The deadline for submitting data for the ranking is Friday, and a university spokesman said officials need more time to analyze the data and deal with criticism from Professor Michael Thaddeus. In a strong review of 21 pages published on his website, Dr. Thaddeus in February not only challenged the data behind the grades, but added fuel to the debate over whether college grades – used by millions of prospective students and their parents – are valuable. or accurate. “Columbia leaders are taking these questions seriously and we have immediately begun a review of our data collection and submission process,” Columbia Professor Mary C. Boyce said in a statement. At the time, Columbia stood by its data, but Dr Boyce said the university was “now closely monitoring our procedures in light of the questions raised”. “Ongoing review is a matter of integrity,” he continued. “We will not make shortcuts to do it right.” A Columbia spokesman, Ben Chang, said he did not want to speculate on when Columbia would return to the rankings. For an Ivy League school like Columbia, dropping out of the rankings, even temporarily, is a blow to their reputation and could push other universities to reconsider. Many college presidents complain that their grades force them to focus on statistics that oversimplify what it takes to find a good match between a student and a school. Dr Thaddeus said Thursday night that the move raises a number of questions that Columbia has yet to answer. “Does the university itself express its disapproval of the US News rankings?” wrote in an email. “Will he retire in the coming years? Why can’t the project be completed? “What was it about the questions I asked that obviously derailed the process?” The university had not made “any substantive answers to the specific questions I raised,” he added. In the critique of Dr. Thaddeus said he had gathered evidence that Columbia had made its undergraduate classes appear smaller, its tuition costs appear higher and its teachers appear more educated. The next edition of the ranking is scheduled for release in September, officials said. To help prospective students navigate without it, Dr. Boyce said Columbia planned to publish a Common Data Set in the fall, a loosely standardized set of statistics used by higher education institutions. He said it would include much of the same information contained in US News profiles. Dr Thaddeus said he understood that Columbia had prepared such datasets in the past for its own internal use, but did not disclose them. “The thing is, they have documents that would shed light on their previous submissions to US News – and may even reveal whether their falsifications were intentional or unintentional – but they refuse to make them public, even after the vast majority of school members “Those who voted asked them to do so,” he said. Mr Chang, the spokesman, declined to comment on Dr. Thaddeus on the Common Data Set, but noted Columbia’s commitment to release a data set this fall. “The university has long been conducting a process that it thought was thorough,” he said. “Our goal is maximum accuracy and transparency.” Critics say US News’s formula tends to reward schools based on wealth and reputation. In his analysis, Dr. Thaddeus, who specializes in algebraic geometry, found that the basic supporting data submitted by Columbia were “inaccurate, doubtful or extremely misleading.” This year, Columbia climbed one place in the No. 2 ranking. The university surpassed only Princeton and tied with Harvard and MIT. Dr. Thaddeus noted that Columbia ranked 18th in 1988, a rise that he suggested was remarkable. “Why have Columbia’s fortunes improved so dramatically?” he asked in his analysis. Columbia is not the first university to dispute its ranking. This year, the University of Southern California withdrew its educational school from the US News rankings due to inaccuracies in data that went back five years. A former dean of the Temple University School of Business was also found guilty last year of using fake data between 2014 and 2018 to improve the school’s national ranking and increase revenue. The school’s online MBA program ranked better in the country than US News & World Report in the years it falsified data. Over the years, other schools such as Iona College, Claremont McKenna College and Emory University have been found to have falsified or manipulated data.
