Monday, December 24, 2018
Temple Reaches $5.5 Million Settlement In U.S. News Rankings Scandal
Following up on my previous posts (links below): Poets & Quants, Temple Fox Reaches $5.5 Milion Settlement Over Rankings Scandal:
After a rankings scandal that has severely impacted the reputation of Temple University’s Fox School of Business, the university today (Dec. 21) said it has agreed to pay students of its MBA and other business programs nearly $5.5 million in a settlement of a class action suit. The scandal cost Dean M. Moshe Porat, who led the school for 22 years, his job and forced the school to withdraw from a number of rankings.
Temple said that $4 million has been set aside to settle the claims from online MBA students, while another $1,475,000 will be used to settle the claims of students in its Executive MBA, Global MBA, part-time MBA and master’s degrees in human resources management and digital innovation in marketing. Undergraduate students in the school’s business programs also will receive settlements out of this latter bucket.
The school also agreed to create a $5,000 ethics scholarship for a student with a demonstrated interest in the study of ethics in business who is enrolled in any of the programs that are part of the settlement. ...
Temple released the news near the end of a work week on a Friday at 4:40 p.m. EST right before the Christmas holiday.
- Philadelphia Inquirer, Temple Pays More Than $5 million to Settle Claims Over False Reporting By its Business School
- Temple News, Temple University Reaches More Than $5.4 Million Settlement in Students’ Class Action Lawsuit About Fox School of Business Data Scandal
- Temple Now, Agreement Reached in Fox School Class Action Case
Prior TaxProf Blog posts:
- Rankings Scandal Unfolds At Temple Business School (Jan. 29, 2018)
- Temple Business School Dean Fired For Knowingly Submitting False Data To Inflate U.S. News Ranking Over Several Years (July 10, 2018)
- After Temple Admitted That Its Business School Misreported Data To Goose Its Ranking, U.S. News Demands Certification Of Other Schools' Data (Including Law School) (July 12, 2018)
- Temple’s Ranking Scandal Spreads To Six Additional Programs; University Also Admits To Three Errors In The Data It Submitted For Its Undergraduate College Ranking (July 30, 2018)
- WSJ: Temple Rankings Scandal Spotlights MBA Grads’ Swelling Debt (Sept. 7, 2018)
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/12/temple-reaches-55-million-settlement-in-us-news-rankings-scandal.html
Comments
Floodgates, opened.
There is nothing like a successful suit to encourage lawyers.
And it is about time - far, far too many institutions of higher learning have more or less been operating as criminal enterprises in order to line their pockets - for decades.
As for the "human beings cheat" snark - actually, *criminals* cheat.
Posted by: cas127 | Dec 26, 2018 1:55:28 PM
The tip of the iceberg. Temple's behavior was more egregious than most but when push comes to shove, at least a plurality of *selective* colleges, universities, and grad/professional programs are engaged in some level of data manipulation, massaging, or gamesmanship that they would not be proud to own up to were it to come to light, from sundry "attract-to-reject" schemes to arbitrarily capping class size to rating every peer a 0 on the prestige-o-meter fliers. The Wall Street Journal once reported that the undergrad part of the university where I went to law school now sends more than 200,000 letters of encouragement to kids they mostly intend to reject, just to drive down the acceptance rate. And the dirty secret is that for the most part, these machinations work. Said university climbed more than one hundred places over the last dozen years or so. I very much doubt it became *better* than one hundred other institutions all striving to do their best (both IRL and on USNWR)...
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Dec 24, 2018 7:47:28 AM