The
number 3 carries with it a power and significance that few other numbers
possess. In Christian theology there is
the Trinity, and in hockey there is the hat trick. There are three wise men, three musketeers,
three tenors, three little pigs, and three stooges. In baseball you have three strikes and three
outs.
There
is also an old saying that bad things happen in threes. Those of us in the college admissions
profession better hope that bad things happen only in threes after the news
this morning that for the third time this year a prominent institution has admitted
to inflating and misreporting admissions data.
Today’s
culprit is George Washington University, which has updated the famous quote
from its namesake, “I cannot tell a lie,” to “I cannot tell a lie (any longer).” According to today’s Washington Post and the
Chronicle of Higher Education, an internal investigation showed that GW has
been submitting incorrect data regarding class rank. For the current year GW reported that 78% of
incoming freshman were in the top 10% of their high school classes when the
actual number of 58%. The discrepancy
comes from the fact that rank was estimated for some outstanding students
coming from schools that do not provide class rank. According to the Chronicle, only 38% of GW
freshmen had class rank reported.
I
don’t find the revelations about GW quite as egregious as the manipulation of
SAT scores reported earlier this year for Claremont McKenna and Emory. (I will follow up this post with some
thoughts about the Emory situation shortly.) I concur with my St. Christopher’s
colleague Scott Mayer, who said this morning upon learning about GW, “It’s a
shame that schools get into trouble for doing stupid stuff.” Implicit in his comment is that the real
shame is doing the stupid stuff in the first place.
Calling
it stupid is not excusing it or lessening judgment that it’s wrong. The estimating of class rank was not an
accident but deliberate, a form of institutional cosmetic surgery designed to
make GW look more attractive. It’s also
not clear whether rank was estimated for every student from schools that don’t
rank, or only those likely to raise the percentage. The latter would make the deception more
ethically offensive.
The
broader, recurring question for all of these cases is how meaningful these
measures of institutional “quality” or “prestige” really are. What do admit rate or yield or mean SAT scores
really tell us, and is any potential meaning mitigated by how easily they can
be manipulated? In the case of class rank, is there any point in reporting what
percentage of freshmen are in the top 10% of the class when two-thirds of
applicants come from school that don’t rank?
A
year ago, at the NACAC Conference in New Orleans, I was a presenter on a panel
devoted to “College Admission and Counseling in the 21st Century.” My fellow panelists were Jerry Lucido,
Executive Director of the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice
at the University of Southern California, and Lee Coffin, Dean of Undergraduate
Admissions at Tufts.
Jerry’s
remarks at the session referenced an article he wrote for the Chronicle of
Higher Education in January, 2011. That
article called on colleges to rethink the metrics they use. He argued that colleges and universities
would be better served measuring their success in:
--educating
first generation and low-income students;
--habits
of mind and skills developed;
--student
participation in research, international experiences, community service, and
interdisciplinary study.
Lee
talked about the selective admissions process, and differentiated between “data”
and “voice.” He argued that voice is far
more important because so many students have strong data (grades, scores).
That’s
true for institutions as well as for students.
Colleges and universities focus on making their data look impressive but
ignore or fail to find their voice (or the focus on manipulating image through
data reflects their voice). The college
experience, as well as the college admissions business, is far more about voice
than data.