The college cheating scandal hit close to home for us for two reasons. First, the people involved: Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin), Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman), college athletic officials. It turns out they can make bad choices like anyone else. Not to over-moralize in this article (there has been plenty of that online, but the choices were just so wrong on many levels—bad examples for the kids, cheating and corrupting the admissions system), but the facts are really just fascinating. Second, and just as concerning, is how seemingly easy it was for this group of wealthy parents, coaches and a couple of folks knowledgeable about the testing and admissions process to undermine the admission system that parents and kids obsess about for years and that has become the gateway to higher education and, in many ways, the start of the American dream. We share stories of kids that struggle to get into the schools, work hard for years, sacrifice. It turns out it’s all for sale. And it’s really expensive. OK, but why didn’t the schools catch this sort of activity?

An interesting narrative that has not received much, if any, focus is that the schools seem to lack an effective process for detecting such schemes. If you look at the ringleader of the scheme, Rick Singer, who has now pleaded guilty—how was this guy able to pull this off with the help of a few insiders spread around America’s most storied schools? Simple. The schools had no process (or at least an ineffective one) for evaluating the risk of and preventing such a scheme.