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Subscribe to RSSOnce a year, a line of briefcase-wielding accountants in business suits files into an office at Texas Christian University.
They’re not there to check on income or expenditures. They’re auditing the admissions statistics.
Texas Christian’s dean of admissions says it is the nation’s only university to voluntarily have its admissions data — the number of applicants and their SAT scores, class rank, grade-point averages, and other measures — audited for accuracy. It has done so for the last dozen years -- and not just for show.
As consumers and the federal government push for greater transparency about such things as cost, average debt, and job-placement rates, major universities have been caught misrepresenting those and other numbers to improve the way they look to prospective students.
“We on the inside have a pretty good idea of who is reporting accurately and who is not. And quite a few schools appear to be cooking the books,” said Texas Christian Dean of Admission Raymond Brown.
That dirty little secret has started to slip out as competition intensifies to attract top students and scale the all-important college rankings. In an admissions battleground on which universities grapple for any advantage, rising by just one number in the U.S. News & World Report rankings leads to a nearly 1 percent increase in applications, a 2011 study at the Harvard Business School found.
Falsified data
In the past year alone, six top colleges and universities have admitted falsifying information sent to the U.S. Department of Education, their own accrediting agencies, and U.S. News, whose college rankings remain the nation’s most prominent. Another was caught the year before. For many of the schools, the misrepresentations had gone on for years.
A senior administrator at Claremont McKenna College resigned after admitting that he falsified admissions test scores submitted to U.S. News and the U.S. Department of Education. For years Bucknell inflated the mean SAT scores of entering students by an average of 16 points, the university’s president has admitted. Tulane’s business school gave U.S. News false data about its number of applicants and inflated their average scores on admissions tests by 35 points.
Emory University misreported student data to U.S. News and other organizations that rank universities and colleges, school officials said, providing the much-higher SAT averages of students who applied and were admitted, rather than those who enrolled. It also inflated entering students’ class ranks. Two former admissions deans and other administrators were aware of the practice, according to the university.
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George Washington University overstated the proportion of its entering freshmen who were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. And the law school at the University of Illinois was caught providing inaccurate admissions information to the American Bar Association, or ABA, which accredits law schools; the same thing happened in 2011 at the Villanova University School of Law.
Illinois’s law school was publicly censured and fined $250,000 by the ABA, and Villanova’s was placed on probation for two years. Meanwhile, 15 other law schools have faced lawsuits for fraud, unfair competition, and false advertising for allegedly misreporting graduates’ job-placement rates by including part-time and temporary work and employment unrelated to law.
“These educational institutions have lost the benefit of the doubt, and I think that’s sad,” says Kyle McEntee, co-founder and director of Law School Transparency, which pushes law schools to provide accurate admissions and job-placement statistics.
Legal groups intervene
So wide has the credibility gap become for law schools that the ABA and the Law School Admission Council responded this year by stepping in to check and certify law schools’ reported entrance-test scores and undergraduate grade-point averages.
But students and their families applying to other kinds of colleges and universities will have to rely on internal whistle-blowers, who exposed all the other instances of falsifications over the last year. Except at Texas Christian, and, now law schools, admissions statistics are not independently audited or certified. And besides bad publicity, the only penalty has been that schools discovered by U.S. News to have misreported data are “unranked” until the accuracy of their information can be confirmed in the following year.
Now the federal government has unveiled a new college-selection tool for families called the College Scorecard, lauded by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address last month and launched the next day, which streamlines and expands information about cost, graduation rates, average debt of graduates, and loan-default rates in a centralized, searchable government website. In spite of its government cachet, that information, too, is provided directly by universities and colleges themselves, and is not certified or audited, and there’s no penalty for misreporting it, said Daren Briscoe, spokesman for the Education Department.
“It is a voluntary reporting system, and like most voluntary reporting systems, it’s not penalty-driven,” said Briscoe, who adds that because the College Scorecard doesn’t rank competing schools, they shouldn’t have any incentive to fudge the numbers.
“I suppose if you’re super cynical you can think that a school might be nefarious enough to pump up their data,” he said. “We’re not taking a position that this is a perfect system. There are always opportunities for us to look at how things are working or not.”
Even if universities and colleges do correctly report the average loan debt of their students, there’s already a loophole in the College Scorecard they can take advantage of, university administrators say privately: It doesn’t require them to disclose the average debt of parents who also borrow to help their children pay tuition.
A loss of 'reverence'
The bottom line is that students and their parents should resist the inclination to blindly believe information provided by even well-regarded universities and colleges, said Jane Shaw, president of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
“We do tend to revere professors and we revere the institutions where they teach, and I think that reverence is probably changing,” Shaw said.
A spinoff of the private education company Hobsons cashes in on this growing mistrust by providing an alternative to college and university admissions statistics. Called Naviance, it collects information from high schools about the qualifications of students admitted to particular colleges, allowing other applicants to measure themselves against those standards rather than relying on the data that admissions offices provide.
While Brown concedes that the number of universities and colleges caught misreporting data remains a tiny fraction of the total, he says the problem is considerably more widespread than that.
“This is illustrative of a broader issue, which is the pressure that is on these admissions offices,” he said. “People talk about how college football coaches are under the gun constantly. They’re under no more pressure than an admissions officer.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Related stories from The Hechinger Report:
- New pressure on colleges to disclose grads’ earnings
- As grads seek jobs, universities cut career services
- Student subsidies of classmates’ tuition add to anger over rising college costs
- Devil’s in the details of Obama plan to punish pricey universities
- Community colleges want to boost grad rates — by changing the formula
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A loss of 'reverence'? more likely a loss of revenue if they don't make the rankings in some way, any way, come hell or high water.
Higher education is a for profit business regardless of what status it touts. Not to mention the commercial viability of those with big name sports teams and the whole conference switcheroo that's going on across the country...
@mjs,
Only about a third of colleges and universities are private and only the ones who advertise so heavily on TV, such as Phoenix are actually for-profit. The problem is that it is a hot item right now for college presidents to "run the college like a business." This means a lot of lying, cheating, and favoring stakeholders over customers (students.)
The University of Alabama is a good example. The football coach makes 20+ times what the university president makes. There is no full professor who makes what an assistant basketball coach makes. And the university ponies up $15-16 million a year to support money-losing sports (such as golf and baseball) and Title IX sports (such as women's lacrosse) so that the football team can offer a full slate of scholarships. The "student-athletes" do not have to attend regular classes, and are taught and tested by special "proctors." If a football player is horny, it is taken care of. If he is broke, he just robs a few students. One recent UA football player got three speeding tickets. In three different brand-new cars. Two of them Cadillacs. In his name with no leins. And the kid had never held a paying job in his entire life. All this is from public records, most of which were published in the local newspaper.
If the football program can cheat and lie, why can't the admissions office?
Just look at the incident at Steubenville High in Ohio. The high school is an important "feeder" school for Ohio State University. And it has 27 football coaches. 27!!!!! Does anyone believe that the high school emphasizes academics more than football? Does anyone NOT believe that the football players feel entitled there? It starts early these days.
“People talk about how college football coaches are under the gun constantly. They’re under no more pressure than an admissions officer.” While this is true, there are other considerations. A school may misrepresent it's standing, as a way to justify recruiting the best students, but it is also a "justification" for higher tuition rates!
@ Roadkill
EXACTLY!
When Obama signed the student loan bill 2011 (putting the Government in control of who gets the loans) Obama made it a point to mention that loans will be awarded "with special preference to minorities". So instead of SAT scores, It's if your black! Than Obama acts like he doesn't know why Collages need to dumb-down to meet the Savage Quota.
Lee---Clinton signed the bill to permit lenders to loan the money directly to students almost 20 years ago. Your rant is both bigoted and nonsensical.
I think fining the universities, colleges or departments is the wrong way to do this. They will ultimately pass that cost onto the students through fees and tuition hikes as the cost of the university goes up. What they should do, is fine the individuals involved, and place the university on probation, such as limit sports, etc.
Those greedy Corporations no one ever mentions...
Do you think that Congress will have hearings digging into the shenanigans surrounding "Big Education" and all the subsidies they receive and waste?
@Booklem",
Name one, just one.
Chris -
Pell grants, for one, are a direct subsidy because the money is given to the schools, through students. In addition to Pell grants, there are several other government grants given to schools. These grants subsidize the research being performed by the school.
There are several conflicts of interest to higher education
*anecdotal evidence warning*
I've gotten both my undergrad and masters.
Of the 6 years I've spent in pursuit of both degrees. I'd say that collectively, only about 2.5 years of work was actually of any value to me either because of being educated for my career, or simply because it was an insightful course that broadened my knowledge. Everything else from my schools qualifies as little more than a cash-grab for themselves and the publishers!
edit... I found a job in biology pretty easily with just BS.
Actually seriously, the exact opposite is happening. When I was an undergrad back in the late 70's my bachelor's required 130 credits. Today, at least in my state, a bachelors requires 120 credits.
Well, they need to check some other places especially online schools. Phoenix, maybe Kaplan, Colorado, many more people been speaking this for years. yet, it's not a crime to rape people with prices when economy can't even keep you well.
Right Charles... There was recent report about some Online Schools.. said to be Ripoffs.
The education at an on-line school, in my experience (having attended both) is of equal value. The cost of the on-line school is much higher, yet comparable to many private schools.
Nonsenese. At fifty years old, I will be graduating college this semester, again. I have taken two college mandated online courses. Notice the word "MANDATED". Hence our agreement only in the area of your statement "The cost of the on-line school is much higher". Correct, income generated for colleges. Well, online courses are horrible. You get some professors making in excess of ninety-thousand dollars a year to guide you at their will. A student could submit a question as I have and "NOT" receive an answer until the following day. OH, I'm sorry, did I wake you? I thought this block of (online) time was for you (professor) to hold "OUR" course. Then you have some in the student body that take online courses and pay someone else to do the work for them.
They should do away with online courses completely. When I pay for college, I am paying for an in class face to face education.
I think the quality of online education, like mortar and brick schools, is highly variable. The teaching quality of my post-grad online course was excellent, but unfortunately the availability of sites for my required clinical was negligible.
reyfl1, I don't think Bookem' was talking about on-line courses at a traditional university, but rather schools that are ONLY online. Think Devry, Phoenix, etc. I know they have campuses, but they cater to those who generally only do online classes. I may be wrong though.
News flash, public schools do the same. They are driven by state assessement systems to falsify data in order to qualify for state funds. Did you notice how often police are involved in diciplinary actions? That is because police related incidents don't get reported, where as disciplinary actions do, which count against a school's grade.
@JBAbbott,
K-12 schools more often falsify attendance numbers. They get a lot of money that is based on student-days, so something like a flu epidemic in a school can cost them a huge amount.
Being a certifiable O.F. (Old Fellow) I may be wrong but I have heard that students cheat on exams, pay others write their papers, use texting to get answers. But no, I can't believe that. Just a myth!
True. At my school (think a big university in Texas that just went to the SEC), in my masters program, it is 95% Chinese, and several even told me they paid someone to write their entrance essay, because that is just what you do.
nothing new, unfortunately. this will only change if getting caught falsifying data leads to the loss of their accreditation.
Surely, no one is surprised by this. This happens in the grammar schools and high schools as well. Higher education is one of the biggest scams of today!! It is allowed to continue because it is all about supply and demand. That dude on the corner will continue playing his three card molly scam as long as there is a sucker to be had. The same with higher education. I find it interesting though, that the youth of today want to accuse the banking industry, the wealthy and others who are more fortunate than they of being evil and money hungry, while they, semester after sememster cut a check to these so called higher learning institutions for what? Considering the work ethic and lack of problem solving skills I notice with some college students, ya'll are indeed being played for big fools. How about you folks start sitting in and boycotting your colleges and universities because they are the ones really taking you for a ride; a ride you will spend most of your life paying for without absolutely anything to show for it. Lastly, if one can barely read graduating from high school, how the *ell can you succeed in college? That in and of itself let's me know that the colleges are not up to par just like the grammar and high schools.
pandy---Yet another uneducated person trying to convince the educated among us that higher learning was a scam.
I am not uneducated you daft sod!!!! I attended Catholic school from grammar school to graduate school. I am a graduate school drop out though I must confess. If the truth be told, I have probably forgotten more than you will ever know. Jerk......
It makes you feel like nobody and nothing is honest anymore.
First and foremost Colleges don't falsify admissions data for higher rankings. They simply adjust reality, which is an accepted liberal technique to perform strategic realignment of perceived failures in teaching what students need to know in relation to what socialist think they should know. Conservative non-politicians simply call it another f**king lie.
There's always some jackass turning these things in to a liberal/conservative political sh!tfest. I see it's you in this article that's doing it.
"Oh Please! - 7253971" - Oh PUHLEEEAAASE
1. You have no life if you view every event in the world through a lib/con political prism.
2. Reality adjustment/ disregarding facts were something that was in full display this past pres. election when the repubs manufactured polls out of their wazoo and were shocked that it didn't match with reality.
Logical. You say someone needs a life if they look at things though political bickering, then go on to lambast republicans.
If there is such intense competition for students, there should be a lowering of tuition right? That's what happens when the supply outpaces demand.
Dream on my friend. Higher education is a government-susidized monopoly.
JHiker, you're right. The "right" students get academic subsidies that boost the school's standings while at the same time take in "OK students" who will pay their full ride. Those standings are to show parents and potential students that they are desirable as evidenced by their student body's academic make-up. They need the good students as advertisment to draw in the paying ones.
Verification by an independent outside auditor should be a requirement for a school to be included in the U.S. New and World Report rankings or any other rankings. If schools want to be included badly enough, they will pay for it; we all know they can afford it.
No problem. They will just include the cost in their semi-annual tuition increase.
And just like the credit scoring of AAA mortgage backed securities by the scoring companies prior to the mortgage meltdown, they'll find someone who will "see it their way."
Aren't there reliable third party sources for this kind of information? If not that is a shame. Self-reporting rarely turns out to be a good system when there is a strong incentive to look better than competitors.
Students that chose these schools because of their rankings, should file suit.
In Ohio, public schools have been doing this for awhile. Here it's called data scrubbing. Cost many people their reputations and jobs. Of course the head of the monster went into private industry and came out smelling like a rose, financially.
Texas + Christian + University
Well, isn't that an interesting combintion for a moral and ethical issue.
As a side note... With this kind of behavior from schools, I wonder how they can possibly expect students to behave ethically.
Try reading the story, idiot, before you spew your ignorant bias.
David couldn't help himself. He read "Christian," had to drool and hit the keyboard.
Yep... I misread it.
But you're still an a$$hole and my last point still stands.
Love a dialogue with an irrational idiot.
Then maybe you should stop talking to yourself - LULZ
You know the further you get away from being able to do anything useful the easier it gets to lie and cheat.
Say it isn't so. Our institutions of higher learning falsifying information? The folks who are helping young adults establish values and character? Falsifying information?
The lack of integrity across the institutions of this country is appalling.
Well considering that it is "law" schools where the truth is relative. Or even business schools where only profits matter, what do you expect?
The university system in the United States is a joke. Graduate to thousands of dollars of debt and no good paying jobs to show for it.
You want an education that matters, then move to Europe. The education is subsidized.
It's subsidized here too son. I was talking to some friends over in England, and you know what they said? The university level education here is much better overall than across the pond, because it isn't fully subsidized, students place more value on getting a degree and an education.
Subsidized means one thing. Someone else pays for it, IN TAXES.
You got it Ranman... you should watch Dan Rather Reports.. he has done a ton of stories on different educational systems, and the one in the US is broke just like a lot of things in this country. This system is going to be severally challenged in the next 10 years. It will be simple supply and demand. Will there be a supply for an education that loads you up with debt and don't give you an better shot at employment. It was a joke on the one Dan Rather he interviews a high school guidance counselor and she still had the you got to go to college and get a degree. when in the same show, they had a story that in German they direct a lot of students to vocations and almost all of them are working at good paying jobs with no debt. The response they she came back with was I don't want my kid standing on some Assembly line for his life, when in reality now some of these assembly line jobs are more high tech than they 4 year college degree will get you. Starting pay for the jobs at BMW in SC with minimal post hs eduction was 35-40K. out of high school. the system must change but the University system is not going to go down easily. they will suck every last dime out of the students they came before they change.
The vast majority of colleges comprise the "Trojan Horse" of this country. The For-Profit sector is a blatant, nefarious scam literally stealing money from students and the taxpayer. Not only do they steal money but they destroy lives. The private and public schools, in many cases, are merely babysitting with students acquiring virtually no skills and insurmountable debt. A tragedy unfolding before our very eyes!
In addition to hyping up the stats to get a better ranking for attracting enrollment I wonder how many states have "performance funding" for their colleges, both 4 yr. and 2 yr. This would be another reason to hype the figures...especially the graduation and placement rates
I also wonder why so many young people still want to get a Bachelors' degree in something like liberal arts when there is really a slim job market for such degrees???? Why don't more get a technical certificate or Assoc. Degree at their local community college?? I just checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics and it is amazing how many 1-2 year certificates and degrees can earn an average of $40K or more!!! I guess a Bach. Degree, especially from a well known college "name," is simply more impressive for social status. But then again, what kind of social status is there to waiting tables while living at home with your parents and your impressive 4 year degree.
Oh well...the older I get the more cynical I get.
Glad I didn't stop reading after the first couple paragraphs. Jon Marcus sure made it sound like TCU was the school who was caught cheating. Seems like an irresponsible way for an intelligent writer to format his story.
Wow... and NBCNews used a pic of TCU students on their homepage for the image for the article.
Well, can't say I'm surprised. The original article is titled
"In new age of college transparency, who’s checking the facts?"
NBCNews came up with their own title about "Caught Cheating." You're a joke NBCNews. I know you have your spin, but this is pathetic.
And the Adminstrators receive larger bonuses and higher pay- raises....
dont forget about the professors that I am sure are well paid and underworked
I wouldn't say underworked Independant, but they sure are paid fairly well. Especially when you reach tenure.
College fake data for rank? Nooo.
Yeah. I was shocked and dismayed as well.
I worked for a for-profit school that falsified more than academic records. It falsified even attendance records in order to continue to qualify as a maker of government-insured loans and to get accredited.
When you get 90% of your revenue from the taxpayers like most private, for profit schools do, of course they're going to lie and falsify records. It's not as if those students are graduating or actually finding jobs if they do graduate. Seriously, does anyone say "University of Phoenix graduate. That's the kind of person we're looking for."
Please say it is not true? Are they telling us that our favorite "Party School Rankings" may actually be false?