For 30 years, U.S. News and World Report has published rankings of United States colleges and universities. For many college-bound youth and their parents, this annual list has become one of the first bits of research they do when deciding where they’d most like to attend. Recently, five schools admitted giving U.S. News and World Report incorrect data, which wound up skewing their ranking. Now, not all these schools necessarily cheated—or, at least, not intentionally so. George Washington University in Washington, D.C., says its problems stemmed from flawed data-gathering systems; other colleges and universities acknowledge that some of their reporting had been intentionally falsified. Bucknell University found it had been ratcheting up incoming students’ SAT scores for years. Tulane University had been overstating how exclusive its business school was. Often, these falsifications were made by just one or two people, unbeknownst to the rest of the school; but the damage was done, and these are just schools admitting errors. There could be other schools out there still cheating. “Rankings have become omnipresent in higher education, and they have enhanced the competition among institutions,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, “and in any highly competitive environment, there is always a temptation to cut corners.” (Washington Post)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and two children. Follow him on Twitter.