Hollywood Nepotism Helped Beget the Admissions Bribery Scandal
It should not surprise us that the folks in Hollywood are disproportionately represented in those arrested in the academic bribery scandal.
The first reason for this is related to law enforcement -- if given a choice of investigating and arresting Joe Schmoe and investigating and arresting, say, Martha Stewart, the FBI is going to invest resources to take down the big name every time.
But the second reason is related to Hollywood itself. I don't have stats on this, but I am willing to bet that, with the possible exception of politics, Hollywood is the most nepotistic industry in America. Look at the IMDB descriptions of the actors, producers, and directors in some recent movie. Some will be first generation talent out of nowhere. But a huge number will be the Tori Spellings of the world, kids who got their start in part due to family connections.
In this sense, making it in Hollywood is very similar to getting admitted to Harvard -- they are both brutally hard and low likelihood events that have enormous payoffs. So it should not be surprising that people in Hollywood, who every day see family connections being used to short-circuit difficult entry processes, would apply the same philosophy to university admissions.
