I knew Oxford very well. This is a frightful story
posted by utilitarian at 4:06 AM on September 28 [2 favorites]

I am the same age as the victims here and also started college (in the US) in 1995. I have some vague recollection of hearing about this story back then. It's easy to forget how hard it was to get info back then. Without the internet, we really did rely on information sent to us in the mail by the universities to choose which schools to apply to and ultimately attend.

I passed up fancier opportunities and chose a weird education, too. I spent days rereading the materials I got in the mail. Luckily, it was a day's drive from home, so I actually got to visit campus twice, once on a brief college tour and then again for an overnight stay in the dorms and attending classes. Many of my classmates couldn't visit and did not really understand what they had gotten themselves into, and we had a lot of people drop out in the first semester and first year because they just didn't understand what the curriculum and campus culture were like.

I know now in addition to just being able to read the Wikipedia article and get some fairly unbiased information about a university, which probably would have saved all the students in the article when they saw Warnborough college wasn't listed as a college of Oxford, many students now obsessively read online forums for prospective and current students where they hear a lot about what life is actually like on campus, find roommates, etc. It seems so much easier to actually find a good fit and of course avoid being totally ripped off.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:15 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]

Wow, that is horrifying. 3 years ago I watched my child go through the college admissions process, including applications to some highly selective schools. I can just imagine the disappointment if something like this had happened, and even more so had we been economically disadvantaged and had to suffer financially as well. CBS really dropped the ball when they sided with the fraudsters. And it is really disheartening that the man behind all of this suffered no apparent consequences. Where was the British legal system in all of this?

They were mentioned once in passing, but it seems to me the guidance counselors at these students¡¯ high schools may have been the best opportunity to avert this. But given their presumed unfamiliarity with the Oxford University system, perhaps that is an unrealistic expectation.
posted by TedW at 4:16 AM on September 28 [2 favorites]

Graham Greene wrote a short story, "When Greek Meets Greek", way back in 1941, taking a comic look at a similar scam: an educated conman advertises that "St. Ambrose's College, Oxford" is offering tuition by correspondence for young men in military service, and is thrilled to learn that the military nobleman Lord Driver will enroll his son (so thrilled that he offers credit; peers don't need to pay cash, after all). Alas, "Lord Driver" is a commoner with the last name "Driver" and the first name "Lord". He's a rogue himself but thinks a college degree would be a nice coming-home gift for his son (who isn't off fighting Rommel in Libya, but in Borstal Prison). At graduation, Lord Driver's son and the niece of the president (who is also a professor at "St. Ambrose's") hit it off and both see immediately through their respective parents' grifts, and figure that they're young and clever and could run the scam so much better than the old men can.
posted by jackbishop at 8:23 AM on September 28 [7 favorites]

They were mentioned once in passing, but it seems to me the guidance counselors at these students¡¯ high schools may have been the best opportunity to avert this. But given their presumed unfamiliarity with the Oxford University system, perhaps that is an unrealistic expectation.

I attended a bog-standard large suburban US public high school, which it sounds like the 3 students profiled in the story did, and, as I said, graduated the same year they would have. I met my guidance counselor once, at the beginning of 11th grade when my schedule was completely screwed up (I had no science or foreign language class and 3 study halls on my schedule). She helped me straighten that out. She also, simultaneously, helped a classmate with a similar problem who was scheduled to meet with her at the same time, because there were so many of us assigned to her with messed up schedules that she didn't have time for one-on-one meetings. That was it. I certainly got no guidance from her on college. I don't think she even still worked at my high school the next year when I was applying.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:33 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]

(sorry, in other words, I had an assigned guidance counselor my senior year, who I never met, but it was not the same person as the year before, who I met that one time)
posted by hydropsyche at 9:35 AM on September 28 [2 favorites]

Of course, with my degree from the prestigious Magdalen College, Oxnard, I'm far too clever to fall for such a transparent scam.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:59 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]

TheWhiteSkull: "Magdalen College, Oxnard"

in Oxnard do they also pronounce it "maudlin"?
posted by chavenet at 1:04 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]

jackbishop: The recently passed Canadian actor Graham Greene?
posted by Canageek at 1:36 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]

They pronounce it Madge and Len, after the founders.
posted by biffa at 1:52 PM on September 28 [4 favorites]

> and a school president who still insists that he did nothing wrong..

Giving every possible benefit of the doubt, "did nothing illegal" might be supportable but "did nothing wrong" is clearly utter bullshit.

Consider the amount of harm this person inflicted on even a single student who passed up scholarships and legitimate educational opportunities as a result of being taken in by the con and then multiply that times the number of students exploited. Many of these kids will recover, to an extent - they're young and bright and presumably high-achieving -- but others will be set back years and some will never fully recover.

"Did nothing wrong", my ass arse.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:03 PM on September 28 [6 favorites]

I've always wondered how many graduates of Oxford Brookes and of Ruskin College Oxford (both legitimate institutions, both located in Oxford, but neither actually part of Oxford University) get hired due to employers assuming they are Oxford grads.
posted by kickingtheground at 4:01 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]

I've always wondered how many BA graduates of Oxford are mistaken for actual MA graduates by employers.
posted by biffa at 5:18 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]

Many UK rail operating companies sell sponsorship space on station signs, leading to this epic piece of trolling by Anglia Ruskin University.
posted by Major Clanger at 12:13 AM on September 29 [2 favorites]

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