Perpetrators of the admissions-rigging scandal at the University of Illinois damaged more than the school’s integrity and reputation. Their schemes — opportunistic adults conniving with one another — cheated young applicants who had worked for years to earn their shot at U. of I. educations.
In exchange for trusting school officials to fairly evaluate their achievements and prospects, some of those young people lost their chance for a diploma to clouted but less qualified applicants. No matter what happens now, no matter how successfully Gov. Pat Quinn rebuilds the university’s leadership, the victims of this outrage remain just that.
There are, though, other impacts of this sordid affair, some of them positive.
The U. of I. touches many millions of people. Precious few degrees of separation divide its many stakeholders: students, their parents, the school’s alumni diaspora worldwide and, not least, the taxpayers who built its Urbana-Champaign campus and who pay a share of its expenses.
That strong U. of I. presence in this state magnifies the hurt this grossly unfair conduct has caused. Our hope is that those stakeholders demand accountability not just now, but going forward. Quinn’s statement Friday that he intends to reconstitute the U. of I. Board of Trustees is a necessary step toward a future cleansed of this stain.
As Illinois and its flagship university prepare to recover, here are four areas that deserve our collective vigilance:
* The scope and injustice of the clout scandal have genuinely shocked fair-minded Illinoisans. The gravity of that realization should assure that an admissions system closer to a meritocracy will rise from this wreckage. The eradication of the “Category I” clout list ought to give thousands of young people who aspire to attend the U. of I. what they deserve but, we’ve all learned, couldn’t expect: a truly fair evaluation of their pluses and minuses. A new, cleaner culture will govern admissions — at least until some Illinois power broker attempts to game it. We only hope he or she gets caught red-handed.
* This scandal ought to be a shot across the bow of the higher education industry nationwide. Overseers of public universities are on notice that they must investigate — and, if necessary, eliminate — political clout and other clandestine influences on their admissions protocols. We can’t improve on Thursday’s warning from commission attorney Ted Chung, Quinn’s general counsel: “Now, universities across the country will never be able to claim plausible deniability, like ‘We have no idea this was improper.'”
* Nor will administrators at other universities want to be as disgraced and discredited as top officials at the U. of I. now are. In the wake of this scandal, those other administrators are more likely to reject outside pressures than to pattern their conduct after B. Joseph White, the U. of I. president criticized by the Illinois Admissions Review Commission for his failed leadership. The U. of I. can’t rebuild its reputation until White and Chancellor Richard Herman depart. Instead, White said Thursday that he’ll call a meeting of more than 100 U. of I. leaders to review new policies. “I love this university,” he said, “and so I intend to lead very effectively.” Astonishing. What is it about the commission’s key finding — “The University now finds itself in a full-fledged crisis purely of its own making” — that White does not see as a verdict on his presidency?
* Then there are the Illinois public officials who thus far have escaped consequences more serious than the exposure of their intrusions. Come the elections of 2010 and 2012, those politicians will have to answer to citizens for an egregious insult: falsely excusing their own pressure on the university as “constituent service.” Their effort to perfume this pig will be hard to justify when angry voters, and moderators of candidate forums, press tough questions. The pols — count on their election opponents and newspaper editorial boards to hammer at their culpability — deserve to be judged for trying to exploit an extraordinary treasure: the privilege of enrolling at one of America’s most prestigious research campuses.
Soon enough, new and trustworthy U. of I. leadership will inherit a golden opportunity: to show all those stakeholders that their school can recover and thrive. That would be the best of this scandal’s many impacts.
