Online Ranking Scandal At Temple Fox Could Worsen

Darin Kapanjie (left) created Fox’s online MBA program and has been academic director of it from the start. Kimberly Cherwinski has been senior associate director of the offering since 2011.

FROM A RANK OF 28TH IN 2013 TO NINTH IN 2014 AND FIRST IN 2015

Those changes allowed Temple to jump into first place in U.S. News’ online ranking in 2015 from ninth a year earlier when the school was in a tie with rival offerings from James Madison University and Quinnipiac University. In the first year that U.S. News numerically ranked online programs in 2013, the online program at Temple Fox placed 28th. The school reported that it enrolled just 18 students for that survey and that 33% of them had taken the GMAT for an average score of 550.

Temple remained in first place in 2016, 2017, and 2018, until the school was stripped of its latest ranking. In the 2016 ranking, Fox claimed that 100% of 135 new students submitted GMAT scores, with the average at 600. In the 2017 ranking, Fox asserted that 100% of 198 new students had taken the GMAT, with an average score of 582. And in the recently published 2018 ranking, the school initially claimed that all 255 of the program’s latest incoming class submitted GMAT scores to get into the program, with an average GMAT score of 619.

Fox Dean M. Moshe Porat, who has been in his job for 22 years and is a professor of risk management, made a point of emphasizing that Fox brought the error to the attention of U.S. News. “Once we discovered the error, we took the proactive approach to promptly correct a mistake,” said Porat in a statement. “We are doubling efforts to verify our data before it is submitted for rankings purposes, and we have every expectation that the Fox Online MBA program will return to its rightful place among the nation’s top programs of its kind in 2019 and beyond. Rankings are a byproduct of quality, and our focus will remain where it always has—on delivering high-quality programs and service to our students.”

ONLINE MBA LEADERSHIP TEAM HAS REMAINED STABLE FOR YEARS

The key leadership over the online program has been stable since it was launched in 2009. Darin Kapanjie, who has been credited with both creating and implementing the online offering, has been academic director of Fox’s online MBA program from the start. He joined the school in 2003, ironically in Fox’s statistics department. Attempts to reach him for comment by voicemail and email have been unsuccessful. He referred our inquiries to a spokesperson who would only send written statements from Temple President Richard M. Englert and Fox Dean M. Moshe Porat.

Meantime, Kimberly Chenwinski has been senior associate director of the online MBA since 2011 and had previously been in charge of insuring that the school’s programs were in compliance with university and graduate school policies and guidelines.

‘TEMPLE SIGNIFICANTLY OVERSTATED THE NUMBER OF NEW ENTRANTS WHO SUBMITTED GMAT SCORES’

It’s not clear why or when officials at Temple Fox decided to be proactive in going back to U.S. News this year to correct the latest data. But U.S. News said the school informed it of the misreported data “shortly after the release of the 2018 Best Online Programs rankings. “The business school significantly overstated the number of new entrants for its 2016-2017 entering class who submitted GMAT scores,” according to a statement from U.S. News. “The misreported data resulted in the school’s numerical rank being higher than it otherwise would have been in the overall Best Online MBA Programs rankings and the Best Online MBA Programs for Veterans rankings.

“Because of the discrepancies, U.S. News has moved Temple to the “Unranked” category in the Best Online MBA Programs rankings and removed the school from the Best Online MBA Programs for Veterans rankings. Schools in the unranked category do not receive numerical ranks from U.S. News. The school’s Unranked status will last until the 2019 publication of the Best Online MBA Programs rankings, conditional upon the Fox School of Business confirming the accuracy of its next data submission…”

Temple is also not the first business school to be kicked out of a ranking by U.S. News. In 2013, U.S. News removed Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business from its ranking of the top 100 business schools in the U.S. The magazine took the action after the school admitted that it had misreported key data to U.S. News—just as Temple Fox did this year.

TULANE’S BUSINESS SCHOOL ALSO WAS SUSPENDED FROM THE RANKINGS AFTER MISREPORTING DATA

After an investigation by the prominent law firm of Jones Day, the school admitted that it inflated average GMAT scores reported to U.S. News by an average 35 points for consecutive five years from 2007 through 2011. Freeman also conceded that it had falsely increased the number of completed applications it received by an average of 116 applications over the same time period.

U.S. News would later reveal that the extent of the fraud was even somewhat greater than reported by Freeman. The organization found that the corrected average GMAT score for the fall 2011 entering class was 631 versus the 670 originally reported by Freeman—a difference of 39 points.

A revision to the number of MBA applications received by the school showed an even greater difference than the originally reported number. The corrected figures showed that Freeman accepted 93% of its applicants for the fall 2011 entering class instead of 57%–a difference of 36 percentage points. Tulane also was suspended from U.S. News’ ranking for a year as a result.

DON’T MISS: AN EMBARRASSING OOPS MOMENT FOR TEMPLE FOX or U.S. NEWS KICKS TEMPLE OUT OF ITS ONLINE MBA RANKING

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.