Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Ryan Craig, a managing director at University Ventures, an investment firm focused on the global higher education sector, provided an interesting take on the recent college admissions scandal that unfolded last week. His conclusion? University internal audit functions should be scouring the admissions process for poor or non-existent internal controls that would have uncovered or prevented the scam from inflicting their institutions. Many are already hard at work examining improper practices in other areas.
“A process allowing coaches to reserve slots for bribes is exactly the kind of material weakness that would be caught by an internal audit and that would need to be remedied by implementing a new control. Likewise, because of the importance of standardized test scores to admissions, appropriately focused auditors might insist on reports from College Board and ACT demonstrating their controls, which—according to reports this week—either failed or didn’t exist in the first place,” writes Craig in his article, “The Admissions Scandal: A Job for Internal Audit.”
“Why would boards of trustees fail to focus internal audit on admissions? I suspect it’s less naïveté than hypocrisy, because closing the side door would probably mean closing the back door. And a lot of money has been pouring through the back door,” Craig continued.
He’s right on the money here. There will be plenty of reviews and investigations in the wake of the college admissions scandal, even at schools that weren’t involved, but ultimately, this is a risk management issue and a full internal audit and remediation is what’s needed to ensure that universities are protecting against fraudulent admissions. He’s also right that such audits will prove thorny, given that university officials at the highest level at some institutions are likely already aware that there are “pay to play” schemes in place, where the children of wealthy donors gain admittance while more qualified students are denied.
Indeed, this whole fiasco good be a good thing if it ultimately the college admissions scandal sheds light on such practices. 