44
BUSINESS DAY
FT
www.businessday.ng
@Businessdayng Tuesday 19 March 2019
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ANALYSIS
Theresa May pins Brexit deal hopes on last-minute DUP talks Hardline Eurosceptic Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg hints he might support PM’s agreement LAURA HUGHES AND SEBASTIAN PAYNE
T McGreggor Crowley of IvyWise: ‘Everyone wants to get their kid into Stanford but the admission rate is, like, 4 per cent’ © AP
US consultants market the key to gates of the Ivy League College admissions scandal shows how battle for university places is big business JOSHUA CHAFFIN
T
he young woman was nearly hyperventilating 30 minutes later. “So, it’s been like half an hour, and I’m like, semi-calmed down — to the point where I’m not shouting expletives any more . . .” she explained, addressing her camera phone. “But, yeah. I got into Yale. Oh, my God! I got into Yale!” In the community of college admissions consultants, who help students snare closely fought-over places in US universities, this was the money shot. The selfie video appears on the website of one of the premiere practitioners of the art: Manhattanbased IvyWise. Interlaced with the promise of Yale the company also offers what may be unnerving advice for anxious parents: they should start early — ideally signing their children up by the time they are in the eighth grade — and be prepared to spend upwards of $100,000. “The reality is there is an ‘arms race’ in the admissions process but it was not created by our profession,” Katherine Cohen, who founded IvyWise 21 years ago and boasts degrees from Brown and Yale — as well as a certificate in college admission counselling from UCLA — wrote in an email from Asia. The real culprit, Ms Cohen argued, was that US university places had remained stagnant even as applications surged in recent years, including from abroad. Many secondary schools have a single counsellor who is meant to guide hundreds of students through the minefield. The role of admissions consultants and their place in the university ecosystem is attracting fresh attention with the revelation last week that dozens of parents had paid approximately $25m in bribes through a crooked California consultant, William “Rick” Singer, to secure places for their children at top schools. On Friday, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, promised a “searching investigation” that would include a focus on the role of private consultants “whose work is conducted out of the view of admissions officers”. “The admissions process has become extremely competitive, leaving this economy ripe for a market for those who need more help navigating this process,” Ms Cohen said. Hours later, her communications adviser insisted Ms Cohen had not meant to suggest there was an arms race — and that there was not one. The industry varies widely, from individuals who hang out a sign and
call themselves admissions consultants, all the way to established firms. Their services range from test preparation and helping students select appropriate schools to coaching them on application essays and, in some cases, building an application over the course of years. “How do we help this kid become a better version of himself?” is how one consultant earnestly described his mission. There are also self-styled gurus, supposed Ivy-whisperers, pseudoscientists and bold promises in the mix. Mr Singer’s former business partner has pioneered what he calls the “academic mentorship” model. A rival offers his unique four-stage “method”. (“The approach is deceptively simple, but its effects are transformational,” says his website, which features a picture of Harvard.) Amid the crowd, Mr Singer, a former basketball coach, was an outlier. For a fee, he would doctor students’ entrance exam results or sneak them through a “side door” by conniving with corrupt coaches and administrators to make them appear as top athletics recruits — even if they did not play a particular sport. Mr Singer has pleaded guilty and has been cooperating with authorities. Long before last week’s revelations, some viewed him warily. “He was kind of seen by people in the industry as a blowhard, kind of shady,” said one test preparation consultant on the west coast who has known Mr Singer for years. One red flag: he never seemed to attend the mainstream industry conferences, this person said. He was also boastful. “He would brag about how he worked with Steve Jobs’ kids. He would brag about how many companies used him,” this person added. Even if Mr Singer’s criminal conduct was egregious and far outside the industry’s norms, the mere existence of admissions consultants raises questions over a US higher education system that presents itself as striving for fairness but looks to many critics like a game rigged for the wealthy. “There always has been the legal advantage one has if you have financial resources,” Stefanie Niles, the president of the National Association for College Admission Counselling, acknowledged. Ms Niles, who is also vice-president of enrolment at Ohio Wesleyan University, noted that most consultants adhered to ethical guidelines and were motivated by a desire to help students navigate what has become a confusing and cut-throat landscape. “As this process has become more
competitive,” she said, citing the “exponential” growth in applications, “it has led families to seek guidance on how to secure admission.” When asked whether their highpriced services represent an unfair advantage, many consultants point to their pro bono work, as well as the free offerings on their websites. “We work really hard to put out a lot of free resources and information to level the playing field and provide access to everyone,” Ms Cohen wrote. Still, for those willing to pay, IvyWise’s pitch is tantalising: access to a team of counsellors who — like Ms Cohen — have worked in the admissions departments at elite universities, including Yale, MIT, Columbia and Northwestern, giving them first-hand insight into what those schools are seeking. Last year, 91 per cent of its students gained admission to at least one of their top three universities, according to IvyWise. “Whether it’s immediate access to a speciality tutor for an upcoming exam or flying counsellors halfway around the world for a meeting with a student, we’re willing to do what we can to make sure families are supported in every aspect of the college counselling process,” its website advertises. Although some rivals accuse the firm of pressure tactics, McGreggor Crowley, who oversaw student selection at MIT before joining IvyWise, describes its approach in more nurturing terms. He prefers to begin working with students years before they are even applying to university. The goal is to help them begin to understand what interests them, and then cultivate those interests. “My goal is to help them see that a lot of these opportunities exist but that they have to be generated,” he explained. Much of his work, he said, also involves managing expectations — often more for the parents than their children. “The schools that parents think their kids deserve — it’s really impossible to get in,” Mr Crowley observed. “Everyone wants to get their kid into Stanford but the admission rate is, like, 4 per cent.” Parents had never asked him to do anything untoward, he said, but had sometimes inquired how to make a donation to a particular university. Many of his clients would kill for Mr Crowley’s credentials: he attended MIT and Harvard Medical School, having made it there from south Texas and without any help from fancy admissions consultants. Given his background, his work sometimes felt a bit surreal, he confided, but never inappropriate.
heresa May is pinning her hopes of pushing her Brexit deal through the House of Commons on winning over the Democratic Unionist party in last-minute talks. The UK prime minister is expected to table a third Commons vote on her deal on Tuesday or Wednesday, after it was heavily defeated twice in large-scale rebellions by Eurosceptic Conservative MPs and the DUP’s 10 MPs. But Mrs May suffered a setback on Monday when Boris Johnson, the Brexiter former foreign secretary, refused to back her agreement unless she secured changes to the Irish backstop, designed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland. Writing in the Daily Telegraph,
government would not hold a fresh vote unless they had a “high degree of confidence in winning it”. The DUP has demanded legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement. Officials said they expected the DUP would be offered a revised “Stormont lock” on the Irish backstop which would offer guarantees that any EU regulations applied to Northern Ireland would be extended to the rest of the UK. The guarantee would not be made to the Withdrawal Agreement, which the EU has so far refused to reopen, and would instead be written into UK law. “All eyes are on the DUP talks,” one government official said. The unionist party is also understood to be reiterating demands to change the rules on air passenger taxes, which it ar-
DUP leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds © AP
Mr Johnson described the deal as “detrimental to the interests of this country”. He called on the prime minister to delay the third vote and seek changes to her agreement at a European Council meeting on Thursday. “Unless we discover some willingness to resist, the diet of capitulation seems set to continue for at least two years,” he wrote. “We will be legally and politically at the mercy of Brussels”. However, Jacob Rees-Mogg, head of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic MPs, signalled on Monday that he may be willing to support Mrs May’s Brexit deal — if a no-deal Brexit is no longer a viable option. “No deal is better than a bad deal but a bad deal is better than remaining in the European Union in the hierarchy of deals,” he told LBC radio. “A two-year extension is basically staying in the European Union.” Dozens of Eurosceptic MPs are flirting with supporting the government in the next vote on Brexit, but are awaiting to see if the DUP change their mind. Were Mr Rees-Mogg to rally behind the deal, it is likely that dozens of other ERG MPs would follow suit. Mrs May’s allies believe that if the DUP announced its intention to back the deal, it would persuade rebel Tory Eurosceptics to fall into line and allow her to go ahead with the vote this week. Downing Street confirmed that officials would continue to talk to the DUP on Monday and the
gues has had an adverse impact on the region’s tourism industry because the levy does not apply in Ireland. Government officials also suggested the DUP would want assurances on the continuation of the state pension triple lock and winter fuel payments. “We will only bring the deal back if we are confident that enough of our colleagues and the DUP are prepared to support it so that we can get it through Parliament,” the chancellor Philip Hammond told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. Mr Hammond denied that an offer of extra cash had formed part of discussions he held with the DUP on Friday, but added: “Well, look, we are coming up to a spending review and we will have to look at all budgets, including devolved block-grant budgets.” A vote on Tuesday would require the government to table an emergency business motion on Monday. Asked if the government had secured enough support, Mr Hammond told the BBC: “Not yet; it is a work in progress.” Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mrs May said failure to support the deal would mean “we will not leave the EU for many months, if ever”. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour ’s leader, confirmed on Sunday that his party would instruct its MPs to vote in favour of a parliamentary amendment put forward by backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson that would support a second referendum on Mrs May’s deal.