Netflix’s “Operation Varsity Blues” Is A Compelling Anatomy Of A Scam

When news of the college admissions scandal broke in the spring of 2019, it was the perfect scammer story for the media to latch on to. Detail after detail emerged about wealthy parents who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy their kids’ way into upper-tier colleges, as the FBI pursued indictments for mail and wire fraud; more than 50 people were charged.

Most of the public’s initial fascination was predictably fueled by the biggest celebrity names. Actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, who once played wholesome moms on Desperate Housewives and Full House, respectively, became stand-ins for the entire brouhaha, as memeable icons of hypocrisy and privilege.

That Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, schemed on behalf of their daughter Olivia Jade, who’d already leveraged her celebrity proximity into a successful career as a beauty influencer, only made them bigger targets of derision. And the ridiculous staged rowing photos of her — faking sports backgrounds was part of the scam — helped ignite the social media roasting.

But those celebs weren’t really central to the scandal’s meaning or the actual scheme, both of which are examined and reframed in the documentary Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, now streaming on Netflix. This savvy contextualization of the investigation is framed as a kind of thriller, chronicling the rise and fall of Rick Singer, the onetime high school basketball coach turned college admissions adviser turned outright fraudster who orchestrated the entire operation.

The documentary draws on FBI recordings of conversations between Singer and his clients, dramatized in cheesy but effective reenactments featuring unknown actors as the parents and a surprisingly compelling Matthew Modine as Singer (in a bad wig that is oddly fitting for this tale about fakery).

But the reenactments are interspersed with interviews with former Singer colleagues, investigators, and lawyers, all of which add up to a critique of the college prep industry, higher education in the US, and an entire class of entitled parents. Eschewing the obvious celebrity or maternal melodrama angle, Operation Varsity Blues skeptically treats most of the college admissions industry as a kind of scam unto itself.

Singer, who left high school coaching in Sacramento to become a college admissions adviser, is the documentary’s central figure. He first made a name for himself in the industry by, as one former colleague puts it, always being “fishy.”

He presented himself as a friendly admissions “coach,” helping families navigate the admissions process, and in his dressed-down, slouchy athletic attire he projected a kind of anti-charismatic relatability. But he’d make promises he couldn’t keep to parents, changed people’s ethnicities or races in applications, and lied to one couple about being responsible for getting their daughter into Stanford.

Eventually, he got into more overtly criminal territory by identifying a way to maneuver around one of the most shamelessly egregious ways in which the US class system and education collide: the “tradition” whereby billionaires who can afford to give Ivy League schools multimillion-dollar donations get a leg up on their kids’ admissions. (Jared Kushner is mentioned as one such mediocre student.)

Singer saw those donations as an overly expensive “back door” into elite schools. So he created a cheaper “side door” entry into top schools, requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than tens of millions. He realized that niche sports — like fencing, water polo, rowing, sailing, and horseback riding — could be an easier way to get students into these schools, because their departments were underfunded and needed donations.

Further, admissions committees completely trusted recruiting coaches’ estimation of student athletes’ abilities. So Singer bribed coaches and athletic directors — a Yale soccer coach, a USC athletic director, a Stanford sailing coach — who would then accept students with nonathletic backgrounds as supposedly promising athletes. As part of his services, he also worked with standardized test proctors, who took the tests for his clients’ kids in order to raise their scores. Soon, he had a base of millionaire clients, like the Hot Pockets heir and lawyers, venture capitalists, and wine entrepreneurs, for whom he could guarantee admission.

The documentary makes clear that the admissions scandal wasn’t just about one scammer or millionaire parents, but that the entire system is rigged in favor of those who already benefit from being upper class. As one college admissions critic points out, the sports Singer targeted are activities that most students in the US wouldn’t even have access to. Even without Singer’s scam, the entire standardized testing industry feeds into existing inequalities; the best predictor for good test outcomes is household…