The recent admissions scandal involving millions of dollars and a broad range of individuals and schools has been viewed by professors with less interest being seen as “business as usual.” Generally, professors seem to wonder why the US justice department decided to spring to enforcement at this time and with this focus. It is not that those involved in teaching consider this recent event unimportant but that this is certainly not new news. My department observed with amazement how many students over the past decades from Asia could receive satisfactory scores on the English TOEFL exam when in early exercises it was clear they could barely understand or write. There was no doubt that they had not taken the exam or that the exam had been doctored. To address the issue we found we had to re-administer the exams when the students registered for class and in doing so denied registration to many. Most of us are familiar with the relationship between fundraising and admissions which appears to have an interesting relationship between the prestige of the school and the expected contribution.
Is the distance between what is being taught, and what members of academic institutions do, increasing, or in a social media world is the ability to hide questionable behavior just becoming more difficult? I clearly recall shortly after joining the academic world in Boston that Harvard failed to deal severely when the editor, Suzanne Spring, of the prestigious Harvard Business Review who was lavishing high praise on Jack Welch’s management style at GE while having an affair with him. In 2006, academic researchers at Harvard were found guilty of stealing samples of their work on antibodies, designed to prevent organs from being rejected by transplant patients attempting to sell them to a Japanese company.
It certainly does not seem that Colleges and Universities are exempt from the greed and temptations of the business world. One such pressure is school rankings and has led, I imagine, most top schools to “smooth their data.” Consider the recent Temple University rankings data scandal. It is possible that universities while striving to make ends meet, are taking on some of the business flaws we have so long cautioned about? Maybe competition brings out not only the best in firms/schools but the worst as well.
Institutions of learning have gone from discussing case studies on inappropriate behavior and fraud to actively being involved while turning out such lofty course objectives as our objective is to: “teach ethics and sound values in order to produce ethical graduates.” Comparing these objectives to syllabus and tests we seem to be doing a great job of “producing ethical graduates” but when comparing these objectives to graduates actions we are doing less well. Take, for example, the two Harvard College students who were responsible for running charity events to benefit children with cancer (Jimmy fund) who stole $132,000 of the money, the two Harvard Law administrators, DeMarco and Saylors, who were arrested for stealing $110,000 in scholarship funds (of all things for students with disabilities) or the case last year (2018) when Lou Anna Simon who had been the President of Michigan State University was charged with lying to police during the investigation of Dr. Nassar who was accused of sexually abusing women and girls while he was athletic doctor for the University and for USA Gymnastics.
Is there much difference between Dean Porat altering data to portray Temple to accreditation in a better light than Students having their admissions altered to show them in a better light? Perhaps the broader lesson Temple provides is the moral high ground that academics have enjoyed when teaching ethics (business or otherwise) has been truly shaken. Perhaps it is time for business schools to acknowledge the enormous nature of the task of teaching ethics and question if they realistically up to it. In situations such as this, I remember the great scene where Bill Murry watching a possessed Sigourney Weaver agonizes over the company rule “not to be involved with clients” in the classic movie “Ghost Busters”. As competition for students and funding increase, it will be wise to recall Mr Murry’s dilemma recognize the forces that can turn “rules” into “guidelines,” deal with the temptations and strive to lead by example.
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