Are Rankings Being Rigged (Again)?

Inside Higher Ed

Scott Jaschik

April 18, 2022

The Rutgers University Business School takes the U.S. News & World Report rankings seriously. If you visit the Stats and Rankings section of its website, you will find four points of pride listed for this year: No. 9 for best overall employment outcomes in the U.S. for M.B.A. programs, No. 12 for supply chain management M.B.A. programs, No. 21 for best public business school in the U.S., No. 22 for best public business school (for part-time students). The source for the honors: U.S. News.

So experts on business schools and admissions generally were shocked by two lawsuits filed last week. One charges that Rutgers discriminated against a human resources manager because she objected to the way the university calculated information on its class for U.S. News. The suit alleges that the university used an employment agency—Adecco—to place some of its M.B.A. graduates into jobs at Rutgers to get a higher ranking, because U.S. News doesn’t let business schools count their own employees as graduates who’ve found employment. The other suit is a class action on behalf of students who enrolled in the M.B.A. program, charging that Rutgers got them to enroll by virtue of inflated rankings.

Rutgers denies the allegations.

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