https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-southern-california-pulls-out-of-education-school-rankings-citing-data-errors-11648055454?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I could spend a half hour just listing and describing the USC scandals over the last ten years. Yet they still managed to get fairly high marks from USN&WR. The LA Times ran an editorial a year ago with the headline: USC Scandals Have no Shock Value Anymore. This was so bad, USC had to tell the rating agencies to stop rating them.

Filtering by inner Bearister: Mods please move this to OT or Women's Basketball as you deem appropriate

First that story about Columbia University... now this. Watch USNews find some new way to screw Berkeley in the rankings and move us below even more private schools.

wifeisafurd said:

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-southern-california-pulls-out-of-education-school-rankings-citing-data-errors-11648055454?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I could spend a half hour just listing and describing the USC scandals over the last ten years. Yet they still managed to get fairly high marks from USN&WR. The LA Times ran an editorial a year ago with the headline: USC Scandals Have no Shock Value Anymore. This was so bad, USC had to tell the rating agencies to stop rating them.

Filtering by inner Bearister: Mods please move this to OT or Women's Basketball as you deem appropriate

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I don't have a subscription. What role did dean Dr. Pedro Noguera (PhD Cal, deep ties to Berkeley) play? He self-reported the issues, right?

wifeisafurd said:

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-southern-california-pulls-out-of-education-school-rankings-citing-data-errors-11648055454?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I could spend a half hour just listing and describing the USC scandals over the last ten years. Yet they still managed to get fairly high marks from USN&WR. The LA Times ran an editorial a year ago with the headline: USC Scandals Have no Shock Value Anymore. This was so bad, USC had to tell the rating agencies to stop rating them.

Filtering by inner Bearister: Mods please move this to OT or Women's Basketball as you deem appropriate

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Wasn't there a similar controversy regarding our school and USNWR ratings based on false data?

calumnus said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-southern-california-pulls-out-of-education-school-rankings-citing-data-errors-11648055454?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I could spend a half hour just listing and describing the USC scandals over the last ten years. Yet they still managed to get fairly high marks from USN&WR. The LA Times ran an editorial a year ago with the headline: USC Scandals Have no Shock Value Anymore. This was so bad, USC had to tell the rating agencies to stop rating them.

Filtering by inner Bearister: Mods please move this to OT or Women's Basketball as you deem appropriate

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I don't have a subscription. What role did dean Dr. Pedro Noguera (PhD Cal, deep ties to Berkeley) play? He self-reported the issues, right?

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Just to be clear, the "USN&WR scandal" relates solely to the USC graduate school of education. Not all data/rankings for USC.

From the article:

"USC Provost Charles F. Zukoski told students and staff at the Rossier School of Education in a letter Wednesday that the school's dean, Pedro A. Noguera, notified him recently of "a history of inaccuracies in the survey data." A school representative declined to comment beyond the letter.

Dr. Zukoski said the school pulled itself from a set of graduate-school rankings that was set to be released in coming days "while we seek to understand the situation further."

A faculty member familiar with the investigation said the probe is related to whether the school included information about the correct groups of graduate students in its rankings submission. The person said faculty at the education school expressed concern a few years ago about proposed changes to that set of data, which could have artificially inflated average GRE scores."

And to answer the post above, yes Cal had a similar scandal in 2019 related to reporting of alumni donations.

"For UC-Berkeley, the snafu came while reporting the two-year average alumni giving rate for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. The school originally reported that its average giving rate for 2017 and 2016 was 11.6% but only recently reported its 2016 average was actually 7.9%. Berkeley also revealed it has likely been misreporting this particular data point since 2014."

https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2019/07/26/uc-berkeley-booted-from-2019-us-news-ranking/

BearGoggles said:

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calumnus said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-southern-california-pulls-out-of-education-school-rankings-citing-data-errors-11648055454?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I could spend a half hour just listing and describing the USC scandals over the last ten years. Yet they still managed to get fairly high marks from USN&WR. The LA Times ran an editorial a year ago with the headline: USC Scandals Have no Shock Value Anymore. This was so bad, USC had to tell the rating agencies to stop rating them.

Filtering by inner Bearister: Mods please move this to OT or Women's Basketball as you deem appropriate

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I don't have a subscription. What role did dean Dr. Pedro Noguera (PhD Cal, deep ties to Berkeley) play? He self-reported the issues, right?

---

Just to be clear, the "USN&WR scandal" relates solely to the USC graduate school of education. Not all data/rankings for USC.

From the article:

"USC Provost Charles F. Zukoski told students and staff at the Rossier School of Education in a letter Wednesday that the school's dean, Pedro A. Noguera, notified him recently of "a history of inaccuracies in the survey data." A school representative declined to comment beyond the letter.

Dr. Zukoski said the school pulled itself from a set of graduate-school rankings that was set to be released in coming days "while we seek to understand the situation further."

A faculty member familiar with the investigation said the probe is related to whether the school included information about the correct groups of graduate students in its rankings submission. The person said faculty at the education school expressed concern a few years ago about proposed changes to that set of data, which could have artificially inflated average GRE scores."

And to answer the post above, yes Cal had a similar scandal in 2019 related to reporting of alumni donations.

"For UC-Berkeley, the snafu came while reporting the two-year average alumni giving rate for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. The school originally reported that its average giving rate for 2017 and 2016 was 11.6% but only recently reported its 2016 average was actually 7.9%. Berkeley also revealed it has likely been misreporting this particular data point since 2014."

https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2019/07/26/uc-berkeley-booted-from-2019-us-news-ranking/

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I probably should have indcated the scope of this scandal was to the School of Education. SC's scandals have hit almost every school on campus: Medical, Business, Athletics, Social Work, and Anneberg (Communications and Journalism). The widespread systematic misconduct still has not hurt USC's overall rating.

I was unaware Cal had a reporting issue. I seem to recall USC also reporrted test scores differently, but perhaps my recall is off,

wifeisafurd said:

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BearGoggles said:

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calumnus said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-southern-california-pulls-out-of-education-school-rankings-citing-data-errors-11648055454?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I could spend a half hour just listing and describing the USC scandals over the last ten years. Yet they still managed to get fairly high marks from USN&WR. The LA Times ran an editorial a year ago with the headline: USC Scandals Have no Shock Value Anymore. This was so bad, USC had to tell the rating agencies to stop rating them.

Filtering by inner Bearister: Mods please move this to OT or Women's Basketball as you deem appropriate

---

I don't have a subscription. What role did dean Dr. Pedro Noguera (PhD Cal, deep ties to Berkeley) play? He self-reported the issues, right?

---

Just to be clear, the "USN&WR scandal" relates solely to the USC graduate school of education. Not all data/rankings for USC.

From the article:

"USC Provost Charles F. Zukoski told students and staff at the Rossier School of Education in a letter Wednesday that the school's dean, Pedro A. Noguera, notified him recently of "a history of inaccuracies in the survey data." A school representative declined to comment beyond the letter.

Dr. Zukoski said the school pulled itself from a set of graduate-school rankings that was set to be released in coming days "while we seek to understand the situation further."

A faculty member familiar with the investigation said the probe is related to whether the school included information about the correct groups of graduate students in its rankings submission. The person said faculty at the education school expressed concern a few years ago about proposed changes to that set of data, which could have artificially inflated average GRE scores."

And to answer the post above, yes Cal had a similar scandal in 2019 related to reporting of alumni donations.

"For UC-Berkeley, the snafu came while reporting the two-year average alumni giving rate for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. The school originally reported that its average giving rate for 2017 and 2016 was 11.6% but only recently reported its 2016 average was actually 7.9%. Berkeley also revealed it has likely been misreporting this particular data point since 2014."

https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2019/07/26/uc-berkeley-booted-from-2019-us-news-ranking/

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I probably should have indcated the scope of this scandal was to the School of Education. SC's scandals have hit almost every school on campus: Medical, Business, Athletics, Social Work, and Anneberg (Communications and Journalism). The widespread systematic misconduct still has not hurt USC's overall rating.

I was unaware Cal had a reporting issue. I seem to recall USC also reporrted test scores differently, but perhaps my recall is off,

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Agree - lots of scandal at USC - so your overriding premise is correct.

I believe the prior reporting "nuance" at USC had (maybe still has?) to do with the fact that the SAT/ACT scores USC reported for its entering class reflected only Fall semester admissions, which as I recall was different than other schools. It was acknowledged that many of the lesser scoring students (e.g., legacy admits) were deferred to Spring semester or told to study abroad for a year as part of the trojan transfer program.

Cheat On!

Wait a minute, so our "issue" was over reporting the number of graduates who make contributions back to the university?

OskiBear11Math said:

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First that story about Columbia University... now this. Watch USNews find some new way to screw Berkeley in the rankings and move us below even more private schools.

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Please summarize the Columbia story.


Thanks

I believe OskiBear11Math is referring to An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking which is written by a math professor at Columbia.

Executive Summary

Copy paste of Executive Summary's Overview.

Quote:

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OVERVIEW
The U.S. News ranking is a long-standing and highly visible ranking of American universities.
Columbia's ranking has steadily risen from 18th place in 1988 to 2nd place in 2022.
Much of the data supporting Columbia's high ranking, however, proves to be inaccurate,
dubious, or highly misleading.
There is a pattern of discrepancies, in Columbia's favor, between data reported to U.S. News
and data available elsewhere.
Almost all elite universities release detailed statistical information to the public in the form of a
Common Data Set. Yet unlike every other Ivy League school, Columbia does not issue a
Common Data Set.

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IMO the first link is worth reading in its entirety.

USNWR rankings are a joke. #22 in National Universities and #4 in World rankings.

JadenceBear said:

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I believe OskiBear11Math is referring to An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking which is written by a math professor at Columbia.

Executive Summary

Copy paste of Executive Summary's Overview.

Quote:

---

OVERVIEW
The U.S. News ranking is a long-standing and highly visible ranking of American universities.
Columbia's ranking has steadily risen from 18th place in 1988 to 2nd place in 2022.
Much of the data supporting Columbia's high ranking, however, proves to be inaccurate,
dubious, or highly misleading.
There is a pattern of discrepancies, in Columbia's favor, between data reported to U.S. News
and data available elsewhere.
Almost all elite universities release detailed statistical information to the public in the form of a
Common Data Set. Yet unlike every other Ivy League school, Columbia does not issue a
Common Data Set.

---

IMO the first link is worth reading in its entirety.

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Thank you for the link. Excellent article.

Go Lions!

U$C Cheating?!! I am shocked, shocked!!!

Go Bears!

calbear80 said:

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U$C Cheating?!! I am shocked, shocked!!!

Go Bears!

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What I remember about this is that, at USC, they reported the "average" SAT scores for their incoming students by using the highest scores the student achieved on Math and English - even if they were achieved on different tests.

Simply put the USN&W rankings are a joke and VERY much subject to data manipulation. They have also had a horrible impacts - not the least of which is that since rankings are raised by being "selective" colleges have every incentive to inflate the "denominator" of those applying and thus creating a generation + of families that are stressed beyond belief about college.

So of all the USC misdeeds this one isn't rising my ire.

SoCalie said:

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What I remember about this is that, at USC, they reported the "average" SAT scores for their incoming students by using the highest scores the student achieved on Math and English - even if they were achieved on different tests.

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This is standard practice in many university admissions. It is called "super scoring" and it was pioneered by private schools who wanted to be able to brag about high test scores of their admission classes. Now even some public schools do it. It is also done with the ACT. Students now plan their testing and prep with this in mind.

The University of California system did not super score before it eliminated the tests as an application requirement. UC used the highest overall individual test date.

Quote:

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JadenceBear said:
I believe OskiBear11Math is referring to An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking which is written by a math professor at Columbia.

Executive Summary

Copy paste of Executive Summary's Overview.

Quote:

---

OVERVIEW
The U.S. News ranking is a long-standing and highly visible ranking of American universities.
Columbia's ranking has steadily risen from 18th place in 1988 to 2nd place in 2022.
Much of the data supporting Columbia's high ranking, however, proves to be inaccurate,
dubious, or highly misleading.
There is a pattern of discrepancies, in Columbia's favor, between data reported to U.S. News
and data available elsewhere.
Almost all elite universities release detailed statistical information to the public in the form of a
Common Data Set. Yet unlike every other Ivy League school, Columbia does not issue a
Common Data Set.

---

IMO the first link is worth reading in its entirety.

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update: U.S. News & World Report has unranked Columbia after Columbia failed to substantiate previously submitted data.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/07/07/the-fallout-continues-us-news-pulls-columbia-university-from-its-2022-rankings/?sh=8b68dbe4a768