Five colleges have recently been caught cooking their admissions statistics in order to secure higher spots in the U.S. News college rankings, that bible of the overachieving high schooler. As admissions officers come clean about the rankings racket, suspicions about U.S. News​' credibility have been raised. 

A new report from The Washington Post's Nick Anderson explores the increasingly common problem, in which universities submit inflated standardized test scores and class rankings for members of their incoming classes to U.S. News, which doesn't independently verify the information. Tulane University, Bucknell University, Claremont McKenna College, Emory University, and George Washington University have all been implicated in the past year alone. And those are just the schools that got caught: 

A survey of 576 college admissions officers conducted by Gallup last summer for the online news outlet Inside Higher Ed found that 91 percent believe other colleges had falsely reported standardized test scores and other admissions data. A few said their own college had done so.

For such a trusted report, the U.S. News rankings don't have many safeguards ensuring that their data is accurate. Schools self-report these statistics on the honor system, essentially. U.S. News editor Brian Kelly told Inside Higher Ed's Scott Jaschik, "The integrity of data is important to everybody ... I find it incredible to contemplate that institutions based on ethical behavior would be doing this." But plenty of institutions are doing this, as we noted back in November 2012 when GWU was unranked after being caught submitting juiced stats. 

At this point, U.S. News shouldn't be surprised by acknowledgment like those from Tulane and Bucknell. It turns out that if you let schools misreport the numbers — especially in a field of fierce academic competition and increasingly budgetary hardship — they'll take you up on the offer. Kelly could've learned that by reading U.S. News' own blog, Morse Code. Written by data researcher Bob Morse, almost half of the recent posts have been about fraud. To keep schools more honest, the magazine is considering requiring university officials outside of enrollment offices to sign a statement vouching for submitted numbers. But still, no third party accountability would be in place, and many higher ed experts are already saying that the credibility of the U.S. News college rankings is shot: 

Rankings are stupid and rife with fraud - would leader accountability help? insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/0… #HigherEd

— Matt Shipman (@ShipLives) February 6, 2013

Tip of the iceberg... 'Five colleges misreported data to U.S. News, raising concerns about rankings, reputation' ht.ly/htNnW

— Anna Ivey (@AnnaIvey) February 6, 2013

Conceding a problem? @usnews may ask college presidents to vouch for accuracy of data they submit for #rankings: bit.ly/12sacUP

— Doug Lederman (@dougledIHE) February 6, 2013

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David Wagner