The college admission scandal fallout continues as more cases of fraud are being discovered.
Now USC is thinking of revoking degrees for some alumni.
“If you’re there by fraud, what right have your really to be there at all?” Attorney Steve Meister said.
Attorney Steve Meister says USC can and should take away the degrees of any alum found to have gotten in by fraud.
“Can” he says, because colleges have broad discretion to protect the system by which degrees are awarded and ‘should’ because:
“If they don’t do it they undermine the integrity of any degree they award to anyone else,” Attorney Meister said.
TMZ is reporting USC has eight suspicious cases where alums used admission scam ringleader Rick Singer’s services and is considering revoking the degrees of any alums involved.
Some USC students we spoke with were, perhaps surprisingly, forgiving.
“I don’t think they should take away their degree if they completed their course work and did it while they were at SC, but yeah there should be some penalty to some extent,” says one student.
“I think it depends on a case to case basis probably,” another student said. “I don’t know there has to be some sort of consequences, can’t go through the system the wrong way and have this rewarding, the same rewards, 04 so I mean they have to figure something out.”
One student suggested something akin to Major League Baseball’s asterisk keep the degree but with a check mark.
“It kinda falls under the degrees of like Barry Bonds you’re gonna take his records away just cause he took steroids?” a student said.
Meister is less charitable, saying even students who claim they didn’t know their parents were cheating to get them in should lose their degree.
“You give a second break to the kid who never should have gotten the first one at everyone else’s expense and it has to stop,” Meister said.
