Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article.
As per the quote at the top of the report:
> Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score...
It would be shocking to me if Columbia was the only institution that fudged its numbers a bit in pursuit of a higher US News ranking. Given how important that ranking has become in US culture, I wonder if it's time for the methodology to change to require audited/auditable metrics rather than continuing to allow self-reporting.
As per the quote at the top of the report:
> Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score...
It would be shocking to me if Columbia was the only institution that fudged its numbers a bit in pursuit of a higher US News ranking. Given how important that ranking has become in US culture, I wonder if it's time for the methodology to change to require audited/auditable metrics rather than continuing to allow self-reporting.
1: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~thaddeus/ranking/investigation...