The New York Times: Frequent scandals of falsifying ranking data among prestigious schools

The New York Times: Frequent scandals about falsifying ranking data among prestigious schools According to the New York Times, Emory University, a prestigious school ranked highly in the United States, was recently exposed for allegedly falsifying ranking data...

It is reported that a similar situation also occurred at Claremont McKenna, an elite institution in Southern California and a well-known liberal arts college. This year, the school admitted that it had been falsifying students' SAT scores since 2006. The latest rankings show that the school ranks 9th among American liberal arts colleges. After the incident was exposed, U.S. News & World Report magazine's rankings did not change, but Kiplinger magazine removed it from the 2012 college list.

Other schools exposed to fraud scandals include Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, Baylor University in Texas, Villanova University School of Law, and the University of Illinois.

What is really shocking is not the number of problem universities, but their endless fraud tactics. Baylor University admitted in 2008 that it would provide financial incentives to freshmen to encourage them to withdraw their ACT scores, so that the school's average admission score would increase. In 2009, it was revealed that a large number of universities had exaggerated the proportion of full-time professors, which is an important reference data in university ranking systems. Iona College admitted in the fall of 2011 that it had falsified not only its test scores but also its graduation rate, freshman retention rate, student-to-faculty ratio, enrollment rate and alumni donations. Directors of admissions at each school said that some schools postponed the admission of low-scoring students until January of the following year, so that these students do not need to be included in the average score of students admitted in September, while some schools are seeking more applicants to reduce the admission ratio.

Jon Boeckenstedt, assistant vice president for admissions at DePaul University in Chicago, said: "People's reliance on college rankings has become uncontrollable. Comparing the value of higher education at one college to another is an ambiguous thing, so parents, students and counselors only focus on what they think is accurate, but in fact it is an illusion."