Who Cooked The Books At Tulane?

Angelo S. DeNisi was dean of Tulane’s Freeman School when the school falsely reported GMAT scores and applications to U.S. News over five years

On Dec. 19, 2012, when Freeman submitted data for the 2012 academic year to U.S. News, the magazine was notified that inaccurate data had been provided for the MBA classes that entered from 2007-2011. Corrected data for 2007 through 2011 was submitted to U.S. News & World Report on Jan. 15. The Jones Day investigation verified the extent of the fraud.

THE MISREPORTING LASTED FOR FIVE YEARS BECAUSE ‘THERE WERE NO SIGNIFICANT YEAR-OVER-YEAR VARIATIONS’

Freeman said it took so long to discover that data was being misreported because “there were no significant variations from year to year. Regarding the applications, there were no unexpected variations in the number of applications from year to year. The first time the discrepancies became apparent was during the preparation of the 2012 data.” “I sincerely regret that these events occurred and that one person could so negatively impact how others see us as a place of learning,” said Provost Michael Bernstein in a statement. “I am, however, proud of the manner and rigor by which Dean Solomon, Tulane and Jones Day took to get to the bottom of this concern and create an even stronger framework for future reporting.”

The dean of the school during the time was Angelo DeNisi, who led Freeman from July of 2005 to June of 2011. He has since joined the business school faculty  as a professor of organizational behavior. DeNisi’s successor was Solomon, an accounting professor who joined the school as dean in July of last year.

Jones Day, the school added, has suggested a series of steps to assure that data collecting and reporting will be as accurate and reliable as possible. Additionally, the Freeman School had instituted a new system of controls in 2011 to govern the collection, analysis and reporting of data. The new controls enabled school officials to uncover the discrepancies that triggered the investigation.

The school said it is “very confident that the system of controls implemented during the fall of 2011 will assure the accuracy of the data. This and an institutional culture that consistently strives to improve will assure that this type of misreporting does not happen again.”

Sandefer was succeeded by Patrick Foran in August of 2012. Foran had been director of the Manchester Business School’s Americas Center in Miami, FL, for nearly three years and had been MBA admissions director at the University of Florida before that for almost seven years.

DON’T MISS: WE FAKED DATA, ADMITS TULANE B-SCHOOL or U.S. NEWS’ HISTORICAL MBA RANKINGS

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