Lifetime's The College Admissions Scandal was less compelling the actual college cheating scandal

The Atlantic

"The real-life scandal arguably could not have been scripted better—no one expected the parents to Photoshop their kids’ heads onto the bodies of water-polo players to make them look like athletes—and Lifetime didn’t try too hard to deviate from it," says Adam Harris. "But in sticking to the drama, the producers and writers obscured a deeper, much more pressing problem with college admissions." He adds that the film dwells on the misfortune of a small group of affluent families. "This focus obscures the fact that college admissions have substantive, systemic problems that will not end with a little jail time and fines for those trying to cheat their way in; there remain big, unanswered questions about why colleges don’t enroll more low-income and minority students, whether they could put the billions they have in endowment funds to better use, and whether the most selective schools should just let more people in," he says. ALSO: Here are the lessons learned from Lifetime's fake Lori Loughlin.