Columbia Won’t Submit Data for U.S. News Rankings This Year? WTF?

Said Chancellor, T Snitz Esq "if we can't cheat I'm not playing". "Besides I've never taken performance enhancing drugs".

Columbia Won’t Submit Data for U.S. News Rankings This Year

School cites review it began after professor alleged widespread inaccuracies in prior report

By Melissa Korn, WSJ

June 30, 2022 7:45 pm ET

Columbia University won’t submit information to be included in next year’s U.S. News & World Report college ranking, citing a review it launched in response to a faculty member’s public concerns about data the school provided in the past.

The New York Ivy League school was tied with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the No. 2 Best National University in last year’s ranking. The list is considered by many prospective students as a definitive guide to the country’s top schools, and institutions had a July 1 deadline to submit their newest data. Columbia said it won’t be able to complete its review in time.

A representative from U.S. News & World Report didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this year Columbia math professor Michael Thaddeus accused his school of reporting inaccurate figures for a number of elements considered in the rankings, including instructional spending, class sizes and count of full-time faculty.

Dr. Thaddeus’s analysis, posted on his faculty website in February and updated in March, compares information used in the latest ranking against data Columbia released internally and in financial statements.

“It certainly raises my eyebrows and it certainly calls for an explanation,” he said in an interview at the time.

At the time Dr. Thaddeus made his initial allegations, Columbia said it stood by the figures it submitted for the rankings and declined to comment further.

Provost Mary C. Boyce said Thursday that the school immediately began a review of its data collection and submission process upon learning of Dr. Thaddeus’s concerns.

“Columbia has long conducted what we believed to be a thorough process for gathering and reporting institutional data, but we are now closely reviewing our processes in light of the questions raised,” Dr. Boyce said. “The ongoing review is a matter of integrity. We will take no shortcuts in getting it right.”

Columbia’s announcement is the latest in a string of setbacks for the rankings.

In March, a federal judge sentenced Moshe Porat, a former Temple University business-school dean, to 14 months in prison and ordered him to pay $250,000, after he was convicted on fraud charges tied to inflating that school’s online M.B.A. rankings.

Also in March, the University of Southern California said it was pulling its Rossier School of Education from consideration in the publication’s graduate-school rankings. An internal review later found the school’s dean directed administrators to omit information from its submission to boost the school’s placement dating back to at least 2013.

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com