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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" align="left"></a></div><br></div>
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<div class="timestamp">January 31, 2012</div>
<h1>Gaming the College Rankings</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and DANIEL E. SLOTNIK</h6></span>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
In one recent example, Iona College in New Rochelle, north of New York City, <a title="Iona report on falsifications (PDF)" href="http://www.iona.edu/about/reportcommittee/docs/Audit-Report-Letter.pdf">acknowledged last fall</a>
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. </p>
<p>
Other institutions have found ways to manipulate the data without outright dishonesty. </p>
<p>
In 2008, Baylor University <a title="NYT report on Baylor 2008" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/education/15baylor.html?scp=1&sq=baylor%20and%20rimer%20and%202008&st=cse">offered financial rewards</a>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.” </p>
<p>
This year, U.S. News rated it as the nation’s ninth-best liberal arts college. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
“The reliance on this is out of hand,” said Jon Boeckenstedt, the
associate vice president who oversees admissions at DePaul University in
Chicago. “It’s a nebulous thing, comparing the value of a college
education at one institution to another, so parents and students and
counselors focus on things that give them the illusion of precision.”
</p>
<p>
The mixed feelings in the academic world were summed up in <a title="NACAC report on US News rankings (PDF)" href="http://www.nacacnet.org/AboutNACAC/Governance/Comm/Documents/USNewRankingsReport.pdf">a report last year</a>
by the National Association for College Admission Counseling: Most
college admissions officers and high school counselors have a low
opinion of the U.S. News rankings, yet they use the published material,
whether to gather information about other schools or to market their
own. </p>
<p>
Claremont McKenna, part of the Claremont Colleges cluster outside Los Angeles, <a title="" href="http://cmcforum.com/news/01302012-cmc-office-of-admission-falsely-reported-sat-scores">acknowledged Monday</a>
that a senior officer had resigned after admitting that he had inflated
the average SAT scores given to U.S. News since 2005. </p>
<p>
People briefed on the matter identified the officer as Richard C. Vos,
vice president and dean of admissions, who once said, “We don’t play
yield games,” referring to the practice of encouraging unqualified
applicants who can be rejected to make a college seem more competitive.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Vos, whose name was removed from the school’s online roster of
administrators over the weekend, declined to comment Monday night and he
did not return calls Tuesday. </p>
<p>
SAT score averages are also reported to credit rating firms and the
Department of Education, which is looking into Claremont McKenna’s
actions, said Justin Hamilton, the agency’s press secretary. He said the
department could impose fines and other penalties for supplying
misinformation, but rarely did, particularly if the college brought the
problem to light on its own. </p>
<p>
Mr. Morse, of U.S. News, said that he and a team of four to six people
verified much of the information that colleges supplied, comparing it
with databases from other sources, and that they performed a service in
making the data public. But he conceded that his publication was
probably at least part of the reason schools have lied. </p>
<p>
Iona’s case was extreme; U.S. News ranked its undergraduate college 30th
among “regional universities” in the Northeast, but estimated that with
correct data it would have dropped to 50th. </p>
<p>
Also last year, the law schools of <a title="Villanova report on false data" href="http://abovethelaw.com/2011/02/villanova-law-school-knowingly-reported-inaccurate-information-to-the-aba/">Villanova University</a> and the <a title="Illinois statement on false data" href="http://www.uillinois.edu/our/news/2011/Sept28.Law.cfm">University of Illinois</a>
acknowledged that they had misreported some statistics; Villanova
conceded that its deception was intentional, while Illinois did not say.
And at the United States Naval Academy, famous for its honor code, a
professor recently accused administrators of inflating the number of
applicants, which the academy has denied. In 2009, a number of
institutions were found to be inflating their percentages of full-time
professors — another criterion used in ranking systems. The impact and
extent of Claremont McKenna’s cheating remains unclear. In a statement
to the college staff and students, the president, Pamela B. Gann, wrote,
“Although the degree of inaccuracies varied over time, we understand
that the reported critical reading and/or math SAT scores were generally
inflated by an average of 10-20 points each.” </p>
<p>
Mr. Morse said that without more precise information, he could not
measure how such a change might have altered the college’s ranking, but
it might have made the difference in cracking the top 10 of liberal arts
colleges, a bragging right that Claremont McKenna reached this year for
only the third time. </p>
<p>
In the <a title="U. S. News explanation of ranking" href="http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/09/12/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings-2012">U.S. News rating system</a>,
explained in detail on its Web site, SAT scores account for 7.5 percent
of the ranking. More heavily weighted criteria include academic
reputation, student retention, faculty resources and the school’s
finances. </p>
<p>
Claremont McKenna’s reputation has risen over the years; as recently as
1990, it was not in the U.S. News top 20. But it is often conscious of
the comparison with its neighbor, Pomona College, which U.S. News rated
fourth among liberal arts colleges. </p>
<p>
Bruce J. Poch, dean of admissions at Pomona until 2010, said of the
rankings, “They’re not benign instruments,” but conceded that they are
easy for a college to fall back on as evidence of its status. “The
pressure is real,” he said. “God forbid you go down in those numbers.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Vos had been dean of admissions at Claremont McKenna since 1987. “He
was always one of the people that I considered one of the good guys in
the profession,” said Ralph Figueroa, director of college guidance at
Albuquerque Academy, a private day school in New Mexico. </p>
<p>
In her Monday statement, Ms. Gann, the college president, said Claremont
McKenna discovered the discrepancy in reported SAT scores and conducted
an internal review, during which one senior administrator stepped
forward to take sole responsibility. </p>
<p>
On the campus Tuesday, students said they were unhappy with the news,
but not greatly concerned, and proud of the college for making it
public. </p>
<p>
“I don’t worry about the rankings or how this will affect them, because
they tend to be pretty arbitrary,” said Blake Bennett, a senior who has
volunteered in the admissions office. “They change from year to year in
order to keep selling books. Working in admissions, we pay attention to
them, although we wish we didn’t have to. It’s just sort of a sad state
of American colleges and higher education.” </p>
<div class="authorIdentification">
<p>Ian Lovett contributed reporting.</p> </div>
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