According to the Wall Street Journal, the University of Southern California and education company 2U have been sued for misrepresenting the influential U.S. News & World Report college rankings.
The University of Southern California logo can be seen on the field before a game. The photo was taken by John W.
According to a lawsuit filed by the National Student Legal Defense Network, the university and the company that runs USC's online graduate programs misled students by suggesting the rankings for in-person education school classes apply to similar online classes.
USC's early admission that it submitted inaccurate data to U.S. News & World Report was cited in the suit as proof that it cheated its students.
After tying for 11th in the most recent U.S. News & World Report ranking of graduate education programs, USC withdrew its school of education from the list.
A USC spokesman told Forbes that the university had not yet received the complaint.
The U.S. News & World Report rankings have long been considered the industry standard to determine the prestige of higher education programs, but they've also been involved in scandal over allegations that schools manipulate the rankings. The situation appeared to reach a tipping point earlier this year when a Columbia mathematics professor published a study that found the university used outdated and incorrect methodologies. Columbia was dropped from second to 18th in the national university rankings by U.S. News & World Report. Last month, Harvard and Yale withdrew their law schools from the rankings due to the fact that the rankings give too much weight to test scores and penalize programs for accepting students from disadvantaged background. The law schools at the universities withdrew from the ranking.
Many of the data points used by U.S. News & World Report are public.
The University of Southern California was sued over education-school rankings.
Harvard Law School is leaving the U.S. news rankings.
Columbia University admits to submitting inaccurate data.
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