Rutgers University's business school has been accused of falsifying data to boost rankings

Rutgers University's business school has been accused of placing its graduates in "sham" positions to inflate employability statistics it submits to organizations for ranking.

The lawsuit — filed earlier this month by the human resources manager at Rutgers' business school — alleges that the school spent at least $400,000 placing seven graduates into "sham" positions between 2018 and 2019. The campus jobs were well below the level that the graduates could handle, despite rankings rules that require the students to engage in MBA-level work.

Another suit, filed by the same firm on behalf of students, claims that Rutgers submitted “false and misleading employability statistics” to rankings organizations such as the U.S. News & World Report.

Rutgers has denied the allegations, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

"The Rutgers Business School team follows the guidelines set by the standards agencies, maintains control over our statistics, and methodically reports the information," Rutgers told the Inquirer. 

These allegations come amid other Philadelphia-area university legal scandals.

One month after the former Dean of Temple University’s Fox School of Business, Moshe Porat was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison after lying to boost the rankings of his school. In 2018, Temple announced that Porat had falsified and exaggerated the number of incoming students who had taken the graduate school entrance exam, in order to boost its ranking.

Additionally, Penn is currently facing a lawsuit that former Rhodes Scholar Mackenzie Fierceton filed in Dec. 2021. In the lawsuit, Fierceton alleges that Penn is unjustly withholding her degree, as well as discrediting details about her upbringing. 

The Wharton School has consistently ranked highly on the U.S. News & World Report, tying for the top spot for the 2023 list.