Gaming the College Rankings
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Any love-hate relationship must have its share of pain, so the academic world, in its obsession with college rankings, is suitably dismayed by news that an elite college, Claremont McKenna, fudged its numbers in an apparent bid to climb the charts.
Dismayed, but not quite surprised. In fact, several colleges in recent years have been caught gaming the system -- in particular, the avidly watched U.S. News & World Report rankings -- by twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying.
In one recent example, Iona College in New Rochelle, north of New York City, acknowledged last fall that its employees had lied for years not only about test scores, but also about graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving.
Other institutions have found ways to manipulate the data without outright dishonesty.
In 2008, Baylor University offered financial rewards to admitted students to retake the SAT in hopes of increasing its average score. Admissions directors say that some colleges delay admission of low-scoring students until January, excluding them from averages for the class admitted in September, while other colleges seek more applications to report a lower percentage of students accepted.
Claremont McKenna, according to Robert Morse, the director of data research at U.S. News, is "the highest-ranking school to have to go through this publicly and have to admit to misreporting."
This year, U.S. News rated it as the nation's ninth-best liberal arts college.
There is no reason to think the U.S. News rankings are rife with misinformation, and the publication makes efforts to police the data, adjust its metrics and close loopholes.
But repeated revelations of manipulation show the importance of the rankings in the minds of prospective students, their guidance counselors, parents, the alumni considering donations, the professors weighing job offers -- and, of course, the colleges themselves.
First Published February 1, 2012 12:01 am
