ArchPundit

That tying a guy’s salary to purely statistical goals he self reports could lead to a scandal:

But year after year, Pless reportedly met or exceeded the goals by falsifying data, concluded a 114-page report by the university’s legal counsel, its ethics office, law firm Jones Day; and Duff & Phelps, a financial advisory and data analysis firm. The university also released thousands of pages of supporting material, including the email exchanges.

U. of I. hired the two firms after the university’s ethics office received a tip in late August that erroneous information had been reported about the Class of 2014, a group the college touted as “the most academically distinguished” in school history, with a median LSAT score of 168 that bumped the college into a “rarefied level.” The class’s actual median LSAT score was 163, a significant drop from the previous year’s honestly reported score of 167.

The report, released Monday, concluded Pless inflated academic credentials for the class of 2008 and the classes of 2010 through 2014. The acceptance rates of four of those classes also were manipulated. Pless “knowingly and intentionally” submitted false data by changing individual students’ grades and test scores or inflating the overall class median, according to the report.

To understand what a drop of 167 to 163 means, a 167 is around the 95th percentile on the most recent test (percentiles do move around on the test,so these previous year’s tests are probably off a bit here) to a 163 which is around the 88th percentile.  That’s a pretty big drop, but part of the problem is the Illinois Law School seems heavily focused on using a mediocre measure of quality in the US News & World Report rankings.

Grades and scores could both change significantly by year regardless of what the Law School does.  Being a slave to USN&WR rankings makes the school a slave to random fluctuations and specifically is an invalid measure to base a strategic plan.  A law school, as any educational institution should, should have a vision of what it does and do that the best it can.   Being a slave to measures that will necessarily fluctuate from year to year creates a situation where the institution is chasing statistical artifacts that have little to no meaning.  That is a corruption of the institution in the worst possible way and a surefire method to eventually turn into a mediocre institution.