Yes, that is my point, it would be interesting to me to see how material of an impact some of these data “distortions” might have had. You have said a number of times that Columbia is a great institution. I see no one debating that. This thread is about whether data was distorted or manipulated and resulted in a higher ranking due specifically to distortions. And yes we know now, lol, that they have some office that oversees data integrity. I would love to hear them explain that $100K instruction spending per student.
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Is Columbia U better now than it was 34 years ago? I sure hope so! What no one knows is, how their factually significant improvements/investments/expansions in facilities, offerings, etc. compare to other universities “numerically” – if relativized to 1988.
Coming out of the 70s and 80s, Columbia certainly started from a relative “low point” for them (also reflected in alumni giving). So I absolutely can see that by several measures their “bouncing back” would objectively be reflected in relatively more “growth” than other institutions who successfully managed to maintain being “in a good place” over those same 34 years.
(Frankly, the scoring differences between the top 10 or even top 20 are so minute that they are more reflective of changes in weighting/algorithms. Having any “overall” ranking between them at all is mostly a “forced” outcome to sell copies.)
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I think Columbia’s increase in rank should be considered in two distinct segments. (1) Columbia increased 10 places in the 2 year interval from 1988 to 1990, from 18th to 8th. (2) Columbia increased 6 places in the 32 year interval from 1990 to now, from a position alone at 8th to its position in a 3-way tie for 2nd currently.
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Agreed. USNews attempts to apply a methodology to rank undergrad colleges. And their methodology is published for all to see. More importantly, USNews has made changes to their methodology over the years in response to input from colleges. Those that dismiss the rankings are free to recommend changes to the methodology to make it better; or just continue to dismiss them outright, fact-free perhaps with the belief that it is mathematically impossible to rank undergraduate colleges.
btw: Columbia and other colleges may certainly complete a CDS or much of it. Just bcos they do not make it public does not mean that they don’t capture the data, (or much of it), and submit it to USNews.
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not even close to being similar. Columbia completed the forms requested by USNews and stands by the data that they submitted. Not all colleges publish their CDS.
btw: not sure why this thread contains so many political shots, which are off point.
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Columbia is being accused by one of its own professors, a math professor, for providing bad info or misrepresenting (inflating) their numbers. One poster above called it “fraud.” Columbia has gone silent. No response as of yet. They may never respond.
If you produce numbers, and publish those numbers, then you should be able to prove them. Period. As for the previously mentioned similarity, it’s STILL there IMO, whether you agree with it or not.
Bad numbers, no numbers, it’s all the same to me.
Just bcos an anonymous poster on an internet site labels something as a fraud doesn’t make it so. (surprised you’d go there)
And Digital Dad reported Columbia’s response upthread. (perhaps you missed it)
What more should they say, besides ‘we stand behind the data provided to USNews; we followed their instructions.’ Do you really expect them to get into a blow-by-blow response to the Professor’s claims? Why? (College Faculty make claims all the time about their Administrations, and if the Admin spent their time addressing each and every claim, they couldn’t do their ‘day jobs.’)
As an aside, personally, I think all colleges should make their CDS public, but it is voluntary and they voluntarily choose not to. Their choice. (And we are free to criticize them if they don’t. Not that Columbia University cares what I think.)
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And the similarity grows. 
The numbers don’t appear to “add up.” Posted above, Temple’s former business school dean got a 14-month sentence in a rankings scandal fraud case. And then there was Varsity Blues, which was a different type of college scandal. Colleges should be beyond reproach IMO. Held to a higher standard, since they’re educating our/my kids.
So, Columbia has been “called to the mat,” now let’s see if they can “wrestle.” Otherwise, until they respond with verifiable numbers, when I look at their USNWR ranking, I’ll say to myself, “ya, right.”
Or, just wait until next year to see what the ‘refereee’ chooses to do since they too, where ‘called out’ by the Prof USNews is now on notice, so they can review their instructions and Columbia’s response to see if they are in sync. If not, the independent company can make a call wrt Columbia. (Or, watch other colleges with a med school interpret their numbers similarly.)
I also don’t expect them to say “You caught us. Feel free to remove us from USNWR, ruin careers, and/or possibly bring up criminal charges like occurred at Temple.” The response that was given is vague and not meaningful.
Rather than addressing the professor’s specific comments, the spokesperson said, " the university’s climb up the rankings was propelled by U.S. News’s recent shift to give more weight to the graduation rates of low-income students, an area in which Columbia representatives said the school performs well".
The new USNWR “social mobility” category adds in a low 5% weighting for some stats related to Pell graduation rate. A comparison of how Columbia does compared to other top USNWR ranked colleges is below, listed in approximate order from best to worst. I took the median of the past 3 years. Columbia seems to perform slightly below average among top USNWR ranked colleges in this category. It does not appear that the small 5% weighting for this new category is propelling USNWR up in the rankings, as the Columbia spokesperson claims. If anything, it’s hurting Columbia.
- Chicago – 94% Pell / 95% All
- Harvard – 95% Pell / 97% All
- Stanford – 93% Pell / 94% All
- Yale – 94% Pell / 97% All
- Columbia – 93% Pell / 96% All
- Princeton – 94% Pell / 98% All
- MIT – 92% Pell / 95% All
Rather than Columbia’s numerical USNWR ranking, I am far more concerned with the professor’s specific claims about misrepresenting information to USNWR, as described at Columbia and U.S. News . A summary of those points are below.
- Class Size – Columbia reports 82.5% of Columbia classes less than 20 students, which is the best among all of the 100 USNWR colleges, by a good margin. The professor calculated that the actual figure was between 62.7% and 66.9%. University responded to this claim and says the professor wasn’t using the final certified list of classes, so his estimate may differ from the actual.
- Faculty with Terminal Degrees – Columbia reports 100% of faculty have terminal degrees, which is well above peer colleges. This conflicts with other sources including the Columbia University Bulletin. The professor calculated that the actual figure was 96%
- Faculty that are Full Time – Columbia reports to USNWR that 96.5% of faculty are full time, which is well above peers. However, they reported to IPEDS that 74.1% of non-medical faculty was full time.
- Student Faculty Ratio – Professor claims Columbia is one of several peer colleges that reports to USNWR in an incorrect interpretation of USNWR rules. Even if accepting the interpretation, he says Columbia should round up to 7:1 rather than truncate down to 6:1.
- Spending on Instruction – Columbia reports spending >$3 billion on instruction to USNWR, which is more than Harvard, Yale, and Princeton combined. Columbia reports spending >$1 billion less on instruction in their public financial statements. Part of the discrepancy relates to Columbia moving $1 billion spending from hospital patient care to student instruction when reporting to USNWR.
- Graduation Rate – Seems to be more an issue with USNWR not including transfer students in graduation rate than something Columbia reported wrong. Professor notes that Columbia has a surprisingly large number of transfers, and transfer graduation rate is subpar.
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For me, it has been important to understand Columbia’s historical numerical ranking (and underlying score) because it pertains to how long Columbia may have been misrepresenting its figures to U.S. News. Columbia has moved from 8th position to its current top-4 position across 32 years, which can be viewed as a minor change for this time span. Therefore, misrepresentation that applies to today also may have applied in the past. Columbia’s misleading information may have been contributing to its rank for decades. To go further, the earlier misrepresentation may have established Columbia’s currently high rank through recursive effects.
Neither IPEDs nor CDS (B4-B21) include transfer students when calculating 4, 5, and 6 year graduation rates…colleges should(!) report the same stats they report on both of these survey instruments. These grad rates are designed to include only the first year, full time cohorts (less those that are removed for allowable exclusions).
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The only reason I scrolled down this thread was to see when someone would bring up that old article. Northeastern has never been accused of falsifying its data.
I.e. gaming (within the rules), but not cheating.
In contrast, the accusation against Columbia is of cheating.
It’s possible that Columbia has not included any information for its over 2600 School of General Studies undergraduate students in the data it submits to U.S. News, even for those from this group who entered without college credit. As an indication of this, even the undergraduate enrollment that USN reports for Columbia (6170) apparently excludes these students. As an area of potential misrepresentation, this could be as important as any other aspect that has been discussed.
I am surprised Columbia wasn’t more sophisticated in its cheating. Really, claiming instruction expenditures exceeded those of HYP combined? Ham-handed and silly.
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Typical lawyer. Not disappointed by the offense but the stupidity of getting caught (said entirely in jest)
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Wouldn’t you need to see the specific info request that US News provides to determine whether it was cheating versus gaming? Are the info requests themselves public? I haven’t seen one.
Columbia responses may well be within the letter of request but not the spirit of it. I would at that point put it on US News to better refine their request. Though even then, there will be gaming (which I expect happens with pretty much every school).
And it may well be the case that Columbia responses were not within the letter of the request and were cheating. Some people may view violating the spirit of the request as cheating as well. But I do think that is likely common.
Columbia College is very different in admissions and low transfer acceptance in comparison to the School of General Studies, and awards separate degrees.
The School of Engineering is also different from the School of General Studies. The School of General Studies is for students age 21 and over who wish to pursue and undergraduate degree.
So, totally different sets of statistics.
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