'F' for college rankings cheating

College rankings, though informative, shouldn't be taken as definitive measures of schools' merits. And they certainly shouldn't be based on falsified data. But given the overemphasis on such ratings in recent years, it's no surprise that some administrators are cooking the books.

Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles announced Monday that a "senior administrator" had resigned after inflating the entering SAT average to U.S. News & World Report for the last six years. Thanks in part to those phony numbers, Claremont McKenna was No. 9 in U.S. News' "liberal arts college" category last year.

This appalling trend extends across the nation. As Tuesday's New York Times reported: "Admissions directors say that some colleges delay admission of low-scoring students until January, excluding them from averages for the class admitted in September, while other colleges seek more applications to report a lower percentage of students accepted."

For instance, Iona College near New York City "acknowledged last fall that its employees had lied for years not only about test scores, but also about graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving."

Jon Boeckenstedt, head of admissions at DePaul University in Chicago, told the Times: "It's a nebulous thing, comparing the value of a college education at one institution to another, so parents and students and counselors focus on things that give them the illusion of precision."

That doesn't mean colleges shouldn't strive to improve in areas the rankings measure. Clemson University President James Barker, when he took that job in 1999, set a goal for making U.S. News' top 20 for "public national universities."

Though that seemed far-fetched for a school rated 38th, Clemson climbed to No. 22 by 2008 and is now No. 25. As its ranking and reputation rose, so did suspicions about how such a rapid ascent was achieved. Catherine Watt, then an institutional researcher at Clemson, added to those concerns in 2009 when she said school officials, when ranking other universities, rated "all programs other than Clemson below average." Clemson's administration denied the accusation, condemning it as "outrageous."

We prefer to believe Clemson wouldn't stoop so low. But it's clear that a growing number of colleges are cheating to elevate their rankings. And that's not just a betrayal of higher education's ideals.

It's a reminder not to take those magazine ratings all that seriously. That goes for colleges as well as prospective students.