Admissions Scandal Round 2: UCLA Needs A Broader Investigation into Cash-for-Admission (Updated)

The admissions scandal is back--thanks to this weekend's reporting in the LA Times about UCLA's previously undisclosed review of apparent donation-for-admissions in its athletics program.

In general, people give money to other people when they think they can trust them with it.  There's a minimum standard for public universities that I'd put this way: are they reliably honest?  If they aren't going to be fiscally starved and micromanaged by the state, can they be trusted to identify their own problems, disclose them accurately, and fix them in a way people can believe in?

On big recent issues--campus responses to Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, graduate mentoring, protecting the liberal arts--the general answer is no.  The same has happened with college admissions: when Operation Varsity Blues hit the news on March 12th, it instantly became a primal narrative, one which sees an abuse not as an exception but the norm.  "Turns Out There's a Proper Way to Buy Your Kid a College Slot," sneered the New York Times editorial board. There were titles like "Higher Education and the Illusion of Meritocracy, "I Learned in College that Admission has Always Been for Sale," "The Raging Hypocrisy of Higher Ed Gatekeeping," and at least a dozen other national headlines just like them.

Now we have "UCLA knew of a cash-for-admissions deal, years before the scandal."  First reactions are the same as for OVB.  As sports columnist Dylan Hernandez put it, "This isn't even a case of holding UCLA to a higher standard. This is about holding one of the crown jewels of American higher education to a basic standard."

Nathan Fenno wrote as follows:

The confidential report, reviewed by The Times, shows that years before the current college admissions scandal, UCLA knew of allegations that parents were pledging donations to its athletic program in exchange for their children being admitted to the university. 

The investigation determined that the timing of the pledge by the parents “together with the revelation that she was intended to be only a manager, in violation of the department recruitment and admission policy, removes any reasonable doubt that the contribution from the parents was obtained quid pro quo for the daughter’s admission.” William Cormier, then the director of UCLA’s administrative policies and compliance office, wrote the report. It is unclear who received it. 

The track and field director later said in a letter, also reviewed by The Times, that he had approved the admission at the request of a senior athletics official.

 Commentary has noted this key difference between OVB and these UCLA cases, in Fenno's words:

The document did not suggest there was evidence that coaches received financial benefits in any of the cases. “The conclusion reached … is that the coaches involved were motivated principally by the expectation of a financial benefit to the University, in violation of Regents policy,” the report said.

UCLA issued an 11-paragraph response. It noted that UC already had a policy that "expressly prohibits admissions 'motivated by concern for financial, political or other such benefit to the University.'"   It describes the investigation into possible violations of policy in three sports--track & field, women's water polo, and tennis--in which donations were solicited or received from families with children in the admissions process.  It notes that at the time,

there was no restriction on when donations could be accepted from families of prospective student-athletes. . . . Immediately in the wake of the investigation and its findings, UCLA Athletics implemented a policy that a donation could not be accepted from families of prospects until the student-athlete is enrolled at UCLA. Athletic department staff was educated about the policy, and additional education of the coaching and development staffs also took place regarding the prohibition of any discussion of donations prior to admission.

Other tweaks were made to policy to require checks that prospective student-athletes actually played the sports they claimed to play and at the appropriate level. (Scott Jaschik has an overview.)  Finally, the statement notes, "While no policy violation is acceptable, it is important to note that the recent charges against UCLA's former men's soccer head coach are alleged to have involved criminal activity and personal enrichment that were not a component of the 2014 investigation."  Which I guess is meant to suggest that these 2014 violations were minor by comparison.

That's not so much how this revelation is being read. The response has been that cash-for-admissions may be more pervasive than previously thought since it can take other not-illegal forms.  As sports reporter Andrew Bucholtz summed it up:

this still is a long way from the school’s claims that they were shocked at what was going on in the recent scandal, which included someone who’d never played competitive soccer before making UCLA’s 2017 national runner-up team. And while UCLA’s 2014 report declared that this violated their own policy at the time, and while the school said that led to “providing staff with training regarding, and accountability for following, UC admissions policies,” they kept all of this very quiet until now, and don’t appear to have handed down much punishment for those involved; one of the athletic department officials cited as key to the undeserving track athlete’s admission still works there, and is still involved with soliciting donations. And this is a further suggestion still that there may be more suspicious athletic admissions out there, at UCLA and beyond.

 The official who is still involved is Josh Rebholz, pictured at top (photo from his UCLA Bruins staff page).  He is currently Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Relations.  Fenno's article has detail about Rebholz's role that the UCLA statement omits:

[Then track and field director Michael] Maynard sent a four-page letter to [UCLA Athletics director Dan] Guerrero explaining the admission. In the letter, Maynard said Josh Rebholz, now the school’s senior associate athletic director, had first approached him about admitting the woman. 

“During the conversation Josh asked me if I had any room on my team for a female athlete, and if so would I assist with her admission,” Maynard wrote to Guerrero. “… Josh indicated that he wasn’t sure what events she did in track, but that she was the daughter of major donors. … Josh indicated to me once again that her parents were major donors to UCLA, and it was very important to development. 

“In my opinion [the admitted woman] was not athletically up to the performance level to participate in indoor or outdoor T&F. At this time I felt that I had been manipulated into coding her under false pretenses.”

Maynard's letter stated clearly that Rebholz, in this case, directly encouraged admission as a quid pro quo for a donation.

The UCLA statement says, "No disciplinary action was deemed necessary against Rebholz."  Naturally, since UCLA did not investigate him.

An optimistic reading is that Rebholz did offer admission in exchange for donations before policy was clarified, perhaps in block capitals with lots of underlining, and before "athletic department staff was educated about the policy," at which point he stopped doing it.

Circumstantial evidence supports a more pessimistic reading.  The then-assistant tennis coach, Grant Chen (now coaching at SMU), had known the applicant and got a "verbal pledge" from her family for a donation to the program.

The same day that Maynard entered her name into the admissions system, the report said, Taylor Swearingen, a member of the athletic department’s fundraising staff, emailed Chen sample donation pledges for the parents. One was for $80,000 and the other for $100,000. 

“That suggested that [the woman] was being admitted because the parents had committed to making a donation,” the report said. 

Less than two weeks later, on April 1, the school’s eight-person student-athlete admissions committee approved the woman for freshman admission. Three days later, Chen sent Swearingen an email with the header “Track Gift Agreements.” 

“We got a deal at $25 x four years for track,” Chen wrote. 

The coach and the development official together set a suggested price for admission at $25,000 a year.

The UCLA statement claims that nothing like this ever happened again. At yet Rebholz's UCLA bio notes, "Since his arrival to Westwood, there has been an increase in major annual donors who donate $25,000 or more annually to UCLA from 16 to more than 260 individuals, and in 2014 UCLA Athletics broke an all-time fundraising record, raising $80M in just one fiscal year."

There's an obvious possibility that Rebholz approached some of those other 259 donors in the same way.  And that he was not investigated not because his methods are so clean but because they are so profitable.

There's also UCLA's wording of current policy: "Immediately in the wake of the investigation and its findings, UCLA Athletics implemented a policy that a donation could not be accepted from families of prospects until the student-athlete is enrolled at UCLA."  A development official like Rebholz can't get the money or pledge up front. But even now, a prior, informal understanding can bring money in later.  It's a quid pro quo, on a timer.

If the pessimistic reading is true, then UCLA Athletics development is selling UC's honesty for $25,000 a year.  Admissions integrity is the flash point for the whole system. Few people still think it is objective and fair, for many good reasons.  If lots of people decide that it is somewhat regularly for sale, we will see a new round of collapsing support for public higher ed.

Fundraising and college sports both need a national rethink.  In the meantime, UC should appoint an outside investigator--one with no ties to UCLA, UC, university businesses, or college sports--to review UCLA's overall fundraising operation.

Update April 21: During the week in which the country has been focused on fine distinctions between illegality and misconduct, the Los Angeles Times reported that the federal prosecutors behind Operation Varsity Blues have been in LA conducting further interviews.  

The Times has unearthed other donor-admissions scandals at UCLA in the past.  In 1996, it ran a five--part series on a pattern of admissions favoritism for connected donors (one piece is here).  In 2007, it covered an admissions scandal in the UCLA School of Dentistry.