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Massive Financial Aid Data Breach Proves Stanford Lied For Years To MBAs (poetsandquants.com)
14 terabytes of "highly confidential" data about 5,120 financial aid applications over seven years were exposed in a breach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business -- proving that the school "misled thousands of applicants and donors about the way it distributes fellowship aid and financial assistance to its MBA students," reports Poets&Quants.
The information was unearthed by a current MBA student, Adam Allcock, in February of this year from a shared network directory accessible to any student, faculty member or staffer of the business school. In the same month, on Feb. 23, the student reported the breach to Jack Edwards, director of financial aid, and the records were removed within an hour of his meeting with Edwards. Allcock, however, says he spent 1,500 hours analyzing the data and compiling an 88-page report on it...
Allcock's discovery that more money is being used by Stanford to entice the best students with financial backgrounds suggests an admissions strategy that helps the school achieve the highest starting compensation packages of any MBA program in the world. That is largely because prior work experience in finance is generally required to land jobs in the most lucrative finance fields in private equity, venture capital and hedge funds.
Half the school's students are awarded financial aid, and though Stanford always insisted it was awarded based only on need, the report concluded the school had been "lying to their faces" for more than a decade, also identifying evidece of "systemic biases against international students."
Besides the embarrassing exposure of their financial aid policies, there's another obvious lesson, writes Slashdot reader twentysixV. "It's actually way too easy for users to improperly secure their files in a shared file system, especially if the users aren't particularly familiar with security settings." Especially since Friday the university also reported another university-wide file-sharing platform had exposed "a variety of information from several campus offices, including Clery Act reports of sexual violence and some confidential student disciplinary information from six to 10 years ago."
Allcock's discovery that more money is being used by Stanford to entice the best students with financial backgrounds suggests an admissions strategy that helps the school achieve the highest starting compensation packages of any MBA program in the world. That is largely because prior work experience in finance is generally required to land jobs in the most lucrative finance fields in private equity, venture capital and hedge funds.
Half the school's students are awarded financial aid, and though Stanford always insisted it was awarded based only on need, the report concluded the school had been "lying to their faces" for more than a decade, also identifying evidece of "systemic biases against international students."
Besides the embarrassing exposure of their financial aid policies, there's another obvious lesson, writes Slashdot reader twentysixV. "It's actually way too easy for users to improperly secure their files in a shared file system, especially if the users aren't particularly familiar with security settings." Especially since Friday the university also reported another university-wide file-sharing platform had exposed "a variety of information from several campus offices, including Clery Act reports of sexual violence and some confidential student disciplinary information from six to 10 years ago."
Interesting, but good luck ever getting a job as a known leaker.
There might be a more selfish reason for this. If they're looking for rich alumni who can feed money back into the program some years down the road, they'll want to funnel as many of them as they can into private equity, venture capital and hedge funds after graduation.
No, it is that they lie about it to attract students. The other famous MBA schools do not lie about it.
Telling people they are extra special snowflakes and lying about granting financial aid is unethical and may be illegal. A school that routinely lies to it's students might even risk loosing accreditation. A class action law suit is inevitable.
Overt discrimination by a educational institution is illegal under federal law. The MBA program faces fines, loss of federal funding and criminal charges for individuals and the program as a whole. It is possible that Stanford may have to end their MBA program. The academic reputation of the entire University is now at risk. There will be a mass exit of anyone in the chain of command above the business school. Even regents may be forced off the board.
You question is as stupid and vile as you are. I can only assume that you think it is acceptable to steal from old people and children. How many puppies did you stomp on this week?
Why is Snark Required?
14TB.
5120 applications.
So, 2700 megabytes per applicant.
Was this data stored as 5 minutes of uncompressed video of each page or something?
Wait, wait, I know, applications were stored as a scanned, multi-page TIFF, wasn't it?
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
So instead of digesting this shocking information about a very prominent institution being caught red-handed in a gigantic lie, you attack the messenger. That's a pretty clever deflection, do you work as a journalist as your full-time job?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"So the "controversy" here is that Stanford is using financial aid to attract the most intelligent kids to the university?"
No, they're using financial intelligence to aid them attracting the most rich kids.
The much more spectacular one would have been "MBA student that can analyze data found".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The data also showed that female students were significantly more likely to have money thrown at them than men in identical financial circumstances. And men are already a disadvantaged minority in the entire education system, let alone by the time they get to university.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Scholarships, by their very definition, go to otherwise overqualified individuals who cannot quite afford tuition.
That was Stanford's claim. The reality is that it went to people that they felt would make them look good, with people in identical financial circumstances receiving very different awards.