Administrators disclosed Thursday that GW botched admissions statistics for nearly a decade – but questions linger about the origin of the flawed data and who was responsible.
The University mistakenly overreported the percentage of freshmen that graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class by up to 20 percent – relying on an estimation system that skewed the data. The oversight prompted GW to strip the Office of Admissions of record-keeping responsibilities.
The admissions office had tabulated 78 percent of the Class of 2015 as top high school students, but this summer, the provost’s office spotted an error that showed the figure was actually 58 percent. That finding could bruise GW’s national ranking in U.S. News & World Report, but likely only by a few slots, if any.
About two-thirds of high schools nationwide don’t rank their students. But the admissions office estimated that admitted students who earned top standardized test scores and grade point averages were in the top 10 percent of their high school class anyway – even if they weren't ranked.
GW hired the audit firm Baker Tilly and came clean after a month-long investigation of last year's enrollment data. Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Planning Forrest Maltzman said the firm found no other accounting errors but declined to provide a copy of the report or a reason as to why it would not be released.
Results of the investigation were presented in a closed-door meeting of the Board of Trustees last month. The firm never discovered who set up the estimation system, Maltzman said, adding that the private audit found it was done “without malice.”
“We’ve taken away from [the admissions office] the responsibility for recording the data,” Maltzman said. “It was a bad system. It’s bad across administrative units to have the same unit responsible for bringing in the class and then telling us about the class. It doesn’t make sense. That’s no longer going to happen.”
Maltzman would not comment on which staff members in the admissions office, if any, would face ramifications for a decade’s worth of false data.
“I can’t discuss any particular personnel issues. That’s sort of a longstanding policy that everyone in the world has,” Malzman said Friday. “What I can tell you is nobody who was responsible for the data is in a role where they are responsible for that data in the future.”
Kathryn Napper, associate vice president and dean of admissions, declined to comment on the data inflation, whether the office had ever reviewed its admissions data before and other questions. Napper has been dean of admissions for 15 years and has overseen a steady ascent in GW’s selectivity and academic standing.
The Office of Academic Planning and Assessment will take over the data reporting and outside firms – like Baker Tilly – will audit admissions data more regularly.
GW has already been planning a search for a new enrollment management chief after the long-serving administrator who oversaw admissions, Robert Chernak, retired in June. His departure moved the admissions office under Provost Steven Lerman's purview, and Maltzman said the provost asked him to evaluate past practices to "really kick the tires" before the new hire.
Representatives from Baker Tilly did not return requests for comment.
The University’s percentage of top high school students had been an outlier among many of the schools it considers its competitors. For example, 62 percent of freshmen at New York University, a higher ranked school, came from the top 10 percent of their high school classes. That statistic was 59 percent at Tulane University and 55 percent at Boston University.
Before the misreported data was uncovered, the percentage of GW freshmen in the top 10 percent of their high school class had shot up over the last five years since it was 67 percent in 2008.
But despite the gap between GW and its peer schools, Scott Jaschik, co-founder of the news website Inside Higher Ed, explained that the University likely overlooked the data because it fit with administrators' view of students as top-performing.
“Seventy-eight percent says the norm here is to be a top-10 percent student,” he said. “There’s less incentive to double-check something when it makes you look good. That’s just human nature."
In a University-wide email sent by University President Steven Knapp, and in subsequent statements and interviews given by Lerman and Maltzman, officials have tried to take responsibility and calm the aftermath.
“I deeply regret this error and want to assure you that corrective action has been taken and safeguards put into place to prevent such errors from occurring in the future,” Knapp said in a statement.
'Embarrassing,' but probably not a rankings dive
The Department of Education does not collect the misreported data, but the U.S. News ranking, the gold standard in higher education, weighs the statistic as about 6 percent of its total methodology, among factors like student retention and selectivity. GW holds the No. 51 slot on the list, a ranking that has remained mostly stagnant for more than a decade.
Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News said Friday that the organization could revise the rankings this year to bump GW down.
“If it does change GWU’s current 2013 ranking, it would be a slight change, however, we are still trying to carefully make that actual determination. We are not commenting on future rankings,” he said in an email.
But the incident has come under more intense scrutiny from national media, with long write-ups in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post. GW is the third top university to report data misdeeds this year.
Emory University, No. 20 in the U.S. News ranking and one of GW’s competitor schools, admitted in August that it intentionally inflated admitted students’ SAT and ACT scores – leading to the resignation of top admissions officials. The school verified last year’s admissions information in time to hold onto the ranking.
In January, a senior administrator at Claremont McKenna College, a top liberal arts school near Los Angeles, admitted to intentional fabrication of student test scores since 2005, after a law firm investigated the data falsified by a top admissions official.
Morse said those two and GW are the only schools out of 1,400 schools U.S. News ranks that admitted to incorrect submissions, but more are stepping up to report wrongdoing now.
“We think the fact that schools are coming forward and going through the pain of these public disclosures about their data misreporting shows how serious schools are taking the issue of data integrity and how they want to be accurate going forward,” he said.
Over the past decade, fewer high schools have reported students’ class rank, administrators and higher education experts say – a trend that likely only led to a more noticeable data discrepancy in more recent years.
That trend also likely explains the error, said former University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who led GW when the misreporting began before stepping down in 2007, ending his 19-year presidency.
Trachtenberg, who has criticized the stranglehold that U.S. News has over universities, called the incident “embarrassing” but said admissions officials were likely only “anxious to please” the magazine and its research director, Morse, by estimating the number of students in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
“Why didn’t it come to the attention of Bob Morse that he was asking questions that people couldn’t give him answers to? By continuing to ask the questions he was putting [the admissions office] in an impossible situation,” Trachtenberg said.
But the crisis will blow over because of the narrow scope of false data that was reported, he said.
“If you’ve got people cooking the books, they’re not going to cook the books in one area. They’re going to cook the books to make the [University] look gold-plated,” Trachtenberg said. “It was more stupidity than malice. The world will move on. You fix it.”
'Disappointment,’ not outrage
Lerman, GW's second in command, made his first public comments Friday to a meeting of faculty leaders, a day after the news broke.
And he used a word that summed up the mood: “disappointment.”
It was an honest mistake, he said, one that went back to the 1990s and was not “in the spirit in the ethical standards to which we hold ourselves.”
“In no uncertain terms, it’s something we’ll make sure is something will never happen again,” Lerman said.
Economics professor Donald Parsons, usually one of the administration’s sharpest critics on the Faculty Senate, said he appreciated that the administration openly and promptly announced the error.
Physics professor Bill Briscoe, another professor who has stirred debate at the Faculty Senate, said after the meeting that administrators are handling it well.
“We have to take it at face value. It’s been going on for a long time, so it’s not really their fault,” Briscoe said.
Tactically, it made sense for the University to go public with the mistake now, said Amanda Griffith, an assistant economics professor at Wake Forest University, who studies how the rankings affect students’ college decisions.
If the University reported new numbers to U.S. News to correct the error next year, it would have raised suspicions because the percentage of students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class would have fallen dramatically, she said.
“It’s better for them honesty wise to show they had this accounting problem and we’re fixing it,” she said.
They’re wondering how it happened while “relying on an estimation system that skewed the data”? That’s pretty simple; they must have used Rasmussen to compile the data :p
This is hardly the first time a private university has intentionally lied to inflate its rankings. As a GW alum, I’m more than embarrassed however. The problem is broader than admssions officials lying about data. As tuition has gone up and up, faculty salaries and administrator salaries have as well- higher education is less focused today on education and more on attracting students who can pay full tuition. One of the more disturbing aspects of this article was the fact that GW hired an outside firm to ” investigate” this problem. How many tens of thousands of dollars did that cost?
Higher education in this country has become a corrupt big business. I think students today should vote with their feet and go to a good state school rather than shelling out their future for some US News ranked school. Honestly- who cares?
Wait, you don’t understand why GW hired an outside firm? Are you kidding me?
Do you not understand how that is a conflict of interest? Had the university just self reported the error without an external audit, its credibility would decrease.
I applaud the university for stepping out and admitting to this mistake. I’m not happy the mistake happened in the first place but at least when they saw it was a problem they stepped up with dignity and are working to correct the error.
Looks like someone needs a refresher in GW’s Commandments
http://www.gwu.edu/~ntegrity/code.html
As an alumnus, I am deeply embarrassed by both the revelation and the University’s response. Claiming there is no malice behind ten years of data manipulation and inflation would be like Lance Armstrong saying he took steroids to make his muscles look big, not win the Tour-de-France.
Furthermore, the fact that this report from Baker Tilly will never see the light of day raises serious questions about what is in that report. With a straight face, GW is claiming that they came clean while hiding the investigation itself.
As a recent alum I applaud the university for bringing this to light. They’ve already explain how the error came to be and I’m sure GW wasn’t the only school trying to figure out how to best estimate its entering student body now that fewer high schools are reporting rankings.
I stand behind the university and am glad to hear that they are actively working to resolve and prevent this from occurring again.
I want the institutions that I care about, like GW, to have integrity. Although you might think you are being loyal by trying to lower the ethical standard for GW, you aren’t. By forgiving this dishonest behavior, you hurt your beloved institution.
I love GW and I want it to be as prestigious as Harvard. But with administrators behaving like this and getting away with it for a decade, I worry that we will never get there.
I’m not excusing the behavior, no one should, but I would much rather that they come clean about it proactively rather than continue to think it’s ok to boost up the numbers and get caught in the act.
If this was without malice intent, I wonder why they did not report the results to be worse than what they really were? why did they report better results?
If they are bringing this to light after 10 years, there should be a good reason for that, something like the … getting closer to hitting the fan, and they wanted to look good by announcing it in advance.
A big big like to Honest Abe. GWU must start acting as a University promoting integrity as opposed to a acting as a greedy corporate.
Except they just promoted integrity by releasing this in the first place. Jesus no one can even try to give credit to the administration for this because they are too stuck in their ‘gw is evil’ mindset.
Would you have been happier if the university was caught in the lie instead of being proactive and reporting it themselves?
No. I would have been happier if they did not lie in the first place.
Let me be more clear. It seems that you are mistaking a University with a little poor kid who lied and came clean after 10 years. GWU is a university and many of its administrators are well-educated adults with PhDs getting mid six figure salaries to promote GWU’s ranking. After such an scandalous incident, at least somebody must take the responsibility and resign. Did they?
Instead, they divert the focus to changing an stupid logo.
And they pat themselves on the back for “coming clean” while burying whatever truth lies in the actual report forever…
” they divert the focus to changing an stupid logo”
That’s not at all what they have done. Do not even begin with this please.
I am not excusing what they have done, I am not confusing them with a “little poor kid”. But I would much rather have them proactively come out and take fault instead of waiting to get caught in the act.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/george-washington-university-unranked-by-us-news/2012/11/14/d07d2d76-2e83-11e2-9ac2-1c61452669c3_blog.html
I’m glad I went to GW because I met some amazing people and wouldn’t trade them for the world, but… I was in the top tier of my high school graduating class and I paid to go to a top tier University. Matter fact, most of us are still paying.
On the other hand, I shoulda known something was up. A LOT of my classmates weren’t that bright…
Including yourself it seems. If you are complaining so much about the university why didn’t you just go into an Ivy? Oh let me guess, you didn’t get in?
Including yourself it seems. If you are complaining so much about the university why didn’t you just go into an Ivy? Oh let me guess, you didn’t get in?
The corporate takeover (or attempted takeover) of our government and media has also extended to higher education- and with the obscene flow of money, of course comes corruption and fraud. 10 years of this an accident? Does anyone seriously believe that?!
This is a disgrace and GW, quite frankly should not get off calling this some “honest mistake”. It wasn’t honest and it wasn’t a mistake.
The real story is GWU has had 3 men running GWU the past 24 yrs whom
A) do not have the educational background nor experience to be the positions they were
B) Displayed uneducated unethical behavior in destroying the history of foggy bottom neighborhood with buying it up in their quest to build the mightiest of corporations
c)Their self entitlement is pure sociopathic
d) They rule GWU with iron fist of intimidation shown in physical data evidence over an over
2 of these 3 are still on GWU staff even though stepping down Ex President Trachtenberg & VP Robert Chernak While Lou Katz the 3rd player is still running the $$ as treasurer for 22 yrs ( oh yes Lou Katz also oversees the the area one can report GWU sexual abuse to ~ Which is extremely Strange for a college Treasurer )
Nov 2, 2009 – Former George Washington University president Stephen J. Trachtenberg received $3.7 million in pay and benefits in 2007-08, $2 million more
more than the total compensation that year for any other current or former leader in private higher education in the United States, according to a survey of executive pay released Monday.Steven Knapp, former provost of Johns Hopkins University, replaced Trachtenberg at GWU, where he received $379,000 in 2007-08
Now in 2011 Knapp recieves 1 million + ~ Pretty good pay raise in 2/3 years… Knapp is a figure head… He is not leading GWU at all.
Jun 22, 2011 – GWU President Steven Knapp looks to be the first college leader in the area to earn $1 million in total compensation.
Ex-president of GWU leads in survey of pay in 2007-08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110102071.html
Last but not least GWU had to go public with this information as it is all over the news everywhere !! This is just one link below.
Yes kids pull back the curtain on your college.. It has been run in extremely abusive totalitarian way of totally believing the deceive to believe way is correct Not the Ethical standards higher education usually identified with
George Washington U. Inflated Class-Rank Data for More Than a Decade – Head Count – The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/george-washington-u-inflated-class-rank-data-for-more-than-a-decade/32828?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
“The University mistakenly overreported the percentage [...] by up to 20 percent…”
“The admissions office had tabulated 78 percent [... but] spotted an error that showed the figure was actually 58 percent.”
Correction:
78% -> 58% is NOT at 20% reduction. It’s a reduction of 20-percentage-points.
78% -> 58% is closer to a 26% reduction.
It’s an important difference.
Thank you! This is my biggest pet peeve, and as aspiring reporters these students are letting me down.
Michael and Nameless are correct in identifying this common error. I am glad they caught it.
Hatchet reporters and editors need to understand, and convey accurately, the difference between two percentages/rates (e.g., 78 percent vs 58 percent = 20 percentage points difference) versus a rate of change between two numeric quantities expressed/conveyed as a percentage (e.g, 200 students applied for Hall Proctor slots in 2011 and 300 in 2012, a one year increase of 33%).
In my opinion, people are overreacting to this. From what I’ve read this was a math error, the formula that the school used to calculate the figure was inaccurate. Besides, of all the things that they could have misreported this is the least significant. When I was deciding which school to go to this statistic wasn’t even a factor. In addition this is a hard figure to calculate since many student self report it or their high school doesn’t make class ranks (mine didn’t).
I also believe that the school has made all the right moves after they discovered the error. They self reported to U.S. News & World Report, they hired an outside agency to go over their records, and most importantly they have not tried to cover it up since it came to their attention and have been straightforward and honest with students, professor, and alumni.
Loved my professors in the Econ dept. at GW and am grateful that I got my first job out of college from on campus recruiting. I have donated, and will continue to donate to the University but only to the Scholarship fund. I am disgusted with the way that the GW administration acts. This isn’t a corporation, yet it is run like one. Adjunct professors are abused and paid a pittance while Housing seeks to extract thousands and thousands of dollars from students for “clean up fees.” I met a lot of intelligent and engaged students and loved almost all of my professors at this college, but the admnistration makes me sick. Stick to educating the students and not trying to extract every penny you can from them. Administrative pay is way out whack with the national average at GW, while Professor pay is only barely above average. I’d like to gather alumni together to pledge to donate money to the school provided certian changes are made.
This is cut and pasted from another article I read regarding GW:
“Mr. Maltzman, who has been overseeing admissions operations as the university searches for its first enrollment chief, said he was surprised when he saw that the admissions office had apparently obtained class-rank data for more than half of the students in the Class of 2015. Given that as many as two-thirds of high schools do not report class rank, he had expected the figure to be 30 to 40 percent.”
So if two-thirds of high schools do not report student class rank then how are the other colleges calculating their student class ranks that U.S. News requires annually?!?! Probably the same way! U.S. News needs to eliminate class rank as part of their formula.