Are we in the midst of a Rick Singer redemption tour? And do we really need Rick Singer to return, triumphantly or otherwise, as the public face of college counseling?
Last August, Singer, the mastermind behind the 2019 Operation Varsity Blues scandal that garnered national headlines and rocked the college admission world, was released after spending 16 months in a federal work camp in Florida. He has since been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Fox News, and People. What’s next? Will we soon see Rick Singer appear on “Dancing With the Stars” or perhaps more appropriately, “The Masked Singer”?
The most recent Singer sighting (or, in this instance, hearing) was last week when he was featured on the Chronicle of Higher Education podcast, “College Matters.” I must admit mixed feelings about the decision to feature Singer on the podcast.
On the one hand, I thought reporter and host Jack Stripling did a good job of asking Singer tough questions and challenging his answers. The Chronicle has a right to choose what topics it chooses to cover, as Stripling pointed out when I reached out to him to ask if the interview had been initiated by the Chronicle or by some PR firm attempting to salvage Singer’s reputation (it was the Chronicle). Both the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed have earned deference based on their track record covering higher education.
At the same time, that track record makes the interview with Singer even more disappointing. We expect a certain kind of coverage from People and Fox News, but not from a respected higher education publication. I have a hard time with Singer getting media attention rather than the many honorable and ethical college counselors who are devoted to helping young people, not just children of the wealthy, make decisions about their futures. Where are their stories? That reveals a lot about the click-bait nature of journalism and the state of our culture.
That’s all I have to say about the decision to interview Singer. I am more interested in several larger issues and questions that popped up in the interview itself.
It is unclear whether Singer feels any remorse over his Operation Varsity Blues role. He says the right things, admitting that he was wrong and that he knew it was cheating. At the same time, he states that he doesn’t, or at least didn’t at the time, see what he did as a “big deal,” because “people cheat all the time.” He “repurposed” a student’s picture ID by replacing the student’s picture with that of one of Singer’s employees who took the SAT claiming to be the student. And when asked if he felt shame, he answered yes, but not the way most people understand shame.
Singer seems to feel that his crime was being ahead of his time. Referencing the role that payments to college athletes for NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) now play, he stated in the podcast that he got in trouble for what they’re doing legally. He also claims that within three days of his release from prison camp, he had received calls from 20 NIL collectives wanting him to help raise NIL money.
It is sad to acknowledge that he may be right. In an era where white-collar crime seems to be a low priority for the FBI and the Department of Justice, it is not hard to guess that Operation Varsity Blues would never be prosecuted or even investigated in 2025.
Another of Rick Singer’s claims, that he gave not bribes, but donations, fits a 2025 world view where bribes are “repurposed” as gifts. What’s the difference? Accepting a bribe is illegal, whereas it’s impolite, even “stupid,” to turn down a gift.
That distinction, between bribes and donations, is relevant not only for Singer’s rationalization of his actions but also a challenge for higher education, specifically college admission. Should donors get admission consideration for their children or grandchildren? Even if “pay to play” has become a norm in other parts of our culture, shouldn’t college admission seek to be countercultural? Perhaps colleges shouldn’t accept donations from those with relatives about to hit the admission process, or perhaps those gifts shouldn’t be tax deductible. Donations in search of a quid pro quo aren’t really philanthropic in nature.
There are two other claims made by Rick Singer in the podcast that deserve scrutiny. One is his justification for his actions that the students he helped were “qualified,” given that they graduated. Interestingly, he then states in a throwaway line that beneficiaries of race-based affirmative action were not qualified. But if they graduated, doesn’t that prove that they were qualified?
But whether his clients were qualified isn’t the issue. The issue is fairness. Admission to the kinds of elite institutions where Singer’s clients wanted to go isn’t about being qualified, it’s about being selected from among a huge pool of qualified candidates. To borrow a term from logic, being qualified is “necessary, but not sufficient.” Highly-selective admission is a zero-sum game. A student who is admitted is taking a spot from another qualified applicant. For a college counselor to encourage a student to cut in line by having someone take the SAT for you or offering bribes, er, donations to college coaches is indefensible, whether or not the student is qualified.
During the interview Singer also claimed that his success, compared with “most of these other people who claim they’re college counselors,” lies in the relationships he built with admission offices. Each summer he visited 50-60 colleges, and he claims that he got to know admission officers, international admission officers, members of the president’s staff, and the dorm people on each campus. As a result he could pick up the phone and call people on campus on behalf of his clients.
I am not capable of judging the truth of that claim, but I’m skeptical. It is a version of the “suburban legend” that college counselors are like Hollywood agents, able to cut deals with admission offices for their students. It is what psychologist Michael Thompson called the “relationship delusion,” the belief that a college counselor can pick up the phone, call his buddy at Brown, and with a word or a Jedi hand wave move an application into the admitted pile.
That suburban legend is particularly pervasive in independent schools. I know a school head who claimed that when she visited a college campus she always made sure she talked with the “top people.” What she didn’t say, and may not have known, was that the top people didn’t want to talk with her. I used to go out of my way to confront the Hollywood agent myth in meetings with parents, and it always got laughs, but nervous laughs.
I have been around the college counseling block a time or two, and the power of relationships is overrated. That may make me naive, because there is a suspicion among long-time counselors that while they don’t have the ability to make the kind of calls Singer is claiming to make, there may be a secret society that does have a hotline connected to Ivy League admission offices.
I’m also skeptical about Singer’s claim because of the fact that no admission officers were implicated in Operation Varsity Blues. Singer’s schemes involved test site administrators and athletic coaches and administrators. I hope that means that they weren’t taking his calls. If they were it may not have been a criminal scandal, but it would be a scandal of a different type.
Rick Singer has paid his debt to society, with the exception of the $10 million he still owes the government, and he deserves the right to restart his life. I wish him good luck, but more importantly, good judgment. I just don’t want him to be seen as representative of the college counseling profession.