Columbia University Offers To Settle Rankings Lawsuit For $9 Million

Forbes

02-07-2025

Columbia University has offered $9 million to settle a lawsuit over what past students alleged were ... More fraudulent data submitted to inflate the university's national ranking. getty
Columbia University has offered $9 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by former students who claimed the university had submitted inaccurate data to U.S. News & World Report, according to the Columbia Spectator .
The lawsuit, filed against Columbia on Aug. 2, 2022, claimed that the university had misrepresented some of the data it submitted to U.S. News & World Report , as part of that publication'a annual college rankings. Columbia's ranking was artificially inflated, constituting false advertising, according to the students, who also contended that as a result of the inaccurate data, they overpaid to attend Columbia.
In September 2022, Columbia acknowledged that it had submitted some inaccurate data as part of its participation in the college rankings done by U. S. News & World Report for the 2022 edition of its Best College s (published September 2021).
The revelation came in a message from then-Provost Mary Boyce that Columbia would begin to submit data to the Common Data Set, an initiative by colleges and universities to provide a wide array of data to the public about their institutional performance.
The Columbia ranking controversy began when Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics at the university, posted a lengthy critique of the data that Columbia had submitted for the college rankings.
After Thaddeus compared institutional data to the numbers Columbia had submitted, he questioned the accuracy of several of the self-reported figures, including the number of classes of various sizes, the percentage of faculty with terminal degrees, the percentage of classes taught by full-time faculty, the student:faculty ratio, and the amount Columbia spent on instruction.
At first, Columbia defended its data. But just before the July 1 deadline for submitting new data to U.S. News, Columbia changed its tune and, in a statement by Provost Boyce, said that the university had 'embarked on a review of our data collection and submissions process.'
In the year following the discovery of the discrepancies, Columbia's ranking dropped from No. 2 to No. 18.
Columbia later announced it would not submit data to U.S. News in 2023 for its undergraduate rankings, claiming that it had concluded that the 'rankings do not accurately capture the student experience or the priorities of the institution.'
Columbia did not admit to any wrongdoing in its settlement offer. A university spokesperson wrote, 'while the University denies any wrongdoing, it deeply regrets deficiencies in prior reporting and has adopted new steps to improve the quality and accuracy of information available to prospective students."
The Spectator also reported that a university official had provided a statement that Columbia was settling the lawsuit to avoid 'protracted and costly litigation.'
The settlement covers about 22,000 former undergraduate students who were enrolled in Columbia College, Columbia Engineering, or Columbia's School of General Studies between 2016 and 2022. According to The New York Times , after contingency fees are paid to the plaintiff's lawyers, each student would each receive about $273.
Columbia's settlement motion must still be approved by a judge.