U.S. News & World Report knocked GW out of its top colleges rankings Wednesday, six days after the University disclosed that it had been significantly inflating admissions data for more than a decade.
GW lost its No.-51 spot and is now listed as “unranked” in the U.S. News 2013 list – a rare and unexpected move after the magazine said GW would likely drop only a few spots.
University President Steven Knapp said Wednesday that he was surprised that the magazine reversed course, calling it a disproportionate and "odd thing" after GW came clean on the error on its own.
“We were expecting a small change – we were not expecting to be taken off the ranking,” he said. “They’ve given us no information about their motivation in doing this.”
Statistics on how many freshmen fell into the top 10 percent of their high school classes – the data GW miscalculated – count as 6 percent of the ranking methodology. For the Class of 2015, Knapp announced Nov. 8 that the Office of Admissions calculated 78 percent of students ranked in the top 10 percent. That figure was actually 58 percent – 20 percentage points lower.
U.S. News’ Director of Data Research Robert Morse referred all questions to a Wednesday blog post explaining GW's removal from the rankings. GW had hovered around the U.S. News list’s top 50 colleges for more than a decade, but the data error would have pushed it out of its No.-51 slot. When top schools Emory University and Claremont McKenna College admitted to intentionally manipulating students’ test scores earlier this year, they held their slots because the skewed data didn't make a dent.
The news came as a public relations blow for a university that’s tried to polish its image this year through a strategic plan and a rebranding campaign, though the unranked status will only last until next fall if GW certifies its data. While U.S. News uses a calculated methodology in the rankings, the list is also a yardstick for prestige.
Within hours of the announcement, that backlash was amplified as students and professors questioned the impact on GW’s reputation. Other unranked universities this year include University of Phoenix Online, Alliant International University and California Institute of Integral Studies.
Associate Vice President and Dean of Admissions Kathryn Napper, who has deferred to GW’s media relations shop since the news broke last week, declined to comment on U.S. News’ decision Wednesday.
“It’s all being handled upstairs with external relations. Take it up with them,” said Napper, who has led the admissions office since 1997.
Administrators explained that the data became increasingly skewed over time as more and more high schools stopped reporting class rank.
About two-thirds of high schools don't rank students. But the admissions office counted unranked students who earned top standardized test scores and grade point averages in the top 10 percent category anyway.
The University also hired the firm Baker Tilly to audit the most recent year’s worth of admissions data, but will not recheck statistics for past years.
Administrators said the report found no other errors, though the University declined to make a copy of the audit report available, and representatives from Baker Tilly referred all questions back to GW. Claremont McKenna made its audit report public in January.
Knapp said Wednesday that "people are being held accountable." But he and other administrators have repeatedly declined to release what personnel decisions have been made. They have also maintained that the misreporting was "without malice."
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 had been planning since the spring to hire an enrollment management chief.
“We’ll just have to weather the short-term fallout, whatever it is,” Knapp said. “You sort of hope you’ll be treated fairly and people will understand the situation and people will realize that this was one very tiny part of the University that made the mistake and won’t judge the whole university based on the mistake made by one part of it."
Measuring the damage
With GW off this year’s influential list, often used as a college compass for high school students, higher education experts weighed whether the unrank would affect this admissions season and GW’s repute.
Scott Jaschik, co-founder of the news website Inside Higher Ed, said it would turn off a rankings-focused high school student, but added that he doesn’t “believe this will be calamity. It’s more of an embarrassment for GW.”
“I don’t mean to insult your very fine institution but GW wasn’t at the top anyway. People who are rankings obsessed and only want to apply to a top 10 place, weren’t looking at GW,” he said.
GW tour guides have been told to direct all questions from parents about the data misreporting and rankings to admissions officers, said Jennifer Titche, a junior and student STAR coordinator.
“I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. We’ll be ranked again next year. I picked GW because I really liked it, and I still do,” Titche said. “It’s not something tour guides have to deal with, because it’s a difficult question to answer.”
But students do sometimes look at rankings over the academic quality of the school, according to research by Wake Forest assistant professor of economics Amanda Griffith.
“It’s a prestige measure. [Students] were more likely to matriculate in the institution if it had a better ranking,” she said last week.
The University has also held an uneven stance on how to value rankings. Some top administrators like Knapp and Provost Steven Lerman have acknowledged their influence for admissions, but maintained that they don’t measure the University’s true quality.
Other administrators like GW School of Business Dean Doug Guthrie and Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Dean Peg Barratt have committed to raising their programs’ U.S. News ranking, acknowledging that the lists hold significant sway.
The University often touts top rankings, and has even used them as a pitch to potential alumni donors. Knapp said Wednesday he did not think the unrank would hurt alumni donations.
Former University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who led GW when the data misreporting began, pointed a sharp finger at U.S. News for the move, and said “it’s an overreaction on their part and shows their unwillingness to recognize their culpability in creating this error.”
Trachtenberg said the magazine should take the blame for forcing universities to report data that few high schools still collect. He added that he didn’t think GW’s next freshman class would take a hit.
“This is not a scandal. That’s what I find off-putting. We don’t have anybody who was cheating,” he said. “No one was sneaking around doing wise guy stuff.”
Raymond Brown, dean of admissions at Texas Christian University, called GW's data manipulation tame compared to how other universities try to game the rankings.
“I don’t think what GW has done is necessarily wrong. There’s a whole lot of schools that force a rank,” Brown said Monday, before the rankings. “I've got to believe that there are still a whole bunch of folks out there cooking their books.”
A campus reacts
Professors and students grappled Wednesday with how to interpret the news.
History and international affairs professor Shawn McHale said he commended Knapp for auditing the data, and predicted that the unranking would harm GW’s reputation only in the short-term.
But, he said, “I think that it’s terrible that someone in that office was either foolish or had no idea about statistics.”
Cynthia McClintock, who has taught at GW since 1975, said she was sad to see a setback for the school, but is confident the school will rebound.
"Everybody knows that mistakes do happen, that’s why there are erasers on the end of pencils. These things do happen. We will come back,” McClintock said.
Some students called for immediate answers. Student Association Executive Vice President Abby Bergren announced that the Senate will hold an emergency meeting Monday to ask administrators what steps they would take to make up for the unrank.
Sen. Hugo Scheckter, U-At-Large, said the University has not been as transparent about the incident as it could be.
“It not only affects us; it affects future alums and future students. We’re trying to open up the canals of communication,” Scheckter said. “We pay a lot of money to come here, and now we’re equally ranked with the University of Phoenix. It’s just not acceptable. It’s embarrassing for everyone who’s here.”
Others shook off the news.
“It sucks, but I’ve been here for four years and know that GW is an esteemed university. So 51st or whatever, it doesn’t matter,” senior Joe Maniscalco said.
The data misreporting error swept across campus over the past week, with deans and administrators holding meetings with faculty to explain the situation, professor of business and international affairs Scheherazade Rehman said.
University officials were conciliatory and mostly up front, with Lerman, GW’s second in command, telling Friday’s Faculty Senate that he would remedy the error.
Jasmine Baker, Catherine Barnao, Sarah Ferris, Matt Kwiecinski, Eric Osman, Priya Anand and Chloe Sorvino contributed to this report.
As an outsider who deals in statistics all day, this isn’t nearly as clear-cut of an issue as I at first thought, since it seems to actually deal with attempting to estimate a statistic high schools increasingly don’t even provide, and where US News appears to need to both modernize their methodology and treat all institutions similarly.
Finally, GW’s bureaucracy and ineptitude catch up with it!
My guess is there are many colleges and universities who take a similar approach to trying to satisfy US News request for data that is not readily available. If a student has exceptionally high SATs and grades, it is not unreasonable to assume they may well have fallen in to their school’s top 10% if their school was to report rank. This is being way overblown.
No, it’s not reasonable to “assume” that. Are you kidding me? High schools vary significantly in student body size, average test scores, etc. The fact that GW was off by TWENTY FREAKIN PERCENT should lay to rest any claim that their assumptions were “reasonable.”
Typical GW students, making a huge deal out of nothing.
This doesn’t affect a single bit the education we are receiving at GW. All it means is that some of the students were potentially less qualified upon entering GW, which a lot of them seem to be validating in this manufactured freakout.
Also worth noting that the outrage didn’t come when GW first reported that they had erred in their calculations. The outrage only came when a magazine took us off their rankings, which shows that the students care more about their ego, bragging rights, and rankings, than they do about the “integrity” or “transparency” of the university.
“When top schools Emory University and Claremont McKenna College admitted to intentionally manipulating students’ test scores earlier this year, they held their slots because the skewed data didn’t make a dent.”
That’s not true. US News just let them keep their standing for the year. Emory was found to be PURPOSELY inflating both SAT scores (worth 7.5% of ranking criteria) and HS rankings (worth 6%), there’s no way that recalculation of both didn’t change their standing. GW was used to be made an example of from the US News.
As bad as this is for GW-and make no mistake this was an intentional thing, it is part of a pattern in higher education that has gotten wildly expensive and lost its focus. The real scandal is the obscene cost involved in getting a college education. GW is consistently one of the most expensive schools. Even state school tuition is going up and it is saddling most students with debt that in practical terms has a depressing effect on the whole economy.
Someone should have simply inquired of US News (or even other schools) whether it was appropriate to include non-reported class ranks of admittees as being in top ten percent of their class.It was stupid not to.I would certainly expect more from a “top Fifty” school!On the other hand ,if this was not simply an error in judgement,but an attempt to inflate our US News score,then heads should indeed roll as that is dishonest!
“I think that it’s terrible that someone in that office was either foolish or had no idea about statistics.” This doesn’t surprise me since GW’s statistics department is beyond terrible. If they aren’t willing to spend the money on good stats professors why would they spend it on staff that are knowledgeable about statistics.
I do worry about admissions though. I know the real deciding factor for me coming here was how it ranked compared to the other schools I applied to. I know it’s shallow but ill admit it.
I’m sorry, but did you guys (The Hatchet) seriously use that quote from Napper maliciously? Let’s be honest, we all know she wanted you to refer to external relations, not quote her.
Of course they did, the Hatchet is everything but a reputable newspaper.
How embarrassing. I think from now on, I’ll just tell people I went to school “in DC”.
Hahaha. Knapp.
By the way, what a cheap shot by the writer. Grouping GW with correspondence schools is disingenuous to readers, as I doubt GW is the only prominent campus-based university to lose its ranking. (Of course, I can’t verify this statement, because U.S. News’ floundering publication forces you to pay $29.95 to access its rankings.)
FAIL, Mr. Weinberg.
As an alumnus, the most concerning thing for me is that someone in a position of authority in the institution thought this was acceptable. This wasn’t a mathematical error, this was a decision made to make up data where none existed. The motivation is not outside the realm of comprehension, but the action is.
The University’s mission statement claims that, “The University values a dynamic, student-focused community stimulated by cultural and intellectual diversity and built upon a
foundation of integrity, creativity, and openness to the exploration of new ideas.”
Where was the integrity here? The administration of the school preferred to make up numbers rather than take a hit of a few spots on a ranking that they continuously point to as flawed.
The undergraduate U.S. News Rankings are indeed a flawed system, but not entirely meaningless in the job market. If you want to move out of GW’s major placement markets immediately after graduation, lack of a ranking could certainly have a negative impact. That said, I think it is safe to assume that GW will be back on the list – if a few spots lower – next year. The issue that must be addressed is the poor judgment shown by the administrator(s) who was/were responsible for this error.
“not entirely meaningless in the job market. If you want to move out of GW’s major placement markets immediately after graduation, lack of a ranking could certainly have a negative impact.”
Honestly, I highly doubt it. Not one company is going to deny you a position because of the name of you college in the same way that you don’t automatically get a position for going to Harvard. Your gpa, what you’ve chosen to do in your undergraduate experience, your interview all of those are the true measure of a candidate for a position. There are many companies that have a long standing relationship with hiring GW students and I don’t think it’ll affect job recruitment on campus for the year.
The only effect this will have is on admissions, as I could easily see a hs student choosing to go elsewhere because of the unranking.
My father employs college students all the time and not once has he used “US News” to judge the validity of an institution.
Employers understand GWU has a fairly good reputation, regardless of what some site ranks it.
The only people who care about the “US News Undergraduate College Rankings” are high school parents who want to brag about where their son/daughter goes.
^^ alright Malfoy, calm down
Remember that time when The Hatchet reported that this revelation would have little if any impact on GW’s ranking. Nice estimation guys. You must have had the same logic professors as the brain trust in Admissions.
But, there was no cheap shot at Napper. If she didn’t want to be quoted as having said that, she should not have said that.
Let’s face it. US News knows that the jig is up. The rankings are the only thing they have. How can they possibly explain removing an institution named after the father of our nation, while other universities have done this purposely and nothing happened. This was an error, and a big one. But, that doesn’t explain or justify the end. Robert Morse made a knee jerk reaction because too many people were asking questions about the validity of the ranking system. This is a classic case of how a perfectly legitimate publication turns into a cheap spineless version of its former self. Shame on you Bob Morse…
Maybe GW and other schools should take a lesson from institutions who have chosen repeatedly not to submit data to Newsweek, and thus forgo the possibility of being ranked. The overarching reason GW is now off the list is because of the ridiculous pressure and nature of the ranking in the first place. Maybe us and other universities should do some soul searching and really think about how important these rankings are.
I wonder if getting kicked out of US News had anything to do with former GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg’s comments blaming the editor of US News for asking hard questions? If I were US News, I would want GW to take responsibility for bad data instead of blaming the messenger for their own mistakes. As an alumnus, I also want that. His exact words from the Hatchet article last week were: “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.”
At least we’re not Penn State…
I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I agree with President Knapp. While obviously rankings are not everything when it comes to students selecting where to apply, this still seems disproportionate and odd. It’s not like there was some scandalous revelation; GW admitted its error.
For all we know 78% of the students could be ranked in the top 10% of their class. Without statistics, who knows? Also, there may be other schools that do what GW did. If so, they should come forward too.
Still, someone does need to be held accountable for what happened. Business as usual can’t keep going on. And the bigger message is that GW has been trying to fake it for too long. The school needs to look in the mirror and ask, when will the substance arrive instead of the fluff? There’s a simple way to climb up the rankings – reduce your class sizes, increase spending per student, and increase spending on academic research. That is how the big boys do it.
So if you wonder why Rice, Northwestern and Vanderbilt are doing so well, that is why. Don’t worry about whether Train or Earth Wind and Fire will be the headlining act next year, focus on the meat and potatoes of what makes a great University, and good things will follow. In other words, stop faking it, and start making it.
I want to buy you a drink. Honestly, no one has said it better so far.
As much a GW rightfully punishes those who cheat, it has now been caught cheating. Regardless of the fact that they self reported and that every major college does this, has been caught doing this, and/ or has not been caught yet. Harvard, Emory, Princeton to name a few…. GW take your medicine an move on
Ouch!!! Cooking the text books.
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.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Just found a great article that was written by the Washington Post blog talking about other Ivy League school class rank numbers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/on-gwu-unrankings-and-class-rank/2012/11/14/73a99d4a-2eb1-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_blog.html
Will GW implement an open admissions policy now that it is not ranked? GW’s peer institution, the University of Phoenix, has open admissions. Why not GW?
Education for everyone!
“Associate Vice President and Dean of Admissions Kathryn Napper, who has deferred to GW’s media relations shop since the news broke last week, declined to comment on U.S. News’ decision Wednesday.
‘It’s all being handled upstairs with external relations. Take it up with them,’ said Napper, who has led the admissions office since 1997.”
I have to say Cory, I’m disappointed The GW Hatchet would include this in the story. It’s clear Napper was referring you to the external affairs office for comment. Opening with “declined to comment” while providing a comment is counter-intuitive. Doing so is a quick way to have doors closed, and you, as a student journalist, would do well to avoid that.
It’s not an “on the record” “off the record” “on background” or “on deep background” thing; she was telling you who could give you information for your story and you took a shot at her. Poor form.