Education
In Mississippi, Welfare for the Well Connected as a Scandal Spreads
As he grew to become additional enmeshed in a scheme that diverted federal welfare cash to construct a volleyball stadium that value greater than $5 million on the College of Southern Mississippi, the previous soccer star Brett Favre texted a query to the head of a nonprofit doling out funds meant to go to welfare recipients within the nation’s poorest state.
“In the event you have been to pay me,” he wrote in 2017 of a $1.1 million proposal for promotional efforts that may truly be funneled towards constructing the stadium, “is there any manner the media may discover out the place it got here from and the way a lot?” A number of years of textual content messages in regards to the undertaking got here to gentle once they have been filed in courtroom final week and have been first revealed by Mississippi Immediately, the small nonprofit information web site that has constantly led reporting on the story.
Way over that cost has been uncovered in a billowing scandal that has stretched significantly past Mr. Favre. A motley assortment of political appointees, former soccer stars, onetime skilled wrestlers, enterprise figures and numerous associates of the state’s former Republican governor all stand accused of pocketing or misusing cash earmarked for needy households.
On Thursday, John Davis, who served as government director of the Mississippi Division of Human Companies underneath former Gov. Phil Bryant, pleaded responsible to each federal and state costs of embezzling federal welfare funds. Tens of millions of {dollars} have been transferred to associates and family members, courtroom paperwork say.
In accordance with a lawsuit filed by the state in Might, round $5 million was diverted to Ted DiBiase, a flamboyant retired wrestler as soon as often known as “The Million Greenback Man,” and two of his sons, in addition to numerous entities linked to them, together with a ministry. A lot of the cash went to fictitious companies, bogus jobs, first-class journey preparations and even one son’s keep at a luxurious rehab heart in Malibu, Calif., that value $160,000, the swimsuit claims.
Equally, the state claims that Marcus Dupree, a former highschool soccer phenom {and professional} operating again, who was paid to behave as a celeb endorser and motivational speaker, didn’t carry out any contractual companies towards the $371,000 he acquired to buy and reside in a sprawling residence with a swimming pool and adjoining horse pastures in a gated neighborhood.
Mr. Favre, who earned greater than $140 million in his Corridor of Fame profession, was paid $1.1 million for speeches he by no means gave, the swimsuit stated. He additionally orchestrated greater than $2 million in authorities funds being channeled to a biotechnology start-up during which he had invested, in accordance with the swimsuit.
Not one of the three have been charged with crimes and all have denied wrongdoing. However even essentially the most cynical observers in Mississippi have been dumbfounded by the brazenness of the exercise within the allegations and the way deeply it mirrored the inequities baked into the historical past of a state with the nation’s highest poverty price.
“The profiteering off the poor is ongoing,” Consultant Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, stated. He added, “It’s like Robin Hood in reverse — you are taking from the poor and provides to the wealthy.”
The accusations about fraudulent grants have been all specified by the lawsuit filed in Might towards 38 people and organizations, which sought the compensation of greater than $24 million. Fairly than serving to the poor, the federal welfare program often known as Short-term Help for Needy Households, or TANF, appeared to turn out to be a slush fund for pet tasks and private achieve.
The state alleges that the cash was siphoned off for companies that have been usually by no means offered and in any case, would have failed to satisfy each federal and state laws governing their dispersal. The case follows a state audit launched in Might 2020 suggesting that as a lot as $94 million of TANF funds may need gone astray.
Six individuals have been arrested in February 2020 on costs of misusing public funds in what the state auditor, Shad White, has described as one of many largest public corruption instances in Mississippi’s historical past. Most of them have pleaded responsible; Jody E. Owens II, the Hinds County district legal professional, stated a joint inquiry by federal and state investigators may produce costs towards extra individuals.
Legal professionals for the senior Mr. DiBiase and Mr. Dupree didn’t reply to requests for remark. Michael T. Dawkins, the lawyer representing Mr. DiBiase and his Coronary heart of David Ministries stated in courtroom papers that his shoppers had acted legally.
After the costs first emerged, a lawyer for Mr. Dupree, J. Matthew Eichelberger, launched a letter saying his shopper had earned the cash.
Bud Holmes, Mr. Favre’s lawyer, didn’t return a request for remark. Each he and Mr. Favre have stated repeatedly that the soccer legend was not conscious that the funds got here from a federal welfare program.
In terms of primary help, Mississippi ranks forty seventh amongst U.S. states within the sum of money it spends, stated Aditi Shrivastava, a senior coverage analyst with the Heart on Finances and Coverage Priorities in Washington. Figures compiled by the middle point out that the median most profit nationally, which few individuals are paid, was $498 month-to-month in July 2021, in contrast with $260 in Mississippi.
Specialists stated the fraud was rooted in modifications enacted in such packages in 1996, when money advantages paid to poor households have been changed by block grants issued to states. They’re purported to distribute the cash in accordance with 4 federal pointers that emphasize shifting poor households towards regular employment, however in observe states and governors are given broad leeway.
Mockingly, the Mississippi Legislature additionally added a fifth guideline, “to forestall fraud and abuse.” That was directed at recipients of the help, however the state now alleges that the malefactors turned out to incorporate the general public officers operating this system.
Nancy New and her son Zach New, who ran a nonprofit instructional group known as the Mississippi Group Schooling Heart, pleaded responsible final spring to costs of misusing TANF funds.
The textual content messages that have been revealed in courtroom paperwork steered that former Gov. Bryant, working with Ms. New, helped Mr. Favre get hold of federal cash for a state-of-the-art volleyball facility to be constructed at Mr. Bryant’s and Mr. Favre’s alma mater, the College of Southern Mississippi, the place Mr. Favre’s daughter performed the game.
“Can we assist him together with his undertaking?” Mr. Bryant wrote in a July 2019 textual content to Ms. New, noting that he had simply talked to Mr. Favre.
In 2020, the state auditor’s report stated the college acquired $5 million for a bogus lease to make use of all its athletic services — together with the volleyball heart, which was not but constructed — for packages for the poor.
The cash, paid by the Mississippi Division of Human Companies by way of the Information’ nonprofit group, truly went towards development, the audit stated. Final April, Mr. New pleaded responsible to transferring $4 million from TANF funds, which the federal authorities bars from utilizing for “brick and mortar” tasks, to the college.
The texts launched final week appeared to point that the $1.1 million welfare contract to advertise the middle’s packages — work that was by no means carried out — was one other solution to divert cash to the stadium.
Within the August 2017 textual content dialog about concealing the supply of the cash meant for the power, Ms. New assured Mr. Favre that she understood he was “uneasy,” however that that form of data was by no means publicized. The following day, she wrote: “Wow, simply received off the telephone with Phil Bryant! He’s on board with us! We’ll get this executed!”
William M. Quin II, a lawyer for Mr. Bryant, stated the textual content messages didn’t help the argument that the governor had inspired and coached Mr. Favre and state officers on learn how to get hold of the grant. “The allegation is patently false,” he stated in an emailed assertion, dismissing the textual content messages as “cherry-picked.” Mr. Bryant has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
The volleyball stadium was not truly a part of the lawsuit. Final July, after J. Brad Pigott, a former U.S. legal professional employed by the state to assist recoup the misplaced hundreds of thousands, started subpoenaing details about what had occurred on the college, he was dismissed. Mr. Favre has repaid the state $1.1 million — although the state auditor has stated he nonetheless owes $228,000 in curiosity.
Organizations that assist the poor have lengthy fearful that block grants awarded by governors will be an invite for abuse, stated Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald, the director of the southern regional workplace of the Youngsters’s Protection Fund.
“There was a hazard of that cash changing into a slush fund effectively earlier than this debacle,” she stated.
In Mississippi, she and others stated, the issue is compounded by the truth that the state’s Republican governors and legislatures of current years have been ideologically against authorities packages designed to assist the poor. “They most likely thought that it was humorous to be utilizing cash that was purported to go — of their minds — to individuals who didn’t deserve it,” she stated of the accused officers.
Mississippi is one in all 12 states that has refused to increase Medicaid and has often turned down federal cash meant to enhance medical remedy, housing and youngster care, amongst different points, Mr. Thompson, the congressman, famous. On the finish of 2020, Mississippi had $47 million in unspent TANF funds, Ms. Shrivastava stated.
On the College of Southern Mississippi, school members say the varsity prides itself in admitting first-generation college students from the form of households the cash was meant to assist. “Nobody may be very pleased about it,” Denis Wiesenburg, the college senate president and a professor of marine science, stated of the current undesirable consideration. “We acknowledge that it has tarnished the popularity of the college.”
The scandal has seeped out over years now, largely due to the dogged reporting by Mississippi Immediately. However that doesn’t boring the anger of these most affected.
Carol Burnett, the chief director of the Mississippi Low-Earnings Baby Care Initiative, a nonprofit group, stated individuals have been appalled that tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} that ought to have gone towards initiatives like improved public transportation or youngster take care of the working poor have been apparently handed out to wealthy political cronies as an alternative. “They see this cash that’s meant to assist individuals like them that’s so misused and redirected to individuals who don’t need assistance,” she stated. “It’s infuriating.”
Jenny Vrentas contributed reporting.
Education
Can You Create a Diverse College Class Without Affirmative Action?
Selective colleges and universities can no longer use race-based preferences in admissions to create a more diverse student body. But what if they gave a break instead to lower-income students? Or those from high-poverty schools? Or those who do relatively well academically despite challenges all around them?
To explore those questions — and how much racial diversity is possible without “race-conscious” admissions — the Upshot worked with Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford, and Demetra Kalogrides, a senior researcher there, to model four alternatives to affirmative action.
The scenarios shown here are based on the real-life academic and demographic characteristics of the high school class of 2013 in America, the most recent tracked over time by a large nationally representative survey. We used this data set, further adjusted to reflect the rising diversity of students in the decade since, to simulate a representative class of 10,000 high school seniors. We then modeled their admissions prospects to the group of colleges (Barron’s Tier 1 schools) that rank as the most selective in the country — and that have also been most affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Throughout, we use SAT scores as a simplified measure of academic merit (after test scores fell out of favor with many colleges during the pandemic, several of the most selective schools have recently returned to requiring them).
Our models simplify the complex and often opaque ways that selective colleges craft admissions (we also reserve no seats for athletes on scholarship or legacy students). But even a stripped-down exercise shows why some approaches to admissions would probably yield more diversity than others, by both race and class.
Let’s start with the simplest model and build from there:
Scenario 1 of 4: A preference for poorer students
In this scenario, we give a moderate boost to applicants on a sliding scale according to their parents’ income: from an extra 150 points for students from the poorest families, to 0 points for students from the richest ones. This creates the slope of the cutoff line you see above.
Because each of our scenarios admits a fixed class of 500 students, the results are zero-sum: As some students are newly admitted, others who might have been admitted under different policies no longer are. The magnitude of that effect — and whom it touches — differs depending on the criteria.
In this case, as more low-income students are admitted, some high-income students with SAT scores just above 1300 no longer get in. That trade-off creates significantly more economic diversity, as this table shows:
Percentage point shifts in admitted student demographics, compared with test-only admissions
Show shares
Figures are rounded. Other includes American Indian, Alaska Native and multi-racial students.
Change in admitted class in Scenario 1
Race
Bottom 25%
25th–
50th50th–
75thTop
25%
White
–
–
–
–
Asian
–
–
–
–
Black
–
–
–
–
Hispanic
–
–
–
–
Other
–
–
–
–
The share of admitted students from the top income quartile falls by about 12 percentage points.
But the shifts toward racial diversity are modest. The Black student share rises by just one percentage point. Why? Black families are over-represented among poorer households in America, but in terms of total numbers, there are still many more poorer white households.
For this reason, income is a relatively weak proxy for race in admissions. A preference for lower incomes produces just that: students with lower incomes, not necessarily a much larger share of Black or Hispanic students.
In this scenario, a total of 13 percent of students in the admitted class are Black or Hispanic. For context, Americans of high-school-graduation age today are about 38 percent Black or Hispanic.
It’s also worth emphasizing that we are modeling who gets admitted, not who enrolls. And Black and Hispanic students are less likely to take that additional step — enrolling in a selective college that might be expensive or far from home, even if they get in.
Scenario 2 of 4: Adding school poverty
In addition to a preference for low-income students, what if we added a preference for those who attend higher poverty schools?
This scenario takes the 150-point income preference in Scenario 1 and adds a second 150-point preference for students in higher-poverty schools, as measured by the share of students in that school receiving free or reduced-price lunch. A low-income student in a high-poverty school could get as much as a 300-point boost.
This produces even more economic diversity than the preference for parental income alone. And it further nudges up the share of admitted Black and Hispanic students.
Change in admitted class in Scenario 2
Percentage point shifts in admitted student demographics, compared with test-only admissions
Show shares
Race | Bottom 25% | 25th– 50th |
50th– 75th |
Top 25% |
---|---|---|---|---|
White | – | – | – | – |
Asian | – | – | – | – |
Black | – | – | – | – |
Hispanic | – | – | – | – |
Other | – | – | – | – |
Figures are rounded. Other includes American Indian, Alaska Native and multi-racial students.
We know that students with equally low family incomes differ from each other in many ways. For example, low-income Black and Hispanic students are more likely than low-income white and Asian students to live in high-poverty neighborhoods and attend high-poverty schools.
And so if one goal of an admissions policy is to account for the compound disadvantages minority students often face, it may help to pull in more information: not just about their parents’ incomes, but also about their households, schools and neighborhoods.
Colleges could further hone a preference like this by pulling in more factors, including neighborhood poverty rates, parental education levels and parental wealth.
Do something like that, and “now you have a group of students who have overcome a lot more in life than the ones who have just been handed everything,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a researcher at the Progressive Policy Institute who has argued for this kind of robust class preference. He also served as an expert witness critiquing race-based admissions in the litigation that led to the Supreme Court decision.
Scenario 3 of 4: Finding the outliers
It’s possible to take the underlying idea in Scenario 2 and dial it up further, by identifying students who outperform their peers with similar disadvantages (or similar advantages).
Here, we’re not just giving a boost to students who come from disadvantage. We’re rewarding students who perform better academically than other students with similar backgrounds.
This strategy identifies, for example, a student who has an 1100 SAT score — but whose score is 250 points above the typical student who also goes to a high-poverty high school and who has low-income parents who didn’t attend college. This strategy also discounts some of the wealthiest students whose 1400 scores look less impressive when compared with their equally well-off peers.
Students who outperform their peers are academic outliers, and that may indicate something special about them: “We’re admitting students on the basis of striving: students whose academic achievement exceeded expectations based on the access to opportunity that they had,” said Zack Mabel, a Georgetown researcher who has modeled admissions scenarios similar in concept to this one.
Of the scenarios tested so far, this one does the most to produce both economic and racial diversity, compared with admitting students on test scores alone. It also produces significant shifts among high-income white students; their share of the admitted class is 27 percentage points lower than it would be in a test-only environment. The resulting average SAT score of the admitted class is also the lowest of the scenarios so far, at 1340.
Change in admitted class in Scenario 3
Percentage point shifts in admitted student demographics, compared with test-only admissions
Show shares
Race | Bottom 25% | 25th– 50th |
50th– 75th |
Top 25% |
---|---|---|---|---|
White | – | – | – | – |
Asian | – | – | – | – |
Black | – | – | – | – |
Hispanic | – | – | – | – |
Other | – | – | – | – |
Figures are rounded. Other includes American Indian, Alaska Native and multi-racial students.
To gauge how we’d expect students to perform in this scenario, we take into account their parental income, school poverty level and a socioeconomic index that includes parents’ education levels and occupations. We use that data to predict each student’s SAT score. Then we admit the students who outperformed those predictions by the largest margins (until we’ve admitted 500 of them).
A college that cares more about keeping a higher average SAT score could use a limited version of a preference like this one. A school that believes students who beat the odds in high school are likely to succeed in college could embrace a fuller version.
Remember that in this scenario and each of the preceding ones, we’ve considered only students who apply to highly selective colleges (the national study we use as a reference shows which students actually did). We have effectively ignored all of the students shown below who don’t apply, including some with pretty good grades and test scores:
Next, let’s think about that group, too.
Scenario 4 of 4: Casting a wider net
What happens when colleges try to expand the applicant pool?
To create this scenario, we expanded the pool of applicants to selective colleges by modeling a recruiting strategy targeted at predominantly minority high schools.
First, we pull into the applicant pool all students of any race with SAT scores above 1000 at high schools where at least three-quarters of students are nonwhite. Then we rerun the preference for beating the odds from Scenario 3 with this larger applicant pool.
This strategy most notably captures more Hispanic students, and it produces by far the biggest shift toward lower-income students. It broadly redistributes seats held in an SAT-only scenario by high-income white students and, to a lesser degree, high-income Asian ones.
Percentage point shifts in admitted student demographics, compared with test-only admissions
Show shares
Figures are rounded. Other includes American Indian, Alaska Native and multi-racial students.
Change in admitted class in Scenario 4
Race
Bottom 25%
25th–
50th50th–
75thTop
25%
White
–
–
–
–
Asian
–
–
–
–
Black
–
–
–
–
Hispanic
–
–
–
–
Other
–
–
–
–
Although colleges can no longer employ racial preferences in admissions, several legal scholars said they believe schools can still consider race in recruiting strategies. The Supreme Court, in turning away another recent legal challenge, has also signaled — at least for now — that it’s permissible for colleges to pursue diversity as an end goal so long as racial preferences aren’t the means to achieve it.
Of the scenarios we’ve shown, an expanded recruiting strategy requires the most work from colleges. But it’s also “the big overlooked gold mine here,” said Richard Sander, a law professor at U.C.L.A. who has worked on admissions strategies at the law school level.
Such a recruiting strategy would mean not just tweaking statistical preferences, but also building relationships with high school counselors, traveling to college fairs, and perhaps developing dual-enrollment courses that introduce high school students to college work.
This kind of outreach — “to me, it’s everything,” said Jill Orcutt, the global lead for consulting with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. She was previously the associate vice chancellor for enrollment at U.C. Merced, the most diverse school in the University of California system.
Comparing our scenarios
In evaluating the impact of the scenarios shown here, we’ve compared each one with the SAT-only baseline in which colleges consider a form of academic merit and nothing else. But it’s also helpful to think about these scenarios in another way — in comparison to the world as it might look if affirmative action were still legal.
To make that comparison, we also created a model approximating the effects of affirmative action. We took the same 150-point boost we’ve used in earlier scenarios, and we applied it to Black and Hispanic students. Real-world affirmative action policies were more complicated than this. But studies have found that such policies gave Black and Hispanic students higher odds of admission equivalent to an SAT score boost of a few hundred points.
Across all our models, Scenario 4 — rewarding students who are academic outliers given their life circumstances, while targeting a wider pool of recruits — comes the closest to creating the Black and Hispanic student shares you might get by giving a boost directly to those students:
Notably, our simple affirmative action model produces far less economic diversity than all of these alternatives. That was also a frequent criticism of such policies: Yes, colleges used them to admit more Black and Hispanic students, but those were overwhelmingly middle- and upper-income students. In our affirmative action model, just 6 percent of admitted students come from the bottom quartile of the income distribution. That’s almost identical to the share of such students who were enrolled in the real world across these selective colleges, according to a 2017 report.
To be clear, our simplified affirmative action model also suggests selective colleges would admit a far higher share of Black and Hispanic students — nearly 34 percent — than were actually in the incoming class of 2022 (23 percent across this top tier of selective schools). That’s because our model captures the upper bound of what’s possible with such a strategy.
Some schools that were already heavily investing in expanded recruiting, like Johns Hopkins, were actually close to or even above this number. Other selective colleges that devoted more seats to legacy students and fewer resources to minority recruiting or financial aid had much lower shares. Our model, in its simplicity, effectively treats all of these varied schools as if they act in unison.
The scenarios illustrated here can’t predict what will happen next — this is a model after all, if one based on real demographics. But this exercise reveals some broad lessons that probably translate to the real world: Income by itself is a weak stand-in for race. Neighborhood and school-level data can help identify minority students. And the potential of any admissions strategy is limited without casting a wider recruiting net.
The questions affecting each admissions parameter are also murky. Does more economic diversity replace some of what colleges lose with less racial diversity? Should students be evaluated in the context of all their disadvantages? How much should colleges yield on lower measures of academic merit to gain the advantages of a diverse campus?
Individual colleges will answer these questions in different ways. And they will do so considering factors, including financial aid and legacy admissions, that are more complex than the ones we modeled. But they’ll also have access to a lot more data than we do about each prospective student in trying to fine-tune what comes next. We will soon see what they do with it.
Education
Video: College Students Celebrate Free Tuition Announcement
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College Students Celebrate Free Tuition Announcement
Footage released by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine shows Dr. Ruth Gottesman announcing that the school will be tuition-free after she made a $1 billion gift.
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I’m happy to share with you that starting in August this year, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will be tuition-free. [cheering]
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Education
Video: Biden Announces Student Loan Forgiveness for 150,000 Borrowers
new video loaded: Biden Announces Student Loan Forgiveness for 150,000 Borrowers
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Biden Announces Student Loan Forgiveness for 150,000 Borrowers
The plan will cancel $1.2 billion in debt for people enrolled in the SAVE repayment program, who took out $12,000 or less and have made payments for at least 10 years.
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Folks, I’m happy to have been able to forgive these loans because when we realize and relieve Americans of their student debt, they’re free to chase their dreams. I’m proud to announce our SAVE plan. We are immediately canceling the debt, loans for over 150,000 borrowers, nearly six months ahead of schedule. I promise you, I’m never going to stop fighting for hard working American families. So if you qualify, you’ll be hearing from me shortly. Thousands of people per month – about 25,000 a month or every two months – will be paid in a 50,000 basis but are eligible for relief. And they’ll be getting a letter from me letting them know they’re qualified. And when they get that letter, your debt is going to be forgiven.
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