Academic freedom is alive and well at Columbia University. Michael Thaddeus proves that hypothesis. The mathematics professor blew the whistle on data errors that pushed his employer up university league tables.
Last year, US News and World Report ranked Columbia as the second-best undergraduate institution in its influential “national university” category. It was the highest placing ever for the prestigious New York college.
Earlier this year, Thaddeus claimed that some figures the university submitted to the magazine were inaccurate. He had scrutinised such publicly available data as class size and faculty education.
Earlier this month, Columbia admitted some of its numbers had been wrong.
In the latest rankings, Columbia is only the 18th-best national university in America. That adds to its ignominy, though such volatility casts doubt on the usefulness of college rankings as a whole.
Over the years, several US colleges have succumbed to the temptation — also strong for alumni who become investment bankers — to game league tables. Some up-and-coming colleges simply changed how they operated. For example, they arbitrarily lowered acceptance rates to juice selectivity.
The Columbia furore has erupted just as another college scandal is winding down. A California college consultant is soon to be sentenced for fraudulently securing college admission slots for the children of wealthy parents.
Many families chase academic prestige as obsessively as universities themselves. Status anxiety is a potent motivator for better-off Americans. They believe a high-grade college education is an essential waypoint on the path to a stable, middle-class life. College is the portal to elite professions such as high finance or medicine.
Private universities have not grown in size to keep up with population trends. At Columbia, the cost of annual tuition alone is $65,000 per year. Meanwhile, public universities are starved of funding. Scolds will lament this perverse system and the damage it wreaks.
You do not need a fancy education to realise that some universities will go on fudging their numbers to stay ahead of rivals. There are strong economic drivers for doing so.
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