Tulane admits to improperly administrating data submitted to US News for MBA program
Some college administrators are resorting to embellishment and distortion to attract students to their campuses.
MBA programs aren’t suffering a “higher education bubble” decline, as the unemployed take the time to enhance their credentials. However, a study shows applicants are seriously conducting time and cost analyses to determine which institution to attend.
Inside Higher Ed writer Scott Jaschik has a report about Tulane University’s recent admission on its approach to attracting business scholars:
Tulane University has admitted that it sent U.S. News & World Report incorrect information about the test scores and total number of applicants for its M.B.A. program.
The admission — as 2012 closed — made the university the fourth college or university in that year to admit false reporting of some admissions data used for rankings. In 2011, two law schools and one undergraduate institution were found to have engaged in false reporting of some admissions data.
A statement issued by Tulane said that it discovered the problem when preparing a new set business school data for U.S. News and found that numbers, “including GMAT scores and the number of applications, skewed significantly lower than the previous two years. Since the school’s standards and admissions criteria have not changed, this raised a concern that our data from previous years had been misreported.”
Tulane’s statement went on to say that new controls put in place last year led to the discovery of the problem. The university has hired outside groups, the statement said, to conduct an audit of past data to determine the full extent of the problem. “We deeply regret that this occurred. The checks and balances we have implemented will provide assurance that this will not happen again,” said the statement, which was issued by Ira Solomon, dean of Tulane’s A.B. Freeman School of Business.
Robert Morse, who heads the rankings at U.S. News, wrote on his blog that the incorrect data had been used in calculating Tulane’s rank in the magazine’s M.B.A. rankings. Currently the university is 43rd on that list.
Tulane officials told him that they didn’t yet know what the correct figures were for the year (and possibly other years) for which incorrect data had been submitted, or how far off the reported numbers were from the real ones. The university hopes to have those answers later this month….
The other institutions that in 2012 admitted submitting incorrect data to U.S. news were Claremont McKenna College, Emory University and George Washington University. In those three cases, the data were for undergraduate admissions.
