Clemson Staffer Outlines College Rankings Manipulation

xzvf writes "A disgruntled Clemson University staffer shows how US News and World Report college rankings are manipulated. Techniques include bad-mouthing other schools, filling out applications from highly qualified students that never intended to apply, and lying about class size and professor salaries." The school, naturally, denies that anything unethical went on. The New York Times has a more detailed article, which links to this first-person account of the presentation.

Comments

Raise your hand

[Romancer]

Raise your hand if you are surprised that this is going on.

Seriously, with all the incentive to attract and hold onto students and the funds they bring. Who would have thought that this is all above board and regulated?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=college+rankings+corruption+&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

It's not like this is new.

In other news...

[Tigersmind]

water is wet!

Of course they cheat. They have to. If they don't know how to cheat then how can they catch the students when they cheat so they can cheat better and better so they can cheat into a job where others learn to cheat from them! /cheat cheat

So?

[DragonDru]

Any time an important ranking system is devised, those being judged will figure out how to cheat the system. Given how important these rankings are perceived to be, this should be no surprise to anyone. I am more surprised this is a surprise.

Re:So?

[yali]

You just have to lie.

And to generate a controversy on slashdot, you just have to lie in the article summary.

Look, I have no doubt that all kinds of universities do all kinds of crazy things to influence their rankings. But the summary gets a lot of stuff wrong.

For example, on the faculty salaries... Apparently, Clemson did two things. Firstly, they raised actual salaries, which would have a real and legitimate impact on their ability to recruit and retain outstanding faculty. Second, they corrected a previous under-reporting of compensation. US News bases its formula on total compensation (which combines salary and benefits), and apparently Clemson had been previously only reporting salary. (Here's the money quote: "Clarifying Clemson's approach after the panel for a reporter and an interested Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News's college rankings, Watt said that the university had added benefits to its faculty salary reporting to U.S. News after previously having failed to do so, as the magazine requires. So its jump came not from double counting or including information that it should not have, but from playing catchup." [source]

On class sizes, the way Clemson "manipulated" the data was by... um, actually changing their actual class sizes. They made their smaller classes smaller and let their bigger classes get bigger, because US News uses thresholds of 50 in evaluating class size. Sure that helps their numbers... but it's also not a bad thing from a pedagogical point of view. With a discussion-oriented seminar, reducing below 20 makes a real difference. And with a big lecture, 55 versus 100 is not that much of a difference. So they might have actually improved their delivery of education.

As for the fake applicants mentioned in the summary, I couldn't find that in any of the linked articles. But one of the articles said that Clemson tightened their actual admissions standards (i.e., required higher high school class ranks and SAT scores). That isn't manipulation, that's objectively becoming a more selective institution.

The dirtiest accusation is that in the peer rankings, Clemson deliberately gave low scores to close rivals. If that was really done intentionally (which Clemson denies), that is genuinely dirty, but not terribly shocking. And that kind of a pattern should have been easily detectable by US News, if they had bothered to look for it.

Same thing happens with Law Schools

[dank zappingly]

This year USNews decided to count night programs where many law schools hid their most unqualified(by USNews standards) students. Most bit the bullet and took the hit in their rankings. Brooklyn Law pretended their night program didn't exist,which is why it isn't listed in the part-time section.

If there is a way to monkey with the rankings, schools will do it. USNews rankings are taken seriously enough where they should really improve their methodology so that it is at least more difficult to cheat.

Common

[gtwrek]

Back in the late 80s, Georgia Tech would have any incoming freshmen with lower high school GPAs start in the Summer quarter. This was under the auspices of giving those who were struggling, a bit more time to adjust to college curriculum before the incoming fall crush.

The interesting "side effect" was that the GPA of incoming Fall freshmen was thus higher, and the university had no trouble repeating that fact.

Re:Common

[KyleTheDarkOne]

That is actually a very good idea. With getting a high school education in the South, I know that many high schools do not properly prepare students for college and with summer classes generally being a bit easier it makes sense for lower GPA students to be transitioned into college without having to worry about settling in and having the full class load.

Re:And...?

[Eternauta3k]

It's like contrast ratio and response time for LCDs. Does anyone actually base their college choice on these rankings, anyway?

Why, I chose the college with the fastest LCDs, something wrong with that?

No surprises here

[timholman]

I've been working in academia for years, and gaming of the USN&WR rankings is hardly news to us. Talk to any college administrator off the record, and he or she can rattle off the names of peer institutions that are almost certainly fudging the numbers.

The USN&WR numbers are self-reported by each university, with no verification by the USN&WR staff. With so much funding and prestige riding on the rankings, who is surprised that some schools play fast and loose with the facts?

What is unfortunate is that USN&WR has manipulated itself into the position of being the arbiter of school "quality", through no other action than being the first to create the poll. A news magazine shouldn't have that kind of influence over the entire U.S. educational system, especially when it can't even be bothered to check the numbers that it publishes.

Re:No surprises here

[Lunzo]

USN&WR was just ahead of its time. Reporting without checking is all the rage these days e.g. blogging, twitter, opinion pieces and even a fair deal of what passes for quality journalism.

(I wish I wasn't joking)

Re:Playboy's Top Party Schools

[zaffir]

Because kids choosing a school based on Playboy's party ranking are the kind of kids that get into MIT.

TNSTAAFL

[sadler121]

This seems to be what happens when you introduce greed into a system. If education was free and universities were more specialised it may reduce this, still, the greed factor will always affect the system.

Maybe I'm too altruistic and this clouds my judgment of others, but I'd like to think that if there was equality of education there'd be less chance of greed in the system.

If education where free? You do know that there is no such thing as a free lunch? You have to pay teachers, administrators salaries and benefits, and that money has to come from somewhere. In the case of people how advocate for 'free' education, this inevitably leads to the government providing the education, and the government has to get that money from somewhere, and that somewhere is called taxation. Which again, does not make it free, it just appears to be that way.