Educational equity has always been a topic of great concern to the people.
At this point, parents around the world have broken their hearts for their children.
In 2019, the United States broke out a college admissions scandal that shocked the whole country, involving top universities such as Yale, Stanford, and USC, involving more than 50 Hollywood film and television stars, Wall Street financiers and other celebrities, involving an amount of up to $25 million.
The most shocking thing for the Chinese people is that the scandal that the boss of the Chinese pharmaceutical giant Buchang Group spent a huge amount of $6.5 million to buy his daughter into Stanford was also exposed...
Recently, Netflix launched a documentary about "buying into elite schools", detailing the "side doors" that rich people have walked through - "Buying Into Elite Schools: Storm of Fraud in American Universities".
The central figure in the event was an independent university advisor named Rich Singer.
The so-called independent university consultant is to provide educational advice, examination arrangements and further education counseling for the children of wealthy families.
In simple terms, Ritchie is a "senior" tutor who takes huge bribes to fake his clients' children from grades to strengths and help them get into top schools.
Richie Singer
On March 12, 2019, the FBI, which had been spying on Richie for a long time, took him away for investigation.
At the same time, there are a large number of celebrity parents and college admissions executives who have been jailed for fraud, fraud and other allegations.
This film is based on the FBI's monitoring of Ritchie's live-action reproduction.
In addition to Richie himself and a few "parents" played by actors, FBI agents, Richie's employees, college coaches, admissions supervisors, lawyers and prosecutors are all real people.
Playing Richie is Matthew Modian, the male protagonist of "Full Metal Shell"
It all started in 2011, when Richie quit his job as a basketball coach from a university, started an education company, and became an independent college consultant.
Because of this professional background, Ritchie knows the inside story of college admissions very well.
In particular, the admission of sports students depends largely on the opinions of the coach in charge, which has a lot of moisture and a lot of room for maneuvering.
Exploiting this vulnerability, Ritchie asked parents to pose for scenes of their children exercising, and then perform ps processing on the photos, packaging the children as sports geniuses.
As for the falsification of cultural class results, it is even more outrageous.
For example, the SAT and ACT tests, the United States has some preferential policies for special groups, such as candidates diagnosed with learning disabilities in medicine, can apply for a special test, which takes longer than the ordinary test.
Richie, who knows this well, bribes the doctor to issue a false diagnosis certificate, helps the child apply for a "special test", and buys the examiner to fill in the "high score" answer card in advance.
In this way, the surprise of the admission letter of the top famous school will soon come.
The whole operation can be called "counterfeiting a dragon".
Richie is very proud of this set of "get rich codes".
He even came up with a set of theories of "front door, back door and side door" -
In promoting this theory, Richie turned into a marketing guru.
He would ask the client directly, "Do you want your son/daughter to go to XX University?" "Do you think his/her grades will be able to pass?" ”
Under the torture of these two souls, most parents will be recruited.
At this time, he reported to his family that he had created a "key" company and a "key charity fund", and as long as he donated half or six hundred thousand US dollars to his fund, he could ensure that his children would get the keys to the top school.
And those who originally wanted to donate money to send their children to elite schools, spending tens of millions of dollars can not guarantee admission.
In contrast, Ritchie's "side door" seems to be cheap and reliable.
So, a steady stream of people found Richie and asked for a "side door" key.
Hollywood actress Lori Lugelin, for example, spent $500,000 to send her two daughters to the University of Southern California.
The youngest daughter, Olivia, is also an Internet celebrity blogger with millions of fans, and after being admitted to USC, she often shows off in videos.
This surprised many students who saw her live broadcast, because they knew that the sisters' grades were very bad, and they also showed boredom many times.
Still, Ritchie used only one photo of her posing on the rowing machine to get her accepted into USC as a rowing captain.
Subsequently, he used the same method to send the daughter of Michel Jenners, the founder of the "Pocket Food" family, into USC in disguise as a volleyball player.
Among all the people who walked the side door, there was a "wronged head", that is, Zhao Yusi, the boss of Buchang Pharmaceutical.
In 2017, Zhao Yusi's father spent $6.5 million, or more than 42 million yuan, at Richie's place to send Zhao Yusi to the Stanford University sailing team.
This price is more than ten times that of Richie's normal fee.
After being admitted that year, Zhao Yusi once opened a live broadcast on Douyu, claiming to have "swept the American college entrance examination and was admitted to Stanford University with a score of ACT 33 and a TOEFL score of 111 points."
In the live broadcast, she said that she was an "American college entrance examination champion" and also an "ordinary girl", and encouraged netizens to say that as long as she firmly aims and works hard, it is not a dream to be admitted to Stanford
As a result, two years later, she was expelled from Stanford for "falsifying admission materials"... Don't punch your face too painfully.
Miraculously, after the admissions scandal at a prestigious school in the United States was exposed, Richie continued to receive phone calls from Chinese billionaires claiming to be willing to spend $10 million to send his children to Harvard...
And among all these people who are keen to take the "side door", the most well-known and the most "wronged" is Hollywood movie star William W. Bush. H. Messi and Felicity Hoffman.
These two big familiar faces, the little friends must be no strangers.
Felicity is the "strongman housewife" Linnett in Desperate Housewives, and William is Frank the "shameless daddy" in Shameless.
A Golden Globe Award-winning actress for "Crossing America" and was nominated for 6 Golden Globes;
A film nominated for an Oscar for "Ice Storm", and starred in "Magnolia", "Unruly Night", "Jurassic Park 3" and other classics... With superb acting skills, they can be called Hollywood's gold medal husband and wife file.
But the couple was deceived by Richie, who was more skilled in "acting".
Richie said their daughter's grades were not up and down, and it was difficult to get into a good university. So Felicity spent $15,000 and asked Richie to fake sat results for her daughter.
It wasn't until the scandal was exposed that they discovered that their daughter's grades alone could get into a good university...
It can be seen from this that the hateful and sad point of these people who walk the other way is that they do not understand the essence of educational fairness, but in fact, they have respect for individual people - they have not respected education, they have not respected fairness, and they have not respected their children!
During the film's production, many people, including Felicity, had already been fined and sentenced to prison.
Ritchie, who has been charged with fraud, counterfeiting, tax evasion and other crimes, is still awaiting his trial.
Apparently, many people feel that their punishment is too light.
The reason why this incident caused public outrage was because what Ritchie and his parents did not only violate the law and break social rules, but also hindered social fairness on a broad level.
Everyone who cheats or bribes to enter a prestigious school will squeeze out a quota of ordinary students who have passed the formal entrance examination and could have entered a prestigious school.
This film interviews some victims who have passed the score line of famous schools but have been eliminated miserably.
In the face of people who have entered famous schools fraudulently, but still show off on the Internet and act as "life mentors", they are very frustrated, angry, but also helpless.
In the case of Ritchie's manipulation, there are also some very absurd (Ming) Tang (Xian) forgeries.
For example, among the sports specialties he recommended to Stanford, there were 165-tall men's basketball players and rugby players who weighed only 60 kilograms.
None of this even attracted the attention and attention of the school!
Is it true that these top schools have not found student fraud? Or are they just turning a blind eye?
This sharp question is actually what the film really wants to explore - the root cause of the scandal is the famous schools themselves.
A study by an educator shows that America's top institutions are becoming aristocratic, elitist, and commercialized.
Even with the same grades, they are more inclined to admit whites and wealthy people.
And the more famous the school, the more students involved in sailing, rowing, fencing, equestrian and other niche sports have a special preference.
These niche movements do not make money in college courses, and even burn money, but as façade engineering, top universities are proud of it.
These niche movements are not related to most ordinary children.
What's even more frightening than walking through the "side door" is what Ritchie calls taking the "back door" — the top rich can donate tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, or donate a building directly to send their children to prestigious schools.
It is precisely because the top elite schools blatantly open the "back door" that this structural unfairness is exacerbated.
Therefore, the film actually points the object of criticism to the increasingly commercialized American university system.
Looking at the "American college admissions scandal" that shocked the world, in addition to lamenting that "money can really do whatever you want", we should also get some wake-up call.
In China, we have also noticed that things like exam fraud, academic qualification fraud, quota replacement, and even university professors doing experiments for their sons to win awards also occur from time to time.
Only when schools and education departments actively supervise, and individual citizens and public opinion media do a good job of supervision, will our society be one step closer to educational fairness.