July 25, 2018
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice
A Temple Owl statue and the Bell Tower on the campus of Temple University.
In an email sent to students on Wednesday, Temple University President Richard Englert announced the university uncovered at least six more programs in the Fox School of Business that had falsely reported data to U.S. News & World Report, in addition to the online MBA program.
The other programs include the Executive MBA, Global MBA, Part-Time MBA, Master of Science in Human Resource Management and Master of Science in Digital Innovation in Marketing.
The programs had issues related to the number of new entrants providing GRE/GMAT scores, student indebtedness and applicants’ undergraduate GPAs, according to Englert's email to all Temple students. For the Online Bachelor of Business Administration, misreporting related to student indebtedness was also found.
"As a result, we have reported to U.S. News that we cannot verify data related to these programs, and we are not participating in or submitting business school surveys at this time," Englert wrote.
The university has faced scrutiny since January when the business school admitted it had provided inaccurate data — at times, knowingly — relating to its online MBA program to U.S. News & World Report and was removed from its list, where the program had previously ranked No. 1 four years in-a-row.
The university hired a law firm to determine how the misreporting occurred at Fox and on July 9 the school asked longtime dean Moshe Porat to resign.
The U.S. Department of Education is currently investigating whether the school intentionally misled students by false reporting data and if found guilty, the university may be responsible for paying back students' federal loans, the Inquirer reported. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office and another accrediting agency are also investigating.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro's office said it has requested information and documents from Temple, and directed its Bureau of Consumer Protection to investigate.
"I'm deeply concerned by the news that more professional graduate programs at Temple University are reporting problems with the veracity of their rankings data," Shapiro said. "My job as chief law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is to ensure students and families receive the benefit of the bargain when they make significant expenditures to advance their education."
This story was updated after it published with a statement from Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
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