Class Action Alleges Columbia University Reported False Stats to Boost U.S. News and World Report Ranking

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges Columbia University has falsely reported certain data to U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) in order to artificially boost its ranking among universities nationwide. 

Central to the breach-of-contract case is a February 28, 2022 article from Columbia mathematics professor Michael Thaddeus, who concluded that the university had misreported to USNWR data used to calculate its national rankings. 

The 19-page complaint alleges the ivy league school, who ranked second in USNWR’s 2022 rankings, has misreported to the publication data related to class size, faculty academic credentials, the full-time status of non-medical faculty, the student-to-faculty ratio and the amount of money spent on instruction. 

In response to Thaddeus’s article, the lawsuit says, Columbia announced in late June that it would not participate in the next USNWR rankings. Earlier this month, the suit adds, USNWR announced that it had “unranked” the university after being unable to verify the data Columbia previously submitted to the publication. 

The filing relays that USNWR calculates its ranking using 17 different “measures of quality” related to class size, percentage of faculty with a terminal degree in their field, percentage of full-time faculty, student-to-faculty ratio, financial resources per student, graduation and retention rates and other factors. Per the case, USNWR relies on universities to self-report this data to determine its national college rankings, which many schools use as a marketing tool to help recruit students. 

According to Thaddeus, much of the data provided by Columbia to USNWR “proves to be inaccurate, dubious, or highly misleading,” and there exists “a pattern of discrepancies, in Columbia’s favor, between data reported to U.S. News and data available elsewhere.” 

For example, although Columbia told USNWR that more than 82 percent of undergraduate classes enroll fewer than 20 students, analysis from Columbia’s class directory, according to Thaddeus, indicated that the correct figure was “likely between 62.7% and 66.9%.”

Further, although Columbia reported to the publication that 8.9 percent of undergraduate classes enroll 50 students or more, class directory analysis, per Thaddeus, showed that figure to be between 10.6 percent and 12.4 percent, the lawsuit states. 

Additionally, Thaddeus reported that although Columbia shared with USNWR that 100 percent of its full-time faculty hold a doctorate, master’s or other kind of terminal degree, analysis showed that the correct figure is “at most 96%, probably lower,” the suit says. With regard to the amount of non-medical faculty that are full-time, Columbia’s 96.5 percent figure reported to the publication more likely sits at 74.1 percent, per the complaint.

According to the suit, Columbia’s reported student-to-faculty ratio of 6:1 is somewhere closer to 11:1. Lastly, although Columbia told USNWR that it spent some undisclosed amount of money on instruction, Thaddeus noted that the university reported to the U.S. Department of Education that it spent $3.1 billion on instruction for the 2019 to 2020 school year. This figure, Thaddeus reported, is made up in large part of “expenditures on patient care” at Columbia’s medical center, meaning the correct instructional figure is “much lower,” the suit says. 

The lawsuit looks to represent all persons who enrolled as students at Columbia University from 2016 to 2022. 

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