Temple University’s Fos School of Business
After reporting that only one in four of its students had taken a GMAT to get into its online MBA program in 2013, Temple University’s Fox School of Business began claiming that the highly unlikely possibility that 100% of its students had taken the test for the next four years. The numbers—reported to U.S. News for its annual online MBA ranking—suggest that the school has been misrepresenting critical data to U.S. News for a number of years.
Only three days ago, on Jan. 24th, U.S. News tossed the school’s online MBA program off its ranking for misreporting critical GMAT data used in its methodology. As it has for the past four years in a row—all years in which Temple’s program had been ranked first—the school had reported that 100% of the students in the latest incoming class submitted GMAT scores to get into the program. In fact, the school acknowledged that only 19.6% submitted GMAT scores. Standardized test scores are a common and usually required part of admissions in graduate business education.
In penalizing Temple for the reporting error, U.S. News did not address the school’s previously reported data that allowed Fox’s online MBA program to attain its No. 1 ranking for what would have been four consecutive years. But administrators at other schools say it would have been improbable, if not impossible, for a school to go from 25% to 100% in a single year between 2013 and 2014, or for that matter, to go to 19.6% this past year from 100% a year earlier.
‘TO CLAIM 100% WHEN IT IS 19% WAS PRETTY RIDICULOUS’
Temple University President Richard M. Englert
Rival deans have long been suspicious of Temple’s claims that 100% of its students have taken the GMAT. That’s largely because the school says on its website it would waive the test for candidates who meet one of several conditions. If an applicant possesses “managerial-level experience,” he may not have to take the standardized test. Of if the candidate has an undergraduate degree from an AACSB-accredited college, he would may get around the GMAT requirement. Temple also said that applicants with at least seven years of work experience and a 3.0 undergraduate point average as well as those with a JD, an MD or a PhD would not be required to hand over a GMAT score.
Given all those ways to get out of submitting a standardized test score, administrators from other schools were incredulous that Temple could still report a 100% rate of compliance for four years in a row. It also seemed odd that although Temple tells applicants it accepts GRE exam results, the school consistently reported to U.S. News that not a single student entered with a GRE score from 2013 to 2017. Yet, GRE exams figure prominently in admissions at other online MBA programs. Last year, for example, 20% of the entering students in IU’s KelleyDirect program got in with GRE scores. At Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, 31% of the latest entering online MBA took the GRE.
Temple University President Richard M. Englert said Thursday the school would undertake an independent review of the data reporting processes for U.S. News rankings. Asked by Poets&Quants if the review would include earlier information supplied to U.S. News, a university spokesperson today confirmed it would. “That review will be comprehensive and will look at previous years as well as at the current year,” says Ray Betzner, associate vice president of strategic marketing and communications at Temple. “We’re in the process of hiring that outside independent reviewer now. The results of that review will go to the President and he will take appropriate action based on those results. That’s where we are.”
TEMPLE TOLD U.S. NEWS 100% OF NEW STUDENTS TOOK THE GMAT IN 2014, 2015 & 2016 AS WELL
U.S. News’ methodology penalizes online MBA programs in its rankings if less than 75% of new entrants submit either a GMAT or GRE score. U.S. News says that is because the lack of data for 25% of students or more “likely means the standardized test score is not representative of the entire class.” Standardized test scores, of course, are also a sign of the quality of a school’s class. Not requiring the test for admission signals that the overall quality of an incoming class could be suspect. These scores have a weight of 10% in U.S. News’ rankings formula.
Temple’s No. 1 rankings, in turn, have also had a positive impact on another aspect of U.S. News’ ranking. U.S. News throws into its methodology the results of a survey of what it calls “high-ranking academic officials at MBA programs helps account for intangible factors affecting program quality that statistics do not capture.” This peer assessment portion of the ranking accounts for 25% of the overall weight. Given the school’s No. 1 ranking over several years, its peer assessment scores have gone higher and higher as well.
In 2013, Temple reported that only 12 of the 48 entrants into its online MBA program submitted a GMAT, with an average score of 619. None of the applicants, according to Temple, provided a GRE score. Only a year later, in 2014, however, Temple was reporting dramatically different numbers. The school said that every new student—70 in all—had submitted a GMAT score, with an average score of 638, higher than either the University of North Carolina’s 629 or Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business’ 620 for their online MBA programs.
Darin Kapanjie (left) created Fox’s online MBA program and has been academic director of it from the start. Kimberly Cherwinski has been senior associate director of the offering since 2011.
FRON A RANK OF 28TH IN 2013 TO NINTH IN 2014 AND FIRST IN 2015
Those changes allowed Temple to jump into first place in U.S. News’ online ranking in 2015 from ninth a year earlier when the school was in a tie with rival offerings from James Madison University and Quinnipiac University. In the first year that U.S. News numerically ranked online programs in 2013, the online program at Temple Fox placed 28th. The school reported that it enrolled just 18 students for that survey and that 33% of them had taken the GMAT for an average score of 550.
Temple remained in first place in 2016, 2017, and 2018, until the school was stripped of its latest ranking. In the 2016 ranking, Fox claimed that 100% of 135 new students submitted GMAT scores, with the average at 600. In the 2017 ranking, Fox asserted that 100% of 198 new students had taken the GMAT, with an average score of 582. And in the recently published 2018 ranking, the school initially claimed that all 255 of the program’s latest incoming class submitted GMAT scores to get into the program, with an average GMAT score of 619.
Fox Dean M. Moshe Porat, who has been in his job for 22 years and is a professor of risk management, made a point of emphasizing that Fox brought the error to the attention of U.S. News. “Once we discovered the error, we took the proactive approach to promptly correct a mistake,” said Porat in a statement. “We are doubling efforts to verify our data before it is submitted for rankings purposes, and we have every expectation that the Fox Online MBA program will return to its rightful place among the nation’s top programs of its kind in 2019 and beyond. Rankings are a byproduct of quality, and our focus will remain where it always has—on delivering high-quality programs and service to our students.”
ONLINE MBA LEADERSHIP TEAM HAS REMAINED STABLE FOR YEARS
The key leadership over the online program has been stable since it was launched in 2009. Darin Kapanjie, who has been credited with both creating and implementing the online offering, has been academic director of Fox’s online MBA program from the start. He joined the school in 2003, ironically in Fox’s statistics department. Attempts to reach him for comment by voicemail and email have been unsuccessful. He referred our inquiries to a spokesperson who would only send written statements from Temple President Richard M. Englert and Fox Dean M. Moshe Porat.
Meantime, Kimberly Chenwinski has been senior associate director of the online MBA since 2011 and had previously been in charge of insuring that the school’s programs were in compliance with university and graduate school policies and guidelines.
‘TEMPLE SIGNIFICANTLY OVERSTATED THE NUMBER OF NEW ENTRANTS WHO SUBMITTED GMAT SCORES’
It’s not clear why or when officials at Temple Fox decided to be proactive in going back to U.S. News this year to correct the latest data. But U.S. News said the school informed it of the misreported data “shortly after the release of the 2018 Best Online Programs rankings. “The business school significantly overstated the number of new entrants for its 2016-2017 entering class who submitted GMAT scores,” according to a statement from U.S. News. “The misreported data resulted in the school’s numerical rank being higher than it otherwise would have been in the overall Best Online MBA Programs rankings and the Best Online MBA Programs for Veterans rankings.
“Because of the discrepancies, U.S. News has moved Temple to the “Unranked” category in the Best Online MBA Programs rankings and removed the school from the Best Online MBA Programs for Veterans rankings. Schools in the unranked category do not receive numerical ranks from U.S. News. The school’s Unranked status will last until the 2019 publication of the Best Online MBA Programs rankings, conditional upon the Fox School of Business confirming the accuracy of its next data submission…”
Temple is also not the first business school to be kicked out of a ranking by U.S. News. In 2013, U.S. News removed Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business from its ranking of the top 100 business schools in the U.S. The magazine took the action after the school admitted that it had misreported key data to U.S. News—just as Temple Fox did this year.
TULANE’S BUSINESS SCHOOL ALSO WAS SUSPENDED FROM THE RANKINGS AFTER MISREPORTING DATA
After an investigation by the prominent law firm of Jones Day, the school admitted that it inflated average GMAT scores reported to U.S. News by an average 35 points for consecutive five years from 2007 through 2011. Freeman also conceded that it had falsely increased the number of completed applications it received by an average of 116 applications over the same time period.
U.S. News would later reveal that the extent of the fraud was even somewhat greater than reported by Freeman. The organization found that the corrected average GMAT score for the fall 2011 entering class was 631 versus the 670 originally reported by Freeman—a difference of 39 points.
A revision to the number of MBA applications received by the school showed an even greater difference than the originally reported number. The corrected figures showed that Freeman accepted 93% of its applicants for the fall 2011 entering class instead of 57%–a difference of 36 percentage points. Tulane also was suspended from U.S. News’ ranking for a year as a result.
DON’T MISS: AN EMBARRASSING OOPS MOMENT FOR TEMPLE FOX or U.S. NEWS KICKS TEMPLE OUT OF ITS ONLINE MBA RANKING
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