Temple finds more misreporting for U.S. News magazine rankings

The rankings scandal at Temple University expanded Wednesday after officials announced they had found more misreporting to U.S. News & World Report from the Fox School of Business, involving six programs beyond the online M.B.A. program revealed earlier this month.

University administrators identified five of the programs in question as Executive M.B.A., Global M.B.A., Part-Time M.B.A., Master of Science in Human Resource Management, and Master of Science in Digital Innovation in Marketing. All are part of the Fox School of Business, which provided false data for those five programs in one or more areas, including the number of students who provided GMAT scores, the GPAs of undergraduate applicants, and student indebtedness, university officials said.

For a sixth program, the online Bachelor of Business Administration, the university said it found misreporting related to student indebtedness.

"We want all the members of the university community to know that, with respect to the misreporting of information at the Fox School, you had a right to expect this information would be accurate and honest," said Richard M. Englert, Temple's president, and JoAnne A. Epps, executive vice president and provost, in a letter emailed to the Temple community.

"We deeply regret that this did not happen. We will do more than own this problem. We will fix it. And none of this takes away from the quality education that our Fox School students receive, or from the excellent teaching and research of its faculty," Englert and Epps said.

In January, U.S. News dropped Temple's online M.B.A. from its ranking after the school self-reported that it had provided inaccurate data. The program had been ranked No. 1 for four years and the university had been touting the ranking.

This month, Temple released the findings of a law firm it had hired to investigate how the misreporting occurred. A rankings-focused strategy led to some of the misreporting, the law firm found.

After the scandal broke, Temple removed its long-time business school head, Moshe Porat, from his leadership post. Porat remains a tenured professor at Temple. The school also announced a series of steps to ensure that such misreporting does not happen again.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office are conducting their own investigations into the false reporting.

Some students are suing, claiming the reputation of their degrees has been harmed.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a statement Wednesday evening that he was "deeply concerned" that more programs are involved in the misreporting scandal and that his investigation is ongoing.

"We've requested an array of documents and information from Temple, and the university thus far has been cooperative," Shapiro said.

Temple on Wednesday also reported that it had completed a review requested by U.S. News of its data submissions for the 2018 and 2019 Best Colleges rankings.

The university said it had verified the accuracy of its submissions and made three minor corrections, two of which involved typographical errors.

Temple is tied for 115th place for national universities on the magazine's website.