General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Should the students who benefited from deceit be expelled? [View all]meadowlander
(4,408 posts)but as you say sometimes policies have to be pragmatic. That doesn't mean looking the other way though or removing any deterrent. Or do you think it's fine for kids to receive stolen goods as long as they don't know they're stolen?
I'd also note that the severity of the consequences needs to be factored in. A kid whose parents could afford a $500,000 bribe to get them into college isn't going to end up on the street because they were expelled and had to reapply. Or, *gasp* had to finish their degree at a state school instead. Even if they never finish college, it's a good bet that they're going to land on their feet somewhere.
A kid whose parents entered the country illegally should not, as a moral imperative, be split up from their family and packed off to some other country where they potentially don't know a soul and may not speak the language and where their future could be irrevocably damaged because of a crime that they didn't have an ability to consent to their participation in.
That's fundamentally different to the consequences that these kids face because of their parents cheating and I think that's were the analogy falls over.
DREAMers should be given a path to earn citizenship (because the alternative is a moral abomination) and these kids should be given a path to either re-earn admissions or re-earn their degree (because the alternative is sort of unfair to them). If they already have a degree and have moved on to post-grad work, the degree should be rescinded and the kids can work with their post-grad programme on some way to re-earn the lower degree at the same time as the higher one. If they've already proven that they legitimately deserve the spot, most programmes would probably be accommodating.
There's no way, practically, to confirm retrospectively that the kids didn't cheat in their college classes. The university doesn't keep records of their work. So they should have to prove that they earned the degree by taking some additional classes or writing a thesis or passing standardised exams in their field.