Claremont McKenna College recently announced that it had been sending inflated SAT scores to US News since 2005.

According to news accounts, the vice president and dean of admissions admitted inflating the scores and resigned. The college’s critical reading scores were inflated by an average of 17 points and the math scores were bumped up by an average of 10.5 points.   Here is where you can find a detailed explanation of the manipulation.

Other Colleges Being Deceitful

Claremont McKenna is hardly the only school that has fudged, or in some cases, falsified its numbers. Baylor University, for instance, essentially bribed its incoming freshmen one year into retaking the SAT. The freshmen were already admitted to Baylor so there was no reason to revisit the test. Baylor’s stunt, which managed to boost the school’s average SAT score by 10 points, triggered a huge outcry.

The U.S. Naval Academy was embarrassed when it became public that its applicant rejection rate wasn’t nearly as high as the institution was reporting. At an industry conference, a Clemson University administrator shared a laundry list of ways that her institution was manipulating its figures to boost its college rankings. What prompted gasps from the audience was the administrator’s observation that Clemson rated all other schools in US News’ survey as below average to make it look better.

Schools also falsify the number of their full-time faculty. I did a story in 2009 for my college blog at CBS MoneyWatch that illustrated that schools, in this case the most elite of institutions, gave US News the wrong figures on the percentage of its faculty who were full-time. Here is an excerpt:

You can read my entire post here:  Are Ivy League Schools Fudging Their Numbers?

Despite what US News, which isn’t even a magazine anymore, might suggest, colleges and universities are on the honor system when submitting data.  In a New York Times article yesterday, Robert Morse, who heads up US News’ rankings operation, said he has a team of four to six people reviewing the data. Hmmmm. Really Bob? Really?

Here’s the Real Scandal

In my opinion, the biggest news isn’t that schools are obsessed with looking better in the rankings, but what the rankings have done to our higher-ed system. In pursuit of rankings glory, schools across the country have adopted policies about how they spend their money, whom they admit, and what kind of financial aid they distribute that have negatively impacted millions of American families. Now that’s the real scandal!

I’ll write more about this tomorrow.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and She also writes a college blog for  CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

Join Me at My College Workshop on Saturday!

There are a few slots left for the college workshop that I will be  holding at the University of California, San Diego this Saturday (Feb. 4). At the Finding the Right College Workshop, you will learn specific strategies to increase your child’s admission chances, ways to evaluate colleges and universities, essential ACT and SAT information and what you need to know about  college rankings.

You can learn more here and sign up for the workshop here.

Last week our son Ben called the house wanting to know if we wanted to Skype. We usually call him every Sunday to find out how he’s doing so whenever he contacts us it’s a big surprise.

His primary reason for calling was to share with us how hard he was studying for his math final exam. He ended up having three hours to complete 10 problems and it was a brutal test.

Ben flew home yesterday afternoon and will probably sleep until noon today. I’m mentioning my son, who is a sophomore at Beloit College, because it’s providing me with an excuse to share a fascinating story that I stumbled across last week in Time Magazine about the study habits of South Korean students. In South Korea, students treat every day as if they were cramming for finals.

Students there study so much after school that there are laws against excessive studying. Here is how the article begins:

One student was quoted in the story as saying, “All we do is study, except when we sleep.”  The typical student begins classes at 8 am. and stops between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Seventy four percent of all South Korean students participate in private after-school instruction. In South Korea there are more private tutors than their school teachers and the most popular ones make millions of dollars of year in online and in-person classes.

Cramming is an entrenched tradition in Asia where typically grades and test scores are what counts to succeed professionally.

South Koreans kicks American kids’ butts on standardized testing and, in fact, beat almost all other nations, but they are paying a price:

This story reminded me of an article I read several years ago in The New York Times about South Koreans’ desire to  get into Ivy League institutions. It highlights residential academies whose focus is to get students into top American universities. Their days begin at 6 a.m. and for some they don’t end until 2 a.m. when the dorm lights are turned off.

President Obama has talked longingly about the South Korean educational system and the South Koreans have talked about Americanizing their system. Too bad we couldn’t combine the American and South Korean systems of education.  Now that would be impressive.

In the meantime, if you child complains about his or her exam schedule, pull out this post.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of a workBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: Great Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. She also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of US News and World Report’s college rankings even though I write a college blog for the magazine.  The methodology is flawed and the rankings sponsor does not try to measure what kind of education students receive at their schools. What I find even more troubling is the fact that  college rankings have encouraged colleges to behave very badly.

I’m bringing this up today because US News has just released its 2012 college rankings. Surprise, surprise. According to US News, Harvard University is the No. 1 ranked university and Williams College is the top dog among liberal arts colleges.

I thought I’d use the latest college rankings release as an opportunity to share just one of my pet peeves with US News’ college rankings. The magazine’s college rankings amount to a strange beauty contest.

Reputation plays a heavy role in deciding who will be the alpha dogs in the US News & World Report’s college rankings and who will be the mutts. That’s a major reason why the schools that enjoy a great reputation – deserved or not – monopolize the top rankings spots. Reputation had traditionally accounted for 25% of a college or university’s ranking.  How the magazine determines reputation is crazy.

How is a College Doing on a Scale of 1 to 5?

Every year, the magazine sends out three surveys to each institution in a particular category, such as national universities or liberal arts colleges. Three administrators in the office of the president, admissions and provost are supposed to fill out the surveys. The folks stuck with this chore are expected to grade each of their peers on a 1-to-5 scale. The best score is a 5 and the worst is a 1.

Any guess which schools get a heap of 5 scores?’ Beyond the automatic high scores of some schools and the crappy scores of others, what has always irked me is that universities and colleges are supposed to know what’s going on at their “peer” institutions and that’s impossible. You can’t tell me, for instance, that administrators at the University of Wisconsin can assess the academic quality of hundreds of its peers including Georgia State, University of Missouri, University of Chicago, Rutgers, MIT, San Diego State and the College of William & Mary.

Changing the College Ranking Reputation Scores

The magazine has deservedly received a lot of flack for basing so much of its ranking on these dubious reputation assessments. I suppose that’s one reason why the magazine dropped the reputation rating down slightly to 22.5% of the total score for its 2011 rankings roll-out. The magazine also shrunk the opinions of the schools themselves to 15% and it added the opinions of high school counselors (7.5%).

Frankly, I don’t think high school counselors are in any better position to measure the reputation of individual schools across the country.   Many counselors know little about the schools outside their own state. In fact, they may know little about schools beyond their own state institutions – if that.

How to Use the Rankings

It’s fine to use US News & World Report’s  college rankings as a starting point to gather names of schools to consider in your college. But please don’t assume that the No. 1 school must be better than School No. 2 or No. 50 or the school ranked as 100th best. It’s up to you to evaluate what schools are best for you or your child. Sure that’s a lot harder than taking your cues from the magazine, but a heck of a lot is at stake.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News & World Report.

Read More:

Blaming College Rankings for Runaway College Costs

What Ever Happened to Shakespeare?

4 Ways to Check Out Colleges and Universities

This week, I’ve been focusing on colleges and universities that are pricey. Here the the posts if you’ve missed them:

 Is That Flagship Worth the Price?

Attending Expensive East Coast Universities

The majority of students limit their college choices to schools within two hours of driving distance, but those who want to look elsewhere tend to salivate over the same expensive dream schools.

When you look at lists of dream schools, they tend to be prestigious state flagship universities (for nonresidents), as well as many of the private institutions that are parked primarily in cities on the East Coast. Thanks to supply and demand, these schools can command much higher prices. I wrote a story about the hazards of dream schools earlier this year for my college blog for CBS MoneyWatch:

What’s Wrong With America’s Dream Colleges

Thinking Outside the Box

If you haven’t saved a quarter million dollars for your child’s education to pay for the dream schools that are eager to gouge you, here’s what I’d suggest: Get more creative when drawing up a college list.

Luckily, there are plenty of wonderful schools spread across the country that are more reasonably priced. So how do you find them?

One way is to check out schools in regions where the starting prices aren’t $50,000 and up! That means casting a wider net and keeping an open mind. Schools in the South, the Midwest and many parts of the West certainly fit that bill.  There are lots of private schools in the $30,000 and $40,000 range (before financial aid/merit awards are deducted) or even the high $20,000′s. Get a decent award and these schools can cost the same or less than residents are charged for their state universities.

Idaho Anyone?

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

How about looking at schools like the College of Idaho, a private liberal arts college? The price for tuition and room/board is about $30,000 and that’s before any financial aid or merit scholarships are deducted. The average merit award at the College of Idaho is $11,439, while the average need-based financial aid package is $20,565. According to Forbes’ college rankings, which I think are much more legit than US News & World Report’s college rankings, the College of Idaho performs better than such hot East Coast schools as Emerson College, NYU and Northeastern University and flagships like the University of Oregon and University of Colorado.

What also impressed me about the College of Idaho were the students’ opinions about their teachers, according to the newest edition of the Princeton Review’s The Best 376 Colleges (2012 edition). While admittedly, this isn’t a scientific survey, students at the Idaho school gave their professors excellent marks. The professors received an interesting rating of 93 (maximum is 100) and a 93 rating for professor accessibility.

Dream College Stats

Let’s compare the stats of the College of Idaho’s professors to profs at a few schools that are on lots of dream college lists:

• UCLA:  69 interesting professors, 67 professor accessibility
• University of Michigan:  65 interesting professors,  71 professor accessibility
• New York University:  78 interesting professors;  71 professor accessibility
• Harvard University:    71 interesting professors; 71 professor accessibility

If you’re curious which school received the top honors for the best professors, using those two measurements, it was Wellesley College, an excellent women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts:  99 interesting professors, 98 professor accessibility. By the way, it wasn’t at all surprising to me that professors at the liberal arts colleges featured in the Princeton Review book consistently received higher rankings than their peers at universities.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll share some final thoughts on how you can find wonderful colleges throughout the country.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of  Shrinking the Cost of College workbook.  She also writes a college blog for  CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

Read More at The College Solution:

What Colleges Have Your Major?

Measuring the Worth of a College

Deciphering a Financial Aid Package