Agreed. Allowing these kids to retain admission or a degree, if graduated, would severely undermine the credibility of the admission systems at those universities for legitimately-admitted students.

If anything, after the current uproar dies down, it would encourage more of the same. It would send the message that even after this problem becomes national and international news with dozens of criminal charges to the perpetrators, those schools will still do nothing if you get caught.

I think it should be more metered. Those currently enrolled lose their enrollment status and must reapply. Those who have graduated should be subject to further investigation, and if they did the work and passed their classes, they should keep their degree. It was enrollment fraud, not academic fraud.

Maybe put a prominent mark on the transcript that the enrollment was fraudulent? Similar to how withdrawn sports and music industry records are noted on the books. And there would need to be a public list that employers could check to verify whether or not a degree from one of these schools was fraudulently obtained. These people should not get a free pass or be able to claim that their degrees were not tainted by fraud.

If they knew about it, I agree. Some obviously did, others perhaps not.

Those who graduated got in with false premise and took away opportunity from someone else. They got the education, that must be worth something. But the degree, it belongs to someone else, and it should go.

In no way has this been a victimless fraud.

What concerns me the most is that as the ruling classes change over time, you’ll end up with an overthrow of the system by people who are under educated, for whatever reason. So rather than building on existing knowledge or improving it, they’ll essentially revert back and repeat past mistakes or invent new ones that would have been avoided if they were better educated.

I have to say I see this all the time in tech with people having no clue why we do things the way we do, why a e2e test doesn’t replace a unit test for example is lost on many developers these days even.

The kids themselves were in most cases unaware of their parents’ deception.

We shouldn’t be lining up to punish 19 year olds for their parents’ crimes. Large fines and jail time for the parents is punishment enough here.

It's true that the kids who did not know about the wrong that granted them admission should not be viewed as morally culpable and should not be "punished". But to suggest that they should still be allowed to benefit from fraud isn't the right answer either. Ill-got admission or degrees should be revoked. Insofar as those rewards of fraud should be revoked, and the kids unaware, the students are themselves victims of their parents along with those others that were defrauded; that they would be harmed by the fraud of their parents shouldn't be surprising to them or anyone else. (They are, after all, adults).

Those still in school should be expelled on some sort of "no fault" basis. They could then be allowed to reapply and demonstrate that they really belong there on their own merits. For those already with degrees, it's less clear and I don't have a good answer; I don't see any way out that either prevents the fraud from succeeding in it's goal (untenable) or is overtly punitive towards the student (also untenable)... the only real answer there is revoke the degree and tell the student/victim to seek redress from the ones that committed fraud (their parents).

I wouldn't rule out that they were aware of what was happening. I'd believe a fraction didn't know but I at least knew how I faired after taking SAT/ACT placements and submitting applications.