“Disbelief.”
Like many students, disbelief was Claremont McKenna President Pamela Gann’s first reaction when she heard the extent of the incident involving false reporting of the college’s SAT scores to ranking agencies and the U.S. Department of Education.
Claremont McKenna College President Pamela Gann
In her first interview with media since the score falsification scandal broke on Monday, Gann described the incident as “a very sad, unfortunate exception” to the integrity and values of the college.
“I do not want anyone to be questioning our integrity, honesty [and] transparency,” she told the Port Side and the CMC Forum.
Pamela Gann announced midday Monday via email that a senior administrator in the CMC Office of Admission had been reporting false SAT scores since 2005. The Port Side later confirmed that this senior administrator was Richard Vos, Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, and that Vos has resigned from the college.
Admissions Policy
Although SAT scores account for less than 10 percent of U.S. News’s rankings calculations and the amount Vos raised the scores was relatively small, raising Claremont McKenna’s ranking was probably his primary motivation. This year, CMC was named the 9th best liberal arts college in the country.
Gann denied that the Office of Admission was given explicit instructions about the SAT scores of each matriculating class.
“We have no explicit goals for SAT scores,” she said. “We have aspirations, but that’s not an explicit goal. These aren’t hard and fixed.” Gann continued, “Our aspiration is to have a talented student body; SAT scores are a part of that. But there is not an explicit ‘we will have X number’ on SAT score.”
Claremont McKenna Office of Admission
“We think [the SAT] is a piece of useful information. It’s the only piece of information that’s across the board for all applicants,” she said.
Likewise, Gann denied having an explicit goal of moving up in the ranking list, saying, “We don’t have a declared goal to continue to move up rankings. I believe rankings follow doing good things on campus, and not vice-versa.”
However, she acknowledged one decision by the Board of Trustees about admissions policy: to enroll more international students.
Gann said, as far as she knows, ACT scores were not manipulated. However, in some years, the number of students submitting ACT scores was under- or over-reported when Vos modified the number of “missing” SAT scores in each matriculating class. All students have either SAT or ACT scores listed in the Office of Admissions’ database and are used in making admissions decisions.
“We don’t exempt any student [from submitting standardized test scores]. If you matriculate, we will have something there,” Gann said. However, some students who submit both SAT and ACT scores do not have SAT scores recorded, if the Admissions Office judges their ACT score to be higher.
Explaining how the score manipulation could have happened, Gann said, “A sole person had too much authority over reporting.” Gann continued, “If you look at how flat the reported data were, it did not raise suspicions.”
This is in part because, Gann said, “Unlike corporate controls over financial matters, we didn’t have internal checks and balances in place.” In the future, the College plans to set up a system of review in which reported statistics will be checked by two vice presidents outside of the Office of Admission. Gregory Hess, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Matthew Bibbens, Secretary of the College, were responsible for checking the recently released corrected data.
Timeline of Events
Gann learned on January 9 from an internal whistleblower, whom she refused to identify, that “a question had been raised about 2011 SAT data,” Gann said. She asked Jerome Garris, Vice President of Academic Affairs emeritus and former Dean of Faculty at CMC, to investigate. Gann said that on Wednesday, January 25, Jerome Garris “learned in his investigation that a senior position in the admission department came forward and took sole responsibility for having falsified reporting of SAT data since 2005.”
“I learned of this the next morning,” Gann said. “I immediately called the Chairman of the Board and told him what I had just heard.”
“There is no question that we had a material, serious problem. There was never a suggestion that we wouldn’t be completely forthright,” she said.
By Friday, January 27, the entire Board of Trustees had been notified.
Early in the morning of Monday, January 30, CMC contacted the various entities to which data is reported. At 9 a.m., Gann shared the news of the data falsification with senior staff. At 10 a.m., Gann personally spoke with the Admissions and Financial Aid staff, saying “I wanted them to hear it from me personally.”
At 11 a.m., Gann emailed students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents of current students.
Aftermath
After Garris’s investigation, the Board of Trustees hired O’Melveny & Myers, an outside law firm, to investigate the incident. “Hopefully it will go quickly, but I can’t predict when this will be done,” Gann said. After its firing of dining hall workers last semester, Pomona College’s Board of Trustees publicly released law firm Sidley Austin’s full report reviewing the College’s actions. Because O’Melveny & Myers was hired by the Board and not the administration, Gann could not say whether this report would be released publicly.
Student exits the Office of Admission
Gann listed three steps for the school’s response. The first step was to discover the root of the problem. Her second step was to report the corrected data. Corrected data was reported to media on Wednesday, February 1, and the college is currently in the process of sending that data to media, ranking entities, Moody’s bond rating agency, auditors, creditors and government entities.
“The third step — how do you repair trust? If you don’t do the first [two steps] right, you can’t do the third very well,” she said.
Gann cited her interview with the Port Side and CMC Forum as one of her first steps in rebuilding trust. She said that this interview with student media would be “more effective than an open town hall meeting right this minute.”
However, she said that she does not know yet if she will do an open town hall-style meeting, but said “I might be there,” referring to Monday’s ASCMC Senate meeting at which spokesman Max Benavidez is scheduled to appear.
When asked if Gann would be surprised if CMC’s rankings dropped, she responded, “yes and no. The rankings are close.”
While the integrity of the college has been called into question, Gann is quick to defend Claremont McKenna’s reputation.
“Institutions are built to last. Institutions are stronger than individual events, leaders and people,” explained Gann. “Our guiding star is integrity. Every step we take is a reaffirmation of those values.”
Russell M. Page and Alyssa Roberts contributed to this report
Correction: The line above “Gann says, as far as she knows, ACT scores were not manipulated” has been corrected from the original version. The Port Side regrets the error.
Okay, little as I know about Pam Gann, this is a good if slightly belated first step at reaching out to the student body. Nice reporting too!
News was probably intentionally delayed since, if I recall correctly, US News and World Report college rankings came out right around Jan 9. Also, it’s not quite the nicest thing to hear for students returning to school… Smart PR.
Actually, USNWR college rankings come out in early September each year. Also, CMC released the news on a Monday morning just in time for a full week days worth of bad publicity….not smart PR.
Gann learned on January 9 from an internal whistleblower, whom she refused to identify, that “a question had been raised about 2011 SAT data,” Gann told the Port Side. She asked the vice president to investigate and announced what happened on January 30th. Why did she wait twenty-one days to announce it? Oh, that’s right. Because The Princeton Review hadn’t yet announced its rankings, which listed Claremont’s Career Services in the top ten.
By asking the vice president to investigate she was able to make an announcement based on confirmed facts rather than an accusation that significantly understated the scope of the fraud. And you’re right, the Princeton Review hadn’t yet announced their rankings….and they still haven’t since they do so every August.
And if you continue reading that very same paragraph from which you quoted, you will see that she didn’t learn the results of the investigation until the 25th. She first learned of the possibility of false reporting on the 9th. Such a serious matter would require a serious investigation, and I’m glad they took some time to make sure they had their facts right before drawing a conclusion.
CMC is small institution, and despite all of the “Vos fell on his own sword” reactions I’ve been seeing, I’d like to believe that our administration is better than orchestrating a plan to falsify SAT scores in order to break the top 10 rankings. Do I fully believe Gann when she says “We don’t have a declared goal to continue to move up rankings?” Absolutely not. But I refuse to believe that our administration, which is so impressive as a whole, would have multiple parties complicit in the specific act of intentional misreporting.
Look closer, Look closer!
http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/news/pressreleases/article.php?article_id=1862
Go to the source, Go to the source!
Princeton Review released that information last August:
http://www.princetonreview.com/best-press-release.aspx
well, according to BondsOnline, the average SAT score reported for 2010 is 1420. What’s up with that? I thought the SAT has a max possible score of 2400, so why are they still reporting based on a 1600 max?
See this link: http://www.bondsonline.com/Todays_Market/Credit_Rating_News_.php?DA=view&RID=18005
This report also says the school received $20M from the Gates foundation. I’m sure Mr. Gates and team will be highly dismayed when they learn exactly what CMC has been doing to ensure its ascent up the rankings charts.
It’s out of 1600 because colleges are only required to report the Critical Reasoning and the Math sections of the SAT. The Writing section does not factor in.
Given the reactions in the press and the many clueless comments regarding the impact of the scores on the rankings, it appears than Gann could have played this a lot better. She should have sought to obtain a preliminary position on the utter triviality of the inflated scores on the rankings. Schools such as Chicago and Middlebury were smarter than CMC in this regard.
CMC rushed through to present an decisive action when the opposite was needed.
Wonder if President Gann would confirm whether higher SAT scores impact her compensation and that of other administrators at CMC? This goes to the heart of the matter. Her statement about SAT scores, explicit goals, and aspirations was vague at best, misleading at worst.
CCCC’s question doesn’t make sense to me. SAT scores are achieved *before* students arrive at Claremont or any other college for that matter. What does that have to do with the salary of the President and other administrators? Precisely nothing, I’m sure.
Don’t be so sure, since it appears that you are missing the whole point. It is posible that the President and other administrators receive increased compensation depending on where CMC is ranked by certain publications. SAT scores impact these rankings. Reporting inflated SAT scores may serve to improve CMCs ranking and thus may trigger increased compensation paid out to certain CMC administrators. An independent audit needs to be conducted to see if this was the case. If individuals did receive increased compensation due to the effects that reporting of inflated SAT scores had on the rankings, they need to reimburse the college for these amounts of erroneous compensation.
Disbelief? Really? Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. And worse yet is the absence of any sort of apology to students, alumni and faculty from the person at whose desk the buck us supposed to stop. I’ve been vocal in my support of CMC over the years. The consequence now are the looks that say “really, you’re a product of that type of culture?” Because all the insistence that this was just the mistake of one misguided individual notwithstanding, that’s really not what people are thinking.
But to put a positive spin on this, my hope is that 5 years from now, someone will look back at this and realize that Dick Vos has done us all a big favor. This will be true if his actions turn out to be a catalyst for change.
For the conspiracy theorists out there, my bet is that Gann is a smart enough lawyer that she’s not going to leave a paper trail consisting of a bonus system for Vos tied directly to scores. But Vos likely did have a big incentive to do what he did, and that would be the retention of his job (or at least some level of peace from the grinding pressure of her managerial style). And the job was defined as ALL the stats by which an admissions office is judged, scores, selectivity, total applicants, # of students graduating in the top 10% of their high school classes. How many other metrics have been misreported? Who else on the senior staff is at the end of his or her rope?
Looking at the various articles and comments surrounding this whole mess, it’s clear there are still many students and alumni who love the school. Count me among them. But I think the things that we love about CMC are mostly the legacy of what Jack Stark and an earlier Board of Trustees left us. Since then, it’s all been about reputation and rankings, about spin over substance. So yes, I’ll admit, I do not like Pamela Gann. But she’s merely the more visible manifestation of a Board of Trustees who have asked her to do exactly what she’s done — get the rankings up and improve the national visibility of the school. Those aren’t bad outcomes. There is, however a hugely important and nuanced difference at work. Under Stark, the emphasis was on teaching outcomes and on excellence in a couple of selective areas of focus. Nothing fancy, just quiet excellence. Do a Google search back for the LA Times article about the legacy of values and ethics that he thought so critical to CMC’s future. Remarkably prescient. His emphasis was also on providing a good value for the largely middle class parents who were footing the bill. It’s unfortunate that such simple humble goals are no longer sufficiently glamourous. His philosophy was to do a great job on behalf of students, take the responsibility seriously, and reputation and rankings would hopefully follow. The more recent game plan has been vastly more Machiavellian.
Reading about the SAT scandal and then reading the other recent blogs about life at CMC, I have this pit in my stomach that is like watching a car wreck as it happens. And it’s especially tragic because of the degree to which the root causes are a toxic stew of hubris and short-sightedness. From the same set of ethics and values that brought you AAA rated mortgage securities and the financial panic of 2008, we bring you the new more nationally visible CMC. Well, Trustees, you wanted us to be more nationally visible. You’ve succeeded and then some.
I graduated quite some time ago, and my financial support over the years is now approaching the six figure range. But it’s over. It’s over because if there isn’t a sufficient reaction to this, nothing will change, and something has to change. I can no longer abide financially supporting a culture that has drifted so far from where it once was. Makes a lot more sense to go out and find the school that is today what CMC used to be.
Well, enough of this rant. Gotta go. Need to call our lawyer and have our estate plan updated.
The college accrediting agencies are the subprime rating agencies that enable the psychosocial bubble of higher education spending. And we’re the ones that foot the bill.
For those who have always disliked Pam Gann, this scandal provides their most recent platform to criticize her leadership of CMC. Unfortunately for them the facts don’t support their cause. Since she arrived, CMC has improved in numerous ways: the range and depth of a faculty deeply committed to teaching, the accessibility and breadth of student support services, the quality of the academic facilities, the “no loan” feature of the need blind financial aid program, and the student driven research of the institutes, just to name a few. Her critics conveniently ignore these and other improvements in the student experience, preferring to bemoan how the culture of the College has changed from their rose colored image of the good old days.
Now the trustees are labeled as full of “hubris and short-sightedness.” During Pam Gann’s tenure the trustees have provided mid-nine figure support to fund hundreds of student scholarships, 80% of the new and expanded academic programs, 90% of the new chaired professorships, and 95% of the new buildings. They have also donated countless hours overseeing academic programs and student services, hosting career education trips, supervising building design and construction, counseling and hiring students, and managing the endowment. To label their massive commitment of time, talent, and treasure to CMC as part of a Machiavellian plan is simply ignorant.
As for those who profess their love for the College but abandon it in times of trial, their only true love is of their own agenda and when it isn’t followed, they bail. As for the rest of us, we will stay in the arena with CMC and help the College learn from this scandal and continue to improve.
This is essentially a political discussion. “It’s not the critic . . .” would have you believe that the loyal Republican must always support their party ticket and the loyal Democrat theirs, regardless of how the party platform evolves. Excuse me for having an independent opinion and saying that the College needs a change in direction.
The message above tells us all, “Keep your financial support flowing unconditionally and stay out of the debate or else you will be labelled as ignorant”.
I will accept the labels as the price one pays for exercising independent thought and prerogative.
This is not a political discussion. Like Americans irrespective of party affiliation do with their country, true CMCers constructively contribute to the perennial discussions about its evolution. They stick around to effect change. They don’t take their ball and go home.
As for the financial support threat, it’s the Godwin’s law corollary for non profit institutions. So much for independent thought.
Those who love the College seek to restore it to its own standards, not the hollow ones of the rankings, diversity, or some such other pabulum that is in vogue.
Gann packed the Board, by the way. Any self-respecting Board would have ousted her long ago, but few on the Board really believe that “Civilization prospers with commerce.” They care only about Mammon and U.S. News & World Report.
I’m really quite a long ways from taking my ball and going home. In fact, I’ve found the insults quite energizing. Thanks for that.
You’re welcome. Your insults were equally energizing.