The arms race for rankings: Emory says student test data inflated for more than a decade
Update Friday evening: AJC reporter Laura Diamond is working on a story for Sunday on Emory and the rankings misinformation. If you are a parent, student or graduate and would be willing to talk with her, please call her at 404-526-7257 or email her. Thanks.
Emory’s announcement today that employees inflated student data to push the university up in the college rankings will spur a renewed debate on the arms race to dominate the “best” lists.
Emory President Jim Wagner said today that Emory has intentionally misreported data about its students to groups that rank colleges for more than a decade.
Emory is not the first college to acknowledge that student academic profiles were tweaked to enhance standings. The New York Times earlier this year reported several schools had acknowledged gaming the system. Iona College in New York admitted lying about test scores, graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio and acceptance rates.
The Times reported that “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.
In January, Claremont McKenna in California announced that a top admissions officer had resigned after he confessed to inflating the average SAT scores for purposes of rising up the ranks in the revered U.S. News & World Report listing.
According to the AJC:
U.S. News & World Report, Peterson’s and others routinely list Emory as one of the nation’s top colleges. Students and families rely on these rankings when deciding where to apply and enroll. Emory officials said they have no way of knowing if the college was over-ranked.
“As an institution that challenges itself, in the words of our vision statement, to be ‘ethically engaged,’ Emory has not been well served by representatives of the university in this history of misreporting,” Wagner wrote in a letter to the university. “I am deeply disappointed. Indeed, anyone who cares about Emory’s reputation for excellence in all things must regret this news.”
Emory launched an investigation in May after John Latting, the new dean of admissions, discovered data discrepancies. The investigation found that Emory:
- Used admitted students’ SAT/ACT data instead of enrolled students since at least 2000. This overstated Emory’s test scores.
- May have excluded the scores of the bottom 10 percent of students when reporting SAT/ACT scores, GPAs, and other information. This practice was not followed after 2004.
- Overstated class rankings.
Two former admission deans and leadership in the Office of Institutional Research were aware of the misreporting, the investigation found. They no longer work at Emory, officials said. The investigation found nothing to indicate that anyone in the president’s, provost’s or dean’s offices knew data was being misreported or directed or coerced staff to do so.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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119 comments Add your comment
Hugo
August 19th, 2012
3:12 pm
“Georgia State law school was recently ranked as the #1 best value in the nation. Its graduates get a quality education, readily find good jobs, and tend to be very successful in practice (a main criteria in the ranking).”
That’s a BS ranking based partly on the percentage of grads who got ANY KIND of job after graduating. You could probably count the number of Georgia State Law alum at Am Law 100 firms on one hand. Emory does better but is far from well represented.
Amicus
August 19th, 2012
8:08 pm
Emory U–overrated for years—very overpriced. They aren’t any better academically than UGa, but walk around with the arrogance of vanderbilt and duke, even though emory is not in their league.
Say What?
August 19th, 2012
9:04 pm
@ Amicus
Emory: 1270-1460 (revised) SAT range
UGA: 1120-1310 SAT range
Emory: 26% acceptance rate
UGA: 63% acceptance rate
Emory: 75% (revised) in top 10% of high school class
UGA: 47% in top 10% of high school class
Emory: 7:1 student/faculty ratio
UGA: 18:1 student/faculty ration
Emory: $5.4 billion endowment
UGA: $573 million endowment
‘nough said.
Institutional Research
August 19th, 2012
9:17 pm
About two or three years ago at the Association for Institutional Research conference here in Atlanta, someone from Clemson did a whole session on how they skewed their numbers for the sole purpose of scoring higher in the U.S. News and World Report. More and more university presidents are opting out of these rankings as it becomes more clear that you can game the system. Example: Clemson added parking fees, that faculty didn’t pay, as part of their compensation to make it look like their faculty members earned more than they actually did. That’s just a small example.
Fred
August 19th, 2012
9:54 pm
@Fred ™ – Wow, resorting to name calling, huh? That is definitely the mark of a superior intelligence! I do indeed know enough about HTML to know how to make superscript but just have never felt the need to artificially inflate my sense of sell worth. Been on the blogs 4-5 years +/- a little and for sure remember when all of a sudden you showed up with your arrogant attitude. Never really said anything because for the most part, we frequent different blogs and life is way to short to get excited over an anonymous blog. I occasionally drop in and comment on other than my normal ones and you tend to have a conniption fit when I do. I neither know you nor care enough about you to have *any* desire to pose as you. I will not, however, change my identity nor my manner of posting to suit you.
Enough with this! I don’t wish to clutter the blog with back and for bickering.
Tom Ryan
August 19th, 2012
10:20 pm
I no longer pay much attention to the U.S. News and Report college rankings and now I may not pay any attention to them. Of course prestige and reputation are everything to private schools, so they do have a considerable temptation to cheat on self-reported statistics. But that doesn’t excuse their misbehavior. One private university at which I taught for four years, and is ranked in the Top 50 national research universities, inflated its reported test scores. This was confirmed to me by a colleague in my dept. whose wife worked in Admissions. He said “everybody does it”. Everybody? Well, maybe most. When you start teaching at a prestigious university and discover that the students are at a much lower level than you expected, you feel like you have been had. Lying to the FBI gets people in big trouble but lying to U.S. News and World Report just causes some embarrassment, which could only be temporarily. I would like to see some substantial penalties levied against guilty schools.
jlmdra
August 19th, 2012
10:21 pm
Emory Healthcare was listed as a top workplace in Atlanta. It would not surprise me if the information supplied for that survey was also intentionally erroneous. Many people who have worked for Emory Healthcare were baffled by their inclusion.
northbeach Scott
August 20th, 2012
11:01 am
@Progressive Humanist, a good value GSU Law? Interesting thought, Walmart and Family Dollar present “good values,” but no one would mistake them for quality shopping experiences with quality goods like high end stores provide. For top law firms and companies hiring law students, they pay top dollar for top quality lawyers as that is what they are selling their clients.
I do not think I want an “Walmart” lawyer handling my cases.
Westie
August 20th, 2012
3:25 pm
It could be worse for Emory, they could have been an UNC which has been caught running a bogus AA Studies program for their “Student Athletes”.
How about...
August 20th, 2012
5:47 pm
The Sunday AJC article quoted a few people as saying they might donate less or not at all to Emory this year.
For all of you folks, may I suggest you direct your donations to Agnes Scott College -they have great rankings, a diverse student body, dedicated faculty and a whole lot of need!
Been here a long time.....
August 20th, 2012
10:09 pm
It is time Emory has a shake down. The university administration is behind the times and still bogged down in the good old boy days of old. It is time the leadership reflect the university’s diverse population. An insular leadership invites this sort of behavior.
DataK
August 21st, 2012
8:35 am
“Emory officials said those involved in the data deception no longer work at the college.”
If you believe that fantasy, you will believe anything.
Progressive Humanist
August 21st, 2012
9:17 am
northbeach Scott @11:01,
Nice obfuscation, drawing comparisons between variables that are not related and have nothing in common. You must be a hack lawyer working out of an empty strip mall.
GSU was rated a strong value precisely because it offers a quality education at a comparatively low cost, and because its graduates not only find jobs but tend to do very well. So the ratings are based both on the quality (the part you seem to have difficulty understanding) and the end result (job status).
GurulikeDrucker
August 21st, 2012
9:32 am
I have hired and supervised associates and staff from many southeastern schools including GA, GA State, GA Tech, Vandy, and Emory. Without a doubt, my experience with GA Tech graduates has been the best, but without fail Emory students have always been exceptionally bright, eager to learn, and quick to understand complex concepts. The one common theme amongst all of my Emory hires is that they are typically either very sheltered or very young (inexperience in the case of Emory MBA grads). Based on my experience, I can only assume that many of the bitter comments here are from those whoe couldn’t get into Emory or didn’t want to pay the tuition. I also assume these same people aren’t in a position (and never have been in a position) to hire and or judge Emory graduates. (Fair disclosure I am a Vandy grad)
Fallout from Emory scandal: Former deans resign current jobs. Still unclear why this mess happened. | Get Schooled
August 21st, 2012
1:53 pm
[...] the score differential but would bet it was not overly significant. Despite a few comments on an earlier Emory blog entry to the contrary, the private university attracts top students and sends many graduates to med school and law school. [...]
MelDon
August 21st, 2012
3:11 pm
emory grads–overrated and too demanding. It’s better to hire grads from state schools
Mr. Holmes
August 21st, 2012
4:31 pm
If you’re still trolling, “Prof,” I never said administrators are responsible for rankings.
We all know university faculty are the animating force behind carbon-based life. So don’t pout.
jlmdra
August 21st, 2012
11:30 pm
Emory is a vacuum devoid of ethical behavior where the most self-serving individuals rise to the top.
jlmdra
August 22nd, 2012
4:20 pm
Emory Healthcare was listed as a top workplace in Atlanta. It would not surprise me if the information supplied for that survey was also intentionally erroneous. Many people who have worked for Emory Healthcare were baffled by their inclusion.