The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/gordon-caplan/)
“I am deeply and profoundly sorry for being involved in this mess,” Caplan said outside the courthouse on Thursday. A judge sentenced him to one month in prison, 250 hours of community service and a $50,000 fine.
“I take full and sole responsibility for my conduct and I am deeply ashamed of my behavior and my actions,” Caplan said in an emailed statement. The lawyer also expressed that his daughter, a high school junior, had “no knowledge whatsoever” about the scheme that he used to up her ACT score.
We call education an “investment,” which typically refers to money spent with the eventual expectation of a return. My rough calculation of the number of students and the average cost of tuition indicates that over $400 billion is “invested” in college every year. For scale, with that money you could own JPMorgan Chase, Facebook or Johnson & Johnson and still have the equivalent of Alaska’s GDP to spare. This week, dozens of parents and administrators were arrested on fraud charges in relation to a sprawling scheme for admission to some of the nation’s top colleges. These parents “invested” six- and seven-figures to cheat on standardized tests and manipulate the athletic admissions process to ensure their children’s acceptance.