UCLA professors allegedly charged certain students extra fees. Now they want to hide investigation from public
The complaint came in 2018 from a whistleblower about UCLA's School of Dentistry. Three professors had allegedly solicited international postgraduate students for unauthorized fees on top of the already hefty tuition.
The design of the alleged profit-sharing scheme was bold: Certain orthodontics residents were required to pay extra fees and the professors received incentive and bonus compensation based on the payments.
Spots in UCLA's prestigious, highly selective orthodontics program are at a premium, with only a handful earmarked for international students. Annual tuition for those students approaches six figures.
After investigating the allegations, a law firm commissioned by UCLA issued a report that concluded the professors targeted Middle Eastern students believing their wealthy government sponsors "could — and would — pay for it."
The professors disguised the payments, including some monies that should rightly have gone to the university, and benefited from them,
