The scandal involving University of Illinois Law School is getting worse by the day. We previously discussed the scandal involving the admissions process and the use of “special admits” where deans circumvent the usual process to guarantee admission for certain well-connected students.The Chicago Tribune continues to uncover shocking examples of manipulation of the admissions process at Illinois by politicians and donors. This may be an example of why admissions are like sausage and legislation — things that you should not watch being made.
The latest disclosure involves an unqualified student who was given admission in exchange for a quid pro quo arrangement — a promise of five jobs for graduates if the student was admitted.
Once again, the main culprit appears to be University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman who comes across more like a patronage boss than an academic. The other party is again former dean Heidi Hurd, who objects but does not appear to fight particularly hard for the academic integrity of the process or school. 
In one e-mail exchange, Herman forces Hurd to admit an unqualified applicant backed by former (and now disgraced) Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Herman appears to have been negotiating with Blagojevich political operative and Trustee Lawrence Eppley. The student was a relative of major political donor Kerry Peck. Herman acts like a petty party functionary. When Hurd objects, Herman responds that the request came “Straight from the G. My apologies. Larry has promised to work on jobs (5). What counts?” Hurd responds with “Only very high-paying jobs in law firms that are absolutely indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar.” Hurd then goes not to suggest that the five must come from the “bottom of the class” — presumably a way of increasing the school’s placement figures for the annual ranking by U.S. News and World Report.
Hurd treated the process as inevitable and, instead of refusing such admits, she promised to get a good deal, telling the admissions staff in 2003 “I’ll do my best to keep the number of Provostian admits to a minimum, and extract payment for them.”
The fact is that such special admits occur in some form in most, if not all, schools. Schools like to pick legacy admissions for families with multi-generations at the school and also favor the children of major donors. However, deans are expected to guarantee that such factors are given some but not determinative weight — requiring that the students be otherwise competitive and not substantially below admissions standards.
While Hurd can be criticized for failing to fight harder, she clearly did object to the process. Yet, the quid pro quo arrangement was an outrage and Hurd should never have participated in such an arrangement. There is a time when a dean should resign rather than allow such a corruption of the process.
The person most at fault is obviously Herman who should lose his job over this controversy. Herman abandoned any semblance of academic integrity and independence. He actively worked to corrupt the admissions process, even after the objections of the dean. The trading of unqualified admissions for jobs is an outrageous act for both Herman and Hurd. Eppley also needs to be removed from any continued position as trustee and barred from any later position of authority with the university.
I just spoke at the University of Illinois to a group of judges and I ran into a member of the Illinois faculty who expressed his utter disgust with both Herman and Hurd. What is sad is that this is one of the finest law schools in the country and both the students and faculty deserved far better treatment.
These emails demean the entire teaching academy and haggling over price like jobs does little to improve the situation. It brings to mind Winston Churchill’s famous exchange at dinner with a woman when he asked her if she would sleep with him for one million dollars. When she said that she would, he asked her if she would sleep with him for one dollar. She was deeply insulted and asked “What do you think I am, a prostitute?” “Madam” Churchill replied, “We’ve already established what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.” It appears that the price at Illinois is five jobs. While I do not believe that many deans or provosts would have accepted such an exchange, there are many deans and provosts who are all too willing to haggle over price.
While some defenders suggest that this is an inevitable factor for any public school subject to legislative authority, I disagree. First, as a public institution, the provost and dean has an added obligation to guarantee the citizens of Illinois that these valuable slots are being awarded fairly and openly. Second, if the dean had fought this corruption, she would have had a large and powerful alumni in the state to back her. The Illinois graduates are fiercely loyal and hold powerful positions in the bar and the courts. Some of the judges who I spoke with last week were Illinois graduates and expressed outrage at the manipulation of the process. Finally, regardless of whether you are a public or a private institution, you have an independent obligation as an academic to protect the integrity of your school and the academy at large.
I am not surprised that a bottom feeder like Blogojevich would degrade this process, but it is the participation of academics like Herman and Hurd that is a shocking addition to this scandal.
For the full story, click here.
Also our children have to compete with the world now. Many other countries as you know have much higher educational standards.
I agree with the GWL mom. Our family has chosen to put a lot of our resouces into our children’s education rather than other material possessions. They have gone to private schools since pre school. I have found the private high schools to be more progressive and superior academically to my local public schools in Texas. It’s not because either they or I are elitist – quite the contrary. I believe in giving a child the best education you can afford. You can do it through magnet schools, good public schools or private schools. The same thing goes for colleges,law schools, med schools, etc. I don’t think a lottery for a professional school is the answer. There are people that simply don’t have the aptitude for medicine or law.
GWL,
You really do not understand what I am saying. You seem to think I am attacking you and your children. I’m not. I think it’s best for us to drop the topic.
Jill writes: Please know that I do not think you should do this. I do not think your children are failures. I don’t even know them and I have absolutely no reason to believe any such thing. You must know that I do not think people who go to elite schools are bound to end up as failures, There are many people on this blog for whom I have the highest regard. Some of them have said where they went to school, others have not. Some of these schools are the most elite institutions in our nation. It doesn’t matter.
This blog is a good example of what education should and could be. We are just speaking at cross purposes to each other so I am going to end my part of the discussion with you. If you have a book that you’d like me to read, let me know. We can read each other’s recommendations and maybe understand each other better that way.
me: that’s right. you don’ t know my kids and you really don’t know me. I think that we could use some time away from “wedge issues” that rest upon some very shaky and highly questionable assumptions about who has been given what advantages and how those advantages are used. maybe we could begin by considering how language affects our abilty to make a point that allows for discussion as opposed to getting all judgmental. “elite” is one of those words. When I hear/read that word, I hear how it is used by people who out of hand hate liberals, feminists, people who take pride in their educations and want their kids to be well-educated.
It is unlikely that i will change my mind about this. I don’t expect you to alter the way you think about it.
but grades, performance assessments, evaluations are crucial to our understanding of who is doing what quality of work whether it is second grade or in professional schools or out there in the workforce.
if those grades make us feel bad or good about ourselves, our performance, it is because we relate to them as someone else’s idea of what we’ve been doing with our time.
oh and one last thing. John Yoo was an accomplished student. it was how he chose to behave professionally after he graduated from Harvard that colors our perceptions of who he became, not that he went to Harvard but the choices he made after graduation.
Horus I believe has it correct that these evasions of fair admission practices are rife throughout the system. As to my previous post there might be some misunderstanding of the points I was making and so let me approach it from another angle.
Early on in Elementary School it was discovered that I could read twice as fast as the normal child. By the 6th grade I had achieved the reading level of a college graduate, I was off the charts. My I.Q. is somewhere over 140. However, I had maturity and socialization problems and was considered, rightly so to be an “underachiever” in the parlance of the times. I was a disciplinary problem in Middle and High Schools and never did homework at home and was absent around 40 days a year.
My father worked late and had quit school in the 9th grade and my mother had severe heart problems and major depression. They were good people, but essentially let me do my own thing. Graduated HS in the bottom quarter of my class, with one of the worst disciplinary records in my school’s history, but 1,400+ SAT’s and a high mark on a NY State Scholarship test got me into College with a full tuition scholarship. In college I calmed down, no more fighting, but the same work/study habits. Graduated with a 1.13 cum (on a 3.0 scale). Three years later after a 680+ on my LSAT’s I was admitted to St. Johns University Law School, based again solely on my standardized test (LSAT) score.
In Law School, despite enjoying it, my work/study habits remained the same and the truth is that Law School wasn’t the
“walk in the park” that college was. To my surprise, I flunked out in 1971, due to my own lack of application and this totally changed me. It taught me the value of working hard, despite my talents and that I couldn’t keep faking it if I wanted to succeed in life. Six years later I won a Full Tuition Scholarhip to an Ivy League Social work School and got my Masters with an A average..
I write this as someone, who having gamed the system for many years and ultimately couldn’t, learned to respect the kids I laughed at in HS that worked hard and got good marks. Their values, at least academically were far better than mine and they took advantage of what was available.Probably, they had involved parents like GWLSM, who ensured that they
take school seriously. Now here’s the rub.
I was luckily born smart, white, blond haired, blue-eyed, tall and handsome (at least my wife thinks so). I was able to succeed and do well despite my own lack of initiative and tendency towards living solely for my pleasure. Had it been a child of color, with equal talents and similar parents, by dint of our society, they would probably go into dealing dope as the most lucrative way out of poverty. This is the inequity of the system and is only heightened by practices at a place like IU, or as horus puts it all over.
Secondly, I was immature when I entered the public school system and was socially probably a year behind my fellow students. Systems like ours, based on grouping children of somewhat similar ages together arbitrarily to form class levels that determine educational content, fail to take into account different levels of growth and maturation. Therefore,
many children are left behind and/or stigmatized for behavior beyond their control. The system may work for a factory, but education should not be a factory.
Thirdly, we have set up a system, given legacy’s etc., that
favors elite schools not so much for their quality as educational institutions, but because of the status of their graduates. The Ivy League School I got my Masters from is very probably the fourth best school of Social Work in its City, yet is one of the most prestigious in the country. The best is part of the City school system. While I have no doubt that Harvard/Yale Medical and Law Schools are first rate, are they really the best in their fields?
Fourth, our system of education’s purpose is to educate people and yet its purposes are viewed more in terms of status arbiters and Corporatism feeders, than it is as places where one can learn to think, reason and gain knowledge about life and the world around them. Part of this I think is purposeful, because an informed citizenry is more difficult to manipulate.
While I have learned to respect the students that apply themselves seriously to their educations, I would submit that a good deal of that is due to family structure and the interests of particular parents. I used my own examples because I wanted to make clear that I have been a beneficiary of our current educational system and seek to change it in the hope that we can do much more to change our society and the world.
While I have objections to this whole circumvention of the admissions process let’s not kid ourselves that the situation at U of I is an aberration. The very same practices are carried out at most universities and grad schools. The biggest difference is that private universities do not have legislative committees investigating their admissions practices and revealing the truth.
GWL,
I’ve tried to explain my position and to link to a book that would further elucidate it. I agree precisely with Mike S. on this matter.
You said:
“me: I guess I should just pull my kid out of law school and her sisters out of their schools and colleges, abandon our house and move to some beach on an island and make hippie handicrafts. if failure is such a certainty as you seem to believe…..”
Please know that I do not think you should do this. I do not think your children are failures. I don’t even know them and I have absolutely no reason to believe any such thing. You must know that I do not think people who go to elite schools are bound to end up as failures, There are many people on this blog for whom I have the highest regard. Some of them have said where they went to school, others have not. Some of these schools are the most elite institutions in our nation. It doesn’t matter.
This blog is a good example of what education should and could be. We are just speaking at cross purposes to each other so I am going to end my part of the discussion with you. If you have a book that you’d like me to read, let me know. We can read each other’s recommendations and maybe understand each other better that way.
Mike A.,
As to history– I started posting here fairly early on. Patty was nice to me or at least, never attacked me for a while. It was later (2 months?) that she suddenly started being hateful towards me. It has been escalating since that time. Before me though, she used to be extremely hateful to Bob Esq. (aka Bob Frog). She called him terrible names for reasons I have never understood. Then she switched to me as her primary target (although she does have run ins with others as well). She hasn’t let up since. I have asked her to stop but to no effect. I have not acted differently since you started posting here than I did before you came to this site. Therefore you have seen my reaction to her and can judge it. I have my own theories as to why she is so hateful but everyone must draw his/her own conclusion. My best tactic is to ignore all Patty posts. In truth, the usual way I have found out about the attacks is because they are mentioned by others in their own posts.
I was making a joke about the DAR. I remembered you once said something like; “far be it from me to argue with someone from the DAR…”. It’s funny you said that about a good a** kick because I know you could do that to me in a heartbeat and I was thinking exactly that thought when I said you couldn’t argue with me now! The DAR is my very own amulet against your kicking my a**.
Congratulations on your scholarship and being the first person in your family to attend college. Harvard was fortunate to have you. Mike, you know many other people here have told you the same thing, but I’ll repeat it– you are one of the smartest people who writes on this blog. You have added so much to it. I don’t have the patience to read through the legal arcana the way you (and Vince, for example) do. Even if I did, I wouldn’t understand it with the depth and intricacy that you exhibit– not even close. Many of us have been mighty grateful to the lawyers here for those explanations. Further, I have always been impressed with your integrity just as FFLEO pointed out the other day. Finally, I consider your sense of humor to be your killer app.!
There are so many other people on this blog about whom I would write the same things, (except/including the legal arcana depending on the person). I hope you all understand how highly I regard most people on this blog (independently of agreement about ideas) . JT has provided a wonderful, imaginative and I believe, actual meritocracy in cyberspace. We are all lucky to have found it and to have found each other.
CEJ, thank you for your kind support. I share the same wish as you do and hope to read more of your ideas here soon! You sell yourself short. I really value your perspective on things.
FFLEO, I agree competely with what you said to rafflaw. Sure he gives some lame excuses for not posting enough, like he loves his family and crap like that–and I believe him!
Thanks again to everyone who offered support. It means a great deal to me.
Jill,
I for one am always pleased to hear what you have to say. Please keep going through what appears the fog.
R
Jill, I don’t know what Patty C’s issue are with you. She appears to make intelligent responses to the comments of others, but when you have something to say, she tends to explode. Is there some history between the two of you that the rest of us are not privy to? I have always enjoyed your posts and the effort you put into them, even when I disagree.
BTW, I didn’t realize that I’m not permitted to argue with you. I generally don’t only because I don’t want my a** kicked. And I did accept my scholarship to Harvard. My parents would have gone berserk if I hadn’t since I was the first person in my family to go to college.
By all means, keep posting. Maybe there’ll be something we can have a vehement exchange over.