Columbia To Pay $9 Million To Settle Lawsuit Over US News College Ranking Data

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Columbia University has agreed to pay $9 million to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit by a former student who claimed the school submitted inaccurate data to U.S. News & World Report, artificially inflating its position in the publication’s annual ranking of American universities.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, a university spokesperson said Columbia did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the agreement and is entering into the settlement to “avoid protracted and costly litigation.”

“Columbia University has reached a settlement agreement regarding the alleged misreporting of data to U.S. News & World Report in connection with its Best Colleges rankings,” the spokesperson said.

The settlement covers about 22,000 undergraduate students at Columbia College, Columbia Engineering, and Columbia’s School of General Studies who were enrolled from the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2022, the spokesperson said.

“While the University denies any wrongdoing, it deeply regrets deficiencies in prior reporting and has adopted new steps to improve the quality and accuracy of information available to prospective students,” the spokesperson added. “Since 2022, the University has published Common Data Sets for all three undergraduate schools which are reviewed by a well-established, independent advisory firm to ensure reporting accuracy.”

The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed against Columbia’s Board of Trustees in August 2022 by a former student who accused the university of misrepresenting some of the data it submitted to U.S. News & World Report’s (USNWR’s) annual list.

According to the complaint, Columbia’s USNWR ranking has steadily risen from 18th place in 1988 to 2nd place in 2022 through the reporting of false data.

The lawsuit stated that USNWR’s yearly college rankings are popular with the general public and influence university application patterns. It further said the publication relies on universities, including Columbia, to self-report the data, which is then used to determine the universities’ rankings.

In March 2022, Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics at Columbia, published an article concluding that the university had misreported data to USNWR.

The lawsuit said that Thaddeus found, among other things, that Columbia reported to USNWR that 82.5 percent of undergraduate classes enroll fewer than 20 students, which marked a higher percentage than any other school in the top 100 USNWR rankings.

His analysis of data from Columbia’s Directory of Classes indicated that the correct figure was likely between 62.7 percent and 66.9 percent, the lawsuit said.

Columbia also told USNWR that 8.9 percent of undergraduate classes enroll 50 students or more, but an analysis of data from Columbia’s Directory of Classes indicated that figure was more likely between 10.6 percent and 12.4 percent, according to the lawsuit.

The university also told the publication that 96.5 percent of its non-medical faculty are full-time, but the analysis by Thaddeus found that the correct figure was likely 74.1 percent. It also reported that its student-faculty ratio is 6:1, but Thaddeus found it was likely 11:1.

The lawsuit stated that Colombia’s actions were “objectively false, misleading and deceptive.” They also led to students paying “premiums for tuition, fees and costs based, in material part, upon Columbia’s USNWR ranking,” according to the lawsuit.

It alleged breach of contract, unjust enrichment, common law fraud, and violation of New York General Business Law.

In September 2022, the university said that it had “previously relied on outdated and/or incorrect methodologies” for some of the data it had submitted to USNWR and said it had changed those methodologies for current and future data submissions.

Then-Provost Mary Boyce said in a statement that “anything less than complete accuracy in the data that we report—regardless of the size or the reason—is inconsistent with the standards of excellence to which Columbia holds itself.”

“We deeply regret the deficiencies in our prior reporting and are committed to doing better,” Boyce added.

In June 2023, Columbia said its undergraduate schools would stop submitting data to the U.S. News rankings, saying it remained “concerned with the role that rankings have assumed in the undergraduate application process.”

It said the rankings appeared to have an outsized influence on prospective students and may “distill a university’s profile into a composite of data categories.”