<p>I agree with Fickle. There should be no equivalent to the “death penalty” in rankings, because it doesn’t serve a purpose, and would end up being misleading.</p>
<p>The death penalty as used in NCAA sports is meant not just as a punishment, but an admonishment that “you are not welcome on the playground anymore.” The equivalent in the academic world would be to strip a school of accreditation (which incidentally, Penn State could still face, over the Sandusky situation).</p>
<p>Those who rank schools have a few choices: They can allow the school to continue to be rank as usual, but now based on accurate figures. Assuming these figures made any difference, it will result in a drop in ranking. People may or may not notice and react to that drop. and set a trend with the school. Secondly, they use an asterisk to inform readers that there were issues witht he previous rankings, and draw attention to the problems. Third they could change the way they rank schools, to unclude some mearsure of integrity, which may or may not result in a change to the rankings.</p>
<p>Did the cheating actually impact the teaching at the school? I doubt it. The rankings are purported to be about the relative quality of education offered at these schools. If the quality of education is impacted by the ranking, then consider a penalty. But what is the purpose of the penalty? The bans faced by PSU football are meant to “level the playing field,” but is that what we want here? Is it even necessary? They didn’t fudge their acceptance rate, they fudged data about tin enrolled class. If anything, it made it look like the average student was stronger, and may have ended up discouraging potentail applications, who though they “weren’t good enough.”</p>