The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office launched an investigation into Temple University and its Fox School of Business on Friday after an independent report found that Fox falsified data reports to the U.S. News & World Report.
The office’s Bureau of Consumer Protection will look into Temple’s business and marketing practices to determine if there was other misreported data or if any laws were broken, the Inquirer reported.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro told President Richard Englert to expect “a detailed demand for information” from his office next week, Shapiro wrote in a letter to Englert on Friday.
Additionally, all of Temple’s schools and colleges must now follow a new process to submit data, Provost JoAnne Epps announced in an email to the Temple community Wednesday afternoon.
A performance analytics unit, led by Barbara Manaka, associate professor of instruction and former director of curriculum management, assessment, teaching and learning at Fox, will be responsible for the aggregation, inspection, verification and submission of all data from Fox to internal and external ranking entities. The unit will report to Senior Associate Dean Aubrey Kent.
Temple will now require the dean of every school and college to describe the collection, verification and submission process of all data, including other information about the individuals gathering the data.
“As a result of the issues uncovered by [the Jones Day] review, it is clear that the university needs to implement new processes to ensure the highest degree of data integrity,” Epps wrote.
The university seeks to hire at least two new staff members in Institutional Research and Assessment to assist the schools and colleges with appropriate data processes and practices. One new staff member will work with Fox.
“We have been asked for additional verification of data we have already submitted to U.S. News,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Temple News. “We are responding to their request.”
The new processes were announced a day after the U.S. News & World Report requested the university verify data for the university’s previous rankings, including Best Colleges, Best Online Program and Best Graduate Program.
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