I think it becomes more complicated if you consider that this has been going on for seven years. Presumably, a number of kids graduated under this system. Do the universities yank their degrees retroactively? I know some schools have revoked degrees for various reasons, including falsified transcripts. Stanford University revoked an MBA that had been granted to Mathew Martoma ten years earlier, after they found out he'd failed to mention that he had been expelled from Harvard Law School after forging a transcript.
That's a good question. I wonder how many people we are talking about? I think I would first set a hard limit, like everyone who's done less than 3 years at that school gets expelled, or who has less than X credits, and for the others, I would go case-by-case, including those who've already graduated.
If a student got in under false pretenses but then legitimately did the work on their own and earned their credits and degree, I can see the argument for letting them keep that, especially if they've already graduated. However, I think the students would be tainted by the idea that if they (their parents) cheated their way into college, they might also have cheated their way through classes. So I think it's only fair, in a sense, that they come under extra scrutiny. No one should
assume they've kept cheating, but it's not a crazy, illogical thing to wonder about now, and as a school administrator I would want to do everything I can at this point to double-check. Talk to their professors and TAs, check samples of their work from every class, look for any plagiarism in essays or suspicious activity surrounding tests, etc..
If you take Loughlin's girls, especially the one who repeatedly, publicly stated she was just at college for the party scene, you have to wonder how she
stayed in college if she didn't focus on her classes. My university where I work is pretty quick to come down on kids who aren't doing well, first offering them support and opportunities to improve, and then increasing levels of discipline. (We had a student worker in our office who was actually expelled from the university for failing to keep his grades up... totally preventable on his part, but he just refused at many points to do the sensible thing.) So if you have a kid like
that, who brags about never going to class, it's more than fair to wonder how they are keeping their grades high enough to stay in school, and if it's now known they (their parents) cheated their way in, it seems an obvious question to ask, if they have cheated to stay.
To me, that's a really important issue--potentially, someone could argue that it's unfair to punish the kids if they knew nothing of what their parents were doing. But, if the kids were continuing to cheat
while in school, which they could not possibly have failed to notice or participate in, that brings them into being fully culpable, and those credits/degrees should be revoked. And since I wouldn't want to make a blanket judgment, I'd have to look at each one individually, at least the ones that have gotten a certain distance in their academic career. Anyone can make a single mistake or lapse in judgment, and potentially be forgiven; but if someone is following a pattern of repeated bad behavior to get what they want, that should never be rewarded.
And again, these are all wealthy people, or the children of wealthy people. They have more than enough resources to start over, even if they have their degree revoked and lose their job. It would be humiliating, of course, and make their lives difficult for the next few years, and it would probably be damaging to their professional reputation for a while. But, if they got into another college legit, did the work, got the degree, and started over at the bottom and worked their way up through their own talent, I think most of the bad stuff in their past would be wiped out. Or, they could go into another profession, perhaps one that doesn't require a degree, if they really aren't academics (which there is nothing wrong with... another problem I see in this scenario is trying to force kids into a certain mold, of having a college degree, when that clearly isn't what they want or are suited for right now).