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Colleges: Wrong data given for rankings

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- A number of colleges submitted incorrect or falsified information to U.S. News & World Report for the magazine's annual school rankings, officials said.

Five prominent schools -- Tulane University in Louisiana, Claremont McKenna College in California, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, Emory University in Georgia and George Washington University in the District of Columbia -- discovered and disclosed they had in the past submitted accidentally or intentionally inflated standardized test scores or high school rankings of incoming freshman, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

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U.S. News & World Report has been a highly regarded source of information about colleges for approximately 30 years, but the colleges' disclosures have rekindled a debate about the reliability of the magazine's rankings, the Post said.

Ninety-one percent of 576 college admissions officers last summer said they think other colleges had misreported test scores and other admissions information -- and a few said their own college had done so, a Gallup survey conducted last summer for the news website Inside Higher Ed showed.

It is impossible to know how many colleges have misreported information, as a lot of the data colleges provide to the magazine, the federal government and analysts is not verified independently, the Post said.

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"Rankings have become omnipresent in higher education, and they have enhanced the competition among institutions. And in any highly competitive environment, there is always a temptation to cut corners," said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

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