civilization is based by necessity on the idea that people can set reasonable rules, and expect other people to abide by them, and take appropriate action against rule breakers. I could open up a whole other can of worms in here by using the phrase “herd immunity”. Civilization breaks down quickly if that can’t be maintained. What this kid, or the family did, was bribery and possibly fraud.

Remember the movie “Soul Man”? Soul Man (1986) - IMDb

For the ex-Stanford student: I got your It’s Not Fair right here.

52

I’m playing a bit of Devil’s Advocate* here for the “it’s punishment” side.

Let’s say you view the student as a relative innocent in the whole mess. She did what her parents told her to do, signed what they told her to sign, etc. Now, with these crimes having been uncovered, her future is in tatters. She is expelled, and schools that would have openly welcomed her based on her high school academics may no longer allow her to attend, since she participated in the fraud.

Given the position that she was innocently following her parents instructions, she can almost appear to be a victim of their crime, along with the school and other students. She isn’t a victim, not really, but this whole thing has pretty well screwed her future.

*My own view is a bit more pragmatic. Her application was fraudulent, in material ways. She can’t be allowed to continue studies at Stanford. It’s not about punishing her, it’s about having integrity in the application process.

53

People keep suggesting that expulsion = life in tatters. I know it can be very inconvenient and it can definitely set back someone’s plan to graduate in four years. But I am really curious if it is the devastating thing people are assuming it is. If someone gets expelled from a school, are they blacklisted from all colleges and universities forever after? Or is it relatively easy to just regroup at another institution, especially if you can pay full freight?

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54

Upper tier colleges are already crazy competitive. Applicants have to do an insane amount of extracurricular activities and get really high grades. That’s why we have all this cheating. So, suffice it to say, this kind of flaw on your record pretty much wrecks any possibility of getting into another top-tier school, even one lower on the totem pole.

Of course public universities and community colleges are more than happy to work with anybody who can pay. Former expelled students can still get a very good education there. But top-tier schools aren’t really about a premium education, they’re about maintaining (or moving up) one’s socioeconomic class.

I happen to not care what happens to them at all. I think the whole premium-tier college thing is ridiculously overblown. But I’d describe it as a fairly serious loss with significant future consequences.

55

Does it matter where you go to school?

If someone got expelled from, say, Stanford and then applied to, say, UofChicago, how would UofChicago know the student had been expelled? I could see them knowing only if the student tried to transfer credits.

56

If your dad is rich enough to have $6.5 million to throw at the school of your choice, your future is not screwed. You are among the luckiest people on the planet, even if you are forced to change course and go to another college.

The truth is no one in their right mind would want to stay at this school after being outed as a fraud. You’d become a walking distraction to everyone on campus. People’s stares and comments would haunt you; school would cease to be a place where you could actually learn. So her getting kicked out is like putting a terminally ill animal out of its misery, if we’re going to be honest. This is another angle the “it’s punishment!” camp should consider. If she has no choice but to leave the school, it means she’s not prolonging a situation that is bad for her, the school, and the other students there.

57

Yeah, I mean, your cite subtitle says: “Research suggests that elite colleges don’t really help rich white guys. But they can have a big effect if you’re not rich, not white, or not a guy.” (bolding mine).

You still have to apply, you still have to submit your academic history and personal bio. You will want to leave out the partial year you got expelled from Stanford. They will want to know what you did with that time. It’s extremely rare for high-achieving students to take a gap year after high school. You could say you studied abroad or did a fellowship, but these things are easily checked. You probably scrubbed your social media of references to “woohoo Stanford”, but traces are still out there, and they will be looking. You could say you went to Stanford and left “for personal reasons”, leaving open the question of why they wouldn’t let you come back after just a semester off.

If you’re paying full freight, I imagine there would be less interest in your checkered past. If it’s a not-very-competitive school and you’re not on scholarship, I doubt they’ll care much. But… this is now your life. Non-competitive schools and no scholarships. If you’re rich it’s still a very lucky life, but it will cost you your shot at ascending to (or remaining in) the upper-upper class of meritocracy.

Again, not that I really care. But it’s a punishment and it’s gonna leave a mark.

58

Here is another article that digs deeper, since you seem to be taking a different message from the Atlantic article than I did:

Private colleges are a waste of money for white middle class kids

The inference I’m drawing from this research is that college prestige doesn’t do anything to “maintain” ones socioeconomic status provided one is rich and/or middle-class white. If you belong to either of the two categories, your socioeconomic status is not at risk if you were to pick a very good state school over an elite private school. Only if you come from a stigmatized group will it make a difference.

This doesn’t discount the very real perception people have about how much prestige matters. I’m sure all the high school seniors who attempt to commit suicide because they didn’t get accepted to the “right” school have been told all their lives that their future success rides on going to the most selective schools. Wish we could do a better job at pushing back against this narrative.

59

This is fair, I was a bit hyperbolic in my devil’s advocate role.

60

First, I also answered in good faith your OP-topical question about how expulsion affects subsequent applications. You ignored that so I guess that means you get it?

Second, I didn’t “take a different message” from the Atlantic article, I literally just narrated the second line of the cite you provided (and then I guess abandoned). Your next cite deals with efficiency private schools in general. Yes, any typical private school is likely to be less tuition-efficient than any random public school. I wasn’t speaking to typical private schools, I was speaking to the hyper-competitive Browns and Cornells and Stanford where you access more than just an education. Though I will point out - whether public or private, there’s literally nothing more financially efficient, or harder to re-acquire, than a full ride scholarship to any university. I mention this because it’s one of the cases involved in the current cheating scandal.

I was speaking to loss of opportunity so, if you’re gonna beat the drum about tuition efficiency, have fun with that. I have 2 kids looking at college on limited means and I assure you I’m already well aware of Google’s conventional wisdom on the matter.