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I’m an English professor, so let me say it Shakespeareanly.

(This just in – via Wendy, a reader.)

UD‘s university must now lie – at least for a while – – in the unranked sweat of an enseamed bed. That is, because George Washington University for years misrepresented the class rank of entering students, it is being punished to the nth degree by US News and World Report.

George Washington University on Wednesday lost its U.S. News and World Report ranking as one of the top national universities because the school revealed it had erroneously reported data on incoming students for more than a decade.

The private university held the coveted 51st ranking on the “Best Colleges” listing of the top 200 national universities. But U.S. News said the use of incorrect data in the September publication made the school’s rank higher than it would have been.

U.S. News said the school will have an “unranked” status until the publication of its 2014 edition of “Best Colleges” and until the school confirms the accuracy of its data.

**********************

NOTE TO THE MEDIA:

As a professor at George
Washington University, I
am available to be
interviewed about how

traumatic this is.

******************************

Sing it with me:

So yank me and wank me,
Spank me, unrank me,
I’m yours ‘til I die,
So in love,
So in love
So in love with you, my love, am I.

Margaret Soltan, November 14, 2012 4:20PM
Posted in: snapshots from home

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2 Responses to “I’m an English professor, so let me say it Shakespeareanly.”

  1. david foster Says:

    Cute. But isn’t the falsification (intentional or unintentional) of data which people use in making very large financial decisions actually a pretty serious matter?

    There are people in prison today, some of whom will be there for a long time, because they filed false financial statement (counting an expense item as a capital investment, for example), thereby exposing investors to undisclosed risk. But for most people, a college education is a larger investment than any single stock or bond than they’re likely to purchase in their lifetime.

    Maybe there needs to be some kind of serious sanction for university officials (for-profit OR “nonprofit”) who misrepresent data influencing a student’s attendance decision.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    david: I agree it’s a serious (as well as strangely comic) matter. I’m skeptical about all of this for so long having been a series of innocent mistakes. But it’s possible. If it was ineptitude, what’s going on at a university where so important a department can’t do math? If it was intentional, that should come out and major consequences should ensue.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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