Columbia is the latest university caught in a rankings scandal

PARENTS HAVE gone to extreme lengths to get their children into highly ranked colleges. Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, promised $2.5m to Harvard University in 1998 shortly before his son’s admission to the university. In recent years the “varsity blues” scandal landed a few famous parents in jail for bribing college staff with six-figure sums. But colleges have behaved badly too. A former dean at Temple University’s business school in Philadelphia received a 14-month prison sentence this month for gaming the rankings system. Now Columbia University is in the hot seat.

US News and World Report, a media organisation, began ranking America’s top universities in 1983, and has released it annually since 1988. It ranks over 1,400 institutions in various categories, based on two types of data: a survey that measures the school’s reputation among administrators at peer institutions (20% of the score), and quantitative measures submitted by the school (80%). These rankings matter because they influence prospective students’ behaviour. A study from Harvard Business School and the College Board found that a one-rank drop on US News led to a 1 percentage-point decrease in the number of applications to a college. (The Economist has its own MBA rankings that also use quantitative and qualitative measures to assess business schools.)