The University said last month that it had been inflating admissions data for a decade. However, when it hired an audit firm, it only had the company review this past year's data to determine what went wrong and how it happened.
The University said the audit found that the inaccuracies were “without malice" – but it could not determine the origin of the error.
The University did not release a written report from Baker Tilly, one of the country's largest accounting and auditing firms, when asked because administrators say a formal audit report does not exist.
Wait. What?
Yes, the Board of Trustees allegedly only received an oral report from auditors at Baker Tilly in a closed-door meeting.
Since the administration held a town hall to discuss the data misreporting and U.S. News & World Report unranking before Thanksgiving break, they thought the issue would quickly become a matter of the past. But with so many pressing questions left unanswered, it is impossible to put this behind us.
GW will return to the U.S. News rankings list next year. What remains an issue is how the University has responded to this situation, and that it failed to release evidence to support its claims.
It is inconceivable that the University would pay a firm to examine its records and then not receive any documentation of that investigation. The whole purpose of conducting an audit is to set the record straight.
Administrators claim that in the oral report, auditors said no other data was calculated inaccurately. And when asked for evidence, University President Steven Knapp said, “There is not a formal audit report." But it is mind-boggling that there is allegedly no written record and furthermore, that the University apparently did not request one from Baker Tilly.
How can this school's leaders not have proof to substantiate the findings of Baker Tilly's audit?
The president of the Association of College and University Auditors, Phillip Hurd, told The Hatchet he has worked on hundreds of audits for institutions of higher education.
“To not have a written [report] on something so important would be questionable," he said. "If it’s going to be an official response to an issue, it’s always going to be something written. It’s kind of like, if you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen."
We cannot fathom why GW's practices would be any different from other schools. And rather than getting peace of mind from this audit, we are left only with more questions.
Why didn’t the Board of Trustees get a report from Baker Tilly? Why would a reputable firm like Baker Tilly conduct an audit and not bother to provide a written report? Wouldn’t the University want physical documentation for its own records, at the very least?
Is it possible that the University purposely chose not to ask for a report? Could it be that administrators didn’t want one? If that is the case, is there something in the report that the administration doesn’t want the community to know?
The auditors supposedly gave a presentation to members of the Board of Trustees in a closed-door meeting in October. More than a dozen board members declined to comment on the presentation, provide their reactions to the audit, say if they received any documentation or explain whether or not they specifically asked the firm not to create any records.
When put in these kind of situations, it is standard practice for an institution to release a report. After reporting incorrect information to U.S. News, Claremont McKenna College and Iona College released a 25-page report and six-page report, respectively, outlining the nature of the error, the steps the college took to find its source and the audit’s overall findings.
If the University wanted a formal report, it could have had one, and administrators would have something to release to the community – a much-needed display of transparency.
But by leaving students and alumni empty-handed, the University further tarnishes its reputation and insults our intelligence as a community.
Somewhere inside Baker Tilly’s office, there must be a file on its investigation of GW’s admissions statistics. The University should demand that report and release it to the public.
It is in the University's best interest to release a formal report. Otherwise, it is blatantly failing to be transparent with a community that is asking for answers to glaring questions.
It has been almost a month since GW announced it was inflating data, and as more details – like the lack of an actual audit report – have come out, more questions have arisen. Administrators and the Board of Trustees can’t expect this to just blow over.
We want to move on, but we can’t until we have more answers.
I think GW’s response has been outrageous. The university continues to maintain that this 10 year inflation of admissions data was a “mistake”. This is obviously ridiculous- but they persist in saying it. They are lying to the students and the public. It shows how deep corruption is ingrained at GW and in higher education in general. As a college education has gotten more and more expensive the corruption has grown. It’s pathetic.
Who says they MUST produce a report? Where is that written? The only way they screwed up is by saying they only had the oral report. They should have said yes we have it and no we’re not giving it to you.
To answer your question: nobody. At least not that I’ve seen. GW is not under any legal or policy obligation to publish a written audit report. But the Editorial Board here, along with a lot of students, parents, and alums, are calling on GW to produce the report in a display of transparency. After all, we did pay for it — and if there’s nothing to hide, why not disclose the findings?
I smell a cover-up.
Either a report was written and destroyed or GW asked for an investigation without a report. Either way, it sounds like the school didn’t want to be embarrassed by a written report. It’s too late to be embarrassed, but its not too late for accountability.
Students and alumni should pressure the school to release this data. After the data is released, some administrators should be fired, especially in the admissions office.
Regardless of their legal requirement to produce or not produce a report, they risk not whatever USNews thinks, but more importantly the trust of those who have supported the university as students, parents and alumni; and oh yes, donors. That should be enough to be transparent.
Move on.
If the university wanted to lie to students and the public, the administration never would have come forward and admitted to making the error in the first place. Administrators have said they reported the error because it was the right thing to do, regardless of the possible action that U.S. News would take as a result.
Today’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education explains that “class-rank numbers reported by some other colleges are also based on estimates. Using estimates to evaluate applicants is often a necessary part of admissions, especially as a growing number of high schools have stopped ranking students”(http://chronicle.com/article/Class-Rank-Slippery-Metric/136071/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en). Clearly, this is an issue not only at GW, but at other institutions across the country. Looking forward, perhaps the conversation should focus on whether class rank really is an effective measure of student quality.
The law school had a similar problem in 1994 when we dropped from around 20th to somewhere in the 60s. I don’t remember the exact details, but they either did or didn’t report something they were supposed to.
Anyway, it’s a strange thing to happen 2X to a school.
Then maybe GW should stop saying this was a mistake and just admit what everybody already knows- it was intentional……