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Comment by akarma | Hacker News Reader

Subverting the rules doesn’t equate to making the world worse.

Assuming just $10m for 2 of his children to be admitted? That’s enough to fully fund the education of ~50 low-income students [1].

I personally believe we should turn these quiet donations into a public bidding process instead to maximize what colleges can receive and ensure it’s done in as fair of a way as possible, but that’s separate.

[1] It’s important to distinguish that the donations went to the university, not a corrupt official at the university. This is actually productive.

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Maybe the universities could start offering to give rich people's kids automatic 4.0s, too, if they donate twice as much. Sure it undermines the system and acts as an insidious poison into the idea of meritocracy, but think of how many scholarships it could pay for!

This already happens:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-16/qatar-pr...

https://theunionjournal.com/qatar-prince-awarded-usc-masters...

It's a shame how easily the reputation of the US higher education is being ruined. If an entity that already has billions of dollars in endowments can be corrupted, what chance does society have?

>[1] It’s important to distinguish that the donations went to the university, not a corrupt official at the university. This is actually productive.

It's important to distinguish that these are not donations, they are payments in exchange for admission into the school. But good thing that they can be considered donations, so that it's gives the "donor" a tax benefit, another subversion of the rules available for those with money.

I think all donations should be anonymous, and there should be no tax benefit for donating. That's the only way to prevent quid pro quo and the inevitable plausible deniability defense. I don't see why anyone would have a problem with anonymous donations, unless they are intending to get something in return.

Those two spots could have gone to students who actually were more qualified and talented. If this is done on a large scale many gifted students cannot get the education they deserve and need, so the world loses out on lots of talents hence making the world worse.

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