Diana Senechal says that Emory is not likely the only university that fudged the data to raise its rankings in U.S. News & World Report.

I imagine Emory isn’t the only one that fabricated its data. There’s a lot of subtle fudging going on all over the place–and with subtle fudging comes not-so-subtle fudging.

What about all the colleges that boost their application rates so that they can appear more selective? That, too, is a way of fudging the numbers–and it’s widespread. A New York Times article from 2010 describes this phenomenon in detail:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/edlife/07HOOVER-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I wrote a satirical piece this week on the subject of data-fudging in higher education. When I wrote it, I wasn’t aware of the Emory story, but I might as well have been.

http://www.cronknews.com/2012/08/29/universitys-fake-following-sets-world-record/