The benefits of corruption in any country have never been documented more than the overall negative impact on a particular country. From corruption, to extortion for embezzlement, to pay-to-play, influence peddling, cronyism and much more, their effect on social, political, economic, educational and other social institutions is unparalleled. Most people always think that economic and financial gains are the only things that can lead people to corruption; however, as shown in this paper, many factors can lead to corruption. Recently, the media has exposed pay-to-play scandals in numerous organizations and institutions in society, especially the issue of university admissions. For example, the American higher education system is struggling to clear its name from national pay-to-play scandals, which have seen the images of major universities such as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, USC and Wake Forest tainted . This paper examines corruption. It attempts to assess the impact of corruption on various aspects of the engineering profession with an epidemic engulfing both aspiring and senior civil engineering professionals. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay While the American Society of Civil Engineers Code of Ethics defines corruption as the illegal and dishonest use of public resources through public authority to obtain private benefit, corruption has been a widespread practice in civil engineering with enormous harmful effects. In reality, it is somewhat difficult to define corruption due to the broad concept, although in all acceptable definitions there is a link with negativity, especially in religious, economic, social and educational fields. Although many reasons are cited as the cause of corruption, corruption has established links with moral debauchery, greed, political motivations, poor reward system, poverty and lack of public participation in public activities, thus low transparency. Recent pay-to-play scandals It's quite difficult to know where to start with the recent big stories in the media about cheating and bribery to gain admission to elite universities. A 10-month investigation, dubbed Operation Varsity Blues, revealed massive cases of corruption across America at various levels of the college admissions process. Respectable names in society have been implicated, including business moguls and actresses like Lori Loughlin who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure an admission spot for her daughter at the University of Southern California. Additionally, there have been reports of parents having to report children's stories of learning difficulties to gain a place and allow the cheating to take place. Another scandal involved non-athlete kids Photoshopping their faces onto the bodies of real athletes to demonstrate that they belonged to the group of candidates requiring special consideration. In addition to corruption in higher education, the engineering profession has been hit by major scandals such as the $177.6 million bribery case involving waterworks construction contracts in New York City. However, Heinis (2017) reports that the director of a New Jersey company was involved in pay-to-play scandals with his top executives indicted for conspiring to bribe Philadelphia mayors of approximately $1.8 million for the contract. The corruption mentioned above can be called a simple scheme of.