The True Culprits of College Data Fudging

By BEN MURRAY

Higher EducationThe Choice on India Ink

Guidance on American college applications for readers in India from The Times's admissions blog.

For this week's installment of The Choice on India Ink, we have an essay about the malpractice of United States colleges and universities that misreport data to climb the college rankings charts. The author, Ben Murray, is an intern for The Choice and a student at New York University. - Tanya Abrams

Last week, Emory University came clean. After a three-month investigation, the private university near Atlanta - which was recently ranked 20th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report - released a statement admitting to fudging data about its students:

The investigation revealed that both the University's Office of Admission serving Emory College, and the University's Office of Institutional Research, annually reported admitted students' SAT/ACT scores to external surveys as enrolled student scores, since at least the year 2000. This had the effect of overstating Emory's reported test scores. The report found that class rankings were also overstated, although the methodology used to produce the data was not clear.

Although the confession is likely a shocking embarrassment to many who are associated with the university, it's hardly a rare circumstance. In fact, Emory is the latest in a string of American colleges and universities that have recently been forced to confess to obscuring or ignoring the rules when it comes to reporting data about their schools. While some universities have been open about the practice and others have not, most - if not all - of the misreporting has been done to better a university's position in variou s college ranking charts.

A similar situation happened recently at Claremont McKenna College, a liberal arts school in Southern California. This year, the college admitted to submitting false SAT scores to various publications for the past six years. Claremont McKenna was recently rated the ninth best liberal arts college in the nation, and although its U.S. News ranking did not change after the scandal broke, Kiplinger magazine did decide to remove the college from its 2012 rankings.

Other universities that have recently been forced to confess to data fudging include Iona College in New York, Baylor University in Texas, and the law schools at Villanova University and the University of Illinois.

But what's shocking is not the number of American universities that have fabricated statistics, but rather the multitude of ways in which they have done so. It goes far beyond misreporting SAT and ACT scores. For instance, represen tatives at Baylor acknowledged in 2008 that the school had offered monetary rewards to admitted students to retake the SATs in the hopes of increasing the university's average score. Also, in 2009, a handful of universities were found to have been exaggerating their percentages of full-time professors, which is a common criterion in college ranking systems.

It would be easy to solely place the blame on the universities for their falsifications. But the true culprit is the extreme emphasis on rankings in the American college admissions process. Students, parents, high school advisers and university representatives alike each play a substantial role in this, and while it is unlikely that rankings will ever become irrelevant, these scandals should undoubtedly serve as cautionary lessons to all who are involved in the college admissions process.

Rankings can certainly be advantageous in many ways, whether it's determining which schools are best with financial aid or which schools have the best biology programs, among a plethora of other criteria. But to select one school over another simply because the former has a higher overall U.S. News ranking is to deny oneself the ability to find a school that is the best fit for each student. Only when we substantially diminish the stress on rankings will a vast majority of students be able to find that match, and at that time, the data fabrication will likely end.

Indian Government Casts a Wide, Puzzling Net Over Internet

August 23, 2012, 12:20 pm

By VIKAS BAJAJ and HEATHER TIMMONS

Earlier this week, the Indian government acknowledged that it had asked internet service providers to block about 250 web pages in an effort to contain ethnic tensions between Muslims and people from the northeast.

Almost immediately, Internet-policy analysts and journalists started trying to figure out what was blocked. What they have found is a clumsy, haphazard dragnet that has ensnared posts, articles and Twitter accounts that do not appear to have any hate speech on them.

In fact, in some cases, the government has ordered blocked the very sites that exposed reports of violence against Muslims as false. Rumors about anti-Muslim violenc e in Assam reportedly helped to spark a riot in Mumbai on Aug. 11 in which two people died, and helped create an atmosphere of fear in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and elsewhere, leading tens of thousands of students and other migrants from the northeast to crowd trains and buses leaving for their home states.

Yet, one of items the government ordered blocked is a post written almost a month before the Mumbai riot by a Pakistani writer for the Express Tribune newspaper, Faraz Ahmed. “>His post, which is no longer accessible to many in India, was early in pointing out that pictures floating around on Facebook and other sites purporting to show Muslims being beaten and killed in Myanmar and northeastern India were taken from natural disasters and police action in China, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia from years past. (The page was not accessible from the New York Times bureau in New Delhi but was available in Mumbai.)

An analysis of the blocked sites by The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore shows that the pages blocked include reports on AlJazeera.com, the web site of the news network; Firstpost.com, an Indian news site; and the British newspaper The Telegraph. “The people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering Internet service providers to block them,” the analysis said. “All larger sites have clear content removal policies, and encouraging communal tensions and hate speech generally wouldn't be tolerated.”

Policy makers have also sought to block the Twitter accounts for reporters, humorists and columnists, including acerbic critics of the government like Kanchan Gupta and several accounts that appear to be parodies of the Twitter account of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, according to documents published by the Economic Times.

The government has not publicly disclosed a list of the blocked sites and accounts, but several have been circulating. The C.I .S. used one such list. It found that in many cases pages supposed to be blocked were often available using a version of its web address meant to provide more security.

On Thursday evening, the Economic Times newspaper published what it says are the orders from the India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology that list the web addresses and Twitter account names the government has asked Internet service providers to block. A ministry spokesperson didn't immediately return calls for comment.

India's government has been warily watching the internet and social media sites since violence started in the Northeast last month. Last week, the government sent a notice to a number of media houses asking them to monitor online comments submitted by readers, in light of the volatile situation, media executives said. Officials have also blamed groups in Pakistan for doctoring images in an effort to incite Indian Muslims.

“This is a cleverly devised st rategy to switch attention from the government's own inability to handle the situation in Assam,” by blaming both the Internet and Pakistan, said Shivam Vij, a journalist in New Delhi who runs Kafila, a popular website about media and free speech.

The blocking orders are so random as to suggest the government determines which sites should be blocked by assigning a bureaucrat to use Google to search for hate speech, Mr. Vij said.

This isn't the first time the Indian government has displayed a heavy hand when trying to block websites and information. In 2006, the government blocked a number of blogs, including one by an American teenager who called herself “Princess Kimberly.” In 2009, the government banned a popular and graphic online comic strip, Savita Bhabhi, about a housewife with an active sex life. And last year, the government asked social media sites to prescreen user content for disparaging or inflammatory materials.

Indian officials have also required social networking sites like Orkut to take down posts deemed offensive to ethnic and religious groups.

A spokesman for Mr. Singh, Pankaj Pachauri, told the Economic Times that the orders to block web pages and Twitter accounts were not an effort to squelch criticism of the government.

“In fact we welcome it as genuine feedback,” he told the newspaper in an apparent reference to criticism. “In some instances, actions have been initiated on complaints made to PM's Twitter account. We also have no quarrel with people parodying PM as long as it is in the limits of good humor.”

Indian Government Casts a Wide, Puzzling Net Over Internet

August 23, 2012, 12:20 pm

By VIKAS BAJAJ and HEATHER TIMMONS

Earlier this week, the Indian government acknowledged that it had asked internet service providers to block about 250 web pages in an effort to contain ethnic tensions between Muslims and people from the northeast.

Almost immediately, Internet-policy analysts and journalists started trying to figure out what was blocked. What they have found is a clumsy, haphazard dragnet that has ensnared posts, articles and Twitter accounts that do not appear to have any hate speech on them.

In fact, in some cases, the government has ordered blocked the very sites that exposed reports of violence against Muslims as false. Rumors about anti-Muslim violenc e in Assam reportedly helped to spark a riot in Mumbai on Aug. 11 in which two people died, and helped create an atmosphere of fear in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and elsewhere, leading tens of thousands of students and other migrants from the northeast to crowd trains and buses leaving for their home states.

Yet, one of items the government ordered blocked is a post written almost a month before the Mumbai riot by a Pakistani writer for the Express Tribune newspaper, Faraz Ahmed. “>His post, which is no longer accessible to many in India, was early in pointing out that pictures floating around on Facebook and other sites purporting to show Muslims being beaten and killed in Myanmar and northeastern India were taken from natural disasters and police action in China, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia from years past. (The page was not accessible from the New York Times bureau in New Delhi but was available in Mumbai.)

An analysis of the blocked sites by The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore shows that the pages blocked include reports on AlJazeera.com, the web site of the news network; Firstpost.com, an Indian news site; and the British newspaper The Telegraph. “The people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering Internet service providers to block them,” the analysis said. “All larger sites have clear content removal policies, and encouraging communal tensions and hate speech generally wouldn't be tolerated.”

Policy makers have also sought to block the Twitter accounts for reporters, humorists and columnists, including acerbic critics of the government like Kanchan Gupta and several accounts that appear to be parodies of the Twitter account of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, according to documents published by the Economic Times.

The government has not publicly disclosed a list of the blocked sites and accounts, but several have been circulating. The C.I .S. used one such list. It found that in many cases pages supposed to be blocked were often available using a version of its web address meant to provide more security.

On Thursday evening, the Economic Times newspaper published what it says are the orders from the India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology that list the web addresses and Twitter account names the government has asked Internet service providers to block. A ministry spokesperson didn't immediately return calls for comment.

India's government has been warily watching the internet and social media sites since violence started in the Northeast last month. Last week, the government sent a notice to a number of media houses asking them to monitor online comments submitted by readers, in light of the volatile situation, media executives said. Officials have also blamed groups in Pakistan for doctoring images in an effort to incite Indian Muslims.

“This is a cleverly devised st rategy to switch attention from the government's own inability to handle the situation in Assam,” by blaming both the Internet and Pakistan, said Shivam Vij, a journalist in New Delhi who runs Kafila, a popular website about media and free speech.

The blocking orders are so random as to suggest the government determines which sites should be blocked by assigning a bureaucrat to use Google to search for hate speech, Mr. Vij said.

This isn't the first time the Indian government has displayed a heavy hand when trying to block websites and information. In 2006, the government blocked a number of blogs, including one by an American teenager who called herself “Princess Kimberly.” In 2009, the government banned a popular and graphic online comic strip, Savita Bhabhi, about a housewife with an active sex life. And last year, the government asked social media sites to prescreen user content for disparaging or inflammatory materials.

Indian officials have also required social networking sites like Orkut to take down posts deemed offensive to ethnic and religious groups.

A spokesman for Mr. Singh, Pankaj Pachauri, told the Economic Times that the orders to block web pages and Twitter accounts were not an effort to squelch criticism of the government.

“In fact we welcome it as genuine feedback,” he told the newspaper in an apparent reference to criticism. “In some instances, actions have been initiated on complaints made to PM's Twitter account. We also have no quarrel with people parodying PM as long as it is in the limits of good humor.”

Sonia Gandhi Ranked Sixth Most Powerful Woman in the World

August 23, 2012, 11:35 am

By PAMPOSH RAINA

Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party president and chairwoman of the coalition government running the country, is India's most powerful woman and the sixth most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

This is the ninth year in a row Forbes has listed the 100 women “who impact the world.” Mrs. Gandhi, 65, made it to the list for the fourth time, and moved up one notch from the list last year. She was also named the 11th most powerful person in the world last year, out of 70 people who were chosen by the magazine.

(The list, some noted, may be geared more toward those outside India than those inside. After all, Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal chief mini ster who has practically held the central government hostage at certain times in the past year, didn't make the cut on the list of powerful women.)

Mrs. Gandhi, who underwent surgery for a mysterious illness last year, reported by many Indian media outlets to be a form of cancer, is “back in fighting spirit,” Forbes said, citing her public reprimand of “a fellow parliamentarian during session who had criticized her party's handling of this summer's rioting in Assam.”

The magazine added: “Lauded for overseeing heavy economic growth, she is also criticized for tolerating political corruption and failing to forge connections with India's fastest-growing demographic â€" younger voters.”

Despite the criticism, Mrs. Gandhi was ranked one spot ahead of the U.S. first lady, Michelle Obama (and just behind Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times).

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany once again ranked first, followed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state. President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil was third on the power list and Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was fourth.

Indra Nooyi, the chairwoman and chief executive of PepsiCo, was the next Indian woman on the list after Mrs. Gandhi, at No. 12, right behind the television host Oprah Winfrey. Ms. Nooyi, 56, has been in the Forbes list's top 10 for the past six years. “This superstar CEO last year returned $5.6 billion to shareholders, when PepsiCo net revenue grew 14% to $66 billion,” Forbes said. The magazine added that she is “in the hot seat” because of “languishing stock at the snack-and-soda giant and diminishing market share.”

Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology and strategy officer of Cisco, the world's largest computer networking equipment maker, was the third Indian woman on the list at No. 58.  Ms. Warrior, 51, “is responsible for all deals activity as one of the most acquisitive f irms in technology reconfigures its business strategy,” and is being “groomed for the top spot,” Forbes wrote. The publication also pointed to her 1.4 million followers on Twitter, who receive company updates and “cute pictures of her family.”

Right behind Ms. Warrior at No. 59 was Chanda Kochhar, 50, the managing director and chief executive of ICICI Bank, one of India's largest lenders. Ms. Kochhar “oversees assets of $93 billion, more than 2,750 branches in India and the bank's presence in 19 countries,” Forbes wrote. Ms. Kochhar, who became the company's youngest chief executive in 2009, is “pursuing a new strategy, prioritizing day-to-day banking business through its branches rather than big-ticket deals,” the magazine wrote.

The last Indian woman to appear on the 2012 list was Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, 59, the founder and chairwoman of Biocon, a biotechnology company, who came in at No. 80. Forbes described Ms. Mazumdar-Shaw as “India's first biotech entrepreneur.”

Image of the Day: August 23

August 23, 2012, 11:08 am

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Manganiyar Musical Legacies Fade With Next Generation

By NIDA NAJAR

For centuries, the destinies of Rajasthan's Manganiyar musicians were dictated by their birth.

Lakha Khan, 66,  learned the Sindhi sarangi from his father, who viewed it as his legacy to be passed down to future generations. The sarangi, a violin-shaped instrument played with a bow, has more than 20 strings. Lakha likens the difficulty of playing it to “climbing a rope using only your feet.”

But  his own sons couldn't be bothered to learn, he said, because it is too difficult.

Sakar Khan, 76,  who is unrelated to Lakha Khan, plays the kamancha, also called the komaicha - also played with a bow, but with fewer strings than the sarangi. He has fared better in passing on his tradition - three of his sons play, each an accomplished musician in his own right.  But his instrument, too, is in decline, some experts say, as many kamancha players' children take up easier instruments, or ev en forgo music altogether.

“The aesthetics of the music are changing,” said Shalini Ayyagari, an ethnomusicologist and professor of South Asian music at American University in Washington.  “The komaicha is a difficult instrument to learn and even to tune, so I think this idea of being able to pick up the harmonium and the khartal is easier.”

Ashutosh Sharma and Ankur Malhotra of the record label Amarrass see the decline of the kamancha and instruments like it as one of the many challenges to preserving the Manganiyars' folk music tradition.

In Sakar's village, Hamira, some 15 miles from the massive yellow sandstone fort of Jaisalmer, they knocked on the door of a carpenter who makes doors and furniture for many of the local families.  His only training in instrument-making was watching his father construct drums for Manganiyars decades ago. Mr. Sharma and Mr. Malhotra are trying to bring the musicians and the carpenter together to fashion a new cr op of instruments.

Even if that effort succeeds, more than just musical skills and craftsmanship are disappearing.

Sakar and Lakha Khan have hundreds of songs living in their heads. On a recent visit to Hamira, Sakar played one that he wrote when the Indian rail service was extended to Jaisalmer in 1967, a whimsical tune that mimics the sound of a train leaving the station.  Lakha played one about a liquor baron negotiating prices with a Rajput for his hunting party, a slice of life from pre-Independence India.  Songs like these, which were rarely written down, are also fading with the next generation.

“It will go,” said Shubha Chaudhuri, an ethnomusicologist at the American Institute of Indian Studies in Gurgaon.  “But then, it's the way of all music.  Natural transmission is failing.”

More than anything, as the eldest generation of living Manganiyars ages, it is a way of life that is changing.  After Lakha Khan ceases to play, his so ns will not be able to carry on his legacy.  As for Sakar Khan, a typical day for him involves donning his white kurta and turban, playing, then setting his kamancha down after lunch and relaxing with a bit of opium. Several of his grandsons are learning to play, but they also put on jeans and T-shirts to attend school in the nearby city of Jaisalmer. During my visit to Hamira, one grandson confided he has a different career goal: he hopes to become an engineer.

Preserving the Passion of India\'s Roots Music

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“In this tiny village almost 400 miles southwest of New Delhi, where women wash dishes in the sand to conserve water, and electricity is scarce,” Nida Najar wrote in The New York Time of Raneri village in Rajasthan, musician Lakha Khan sat on the floor of a stone hut, coaxing “a bright, high-pitched, dizzyingly fast melody from his violinlike sarangi.”

Mr. Khan, 66, “is one of the few remaining Sindhi sarangi players among the Manganiyars, a caste of hereditary Muslim musicians,” who live in the desert state, Ms. Najar wrote.

“He plays for hours - until black beetles falling from the ceiling indicate nighttime - usually with no more company than a couple of passing goats,” she wrote. “But on a recent afternoon he had an audience of two: Ashutosh Sharma and Ankur Malhotra, who were crouching over their gear, including a five-channel mixer and two analog recorders.”< /p>

“There's an exuberance or just kind of a lack of inhibition when they're performing at home,” Mr. Malhotra said of the Manganiyars, whose music is a mix of traditional melodies and arresting vocals. “Here these performances are genuine and real and filled with emotion.”

Mr. Sharma and Mr. Malhotra, both 37, said they want to preserve the music of the Manganiyars, whose songs - devotionals as well as stories of births, deaths and love, often about the Hindu families that are their patrons - have no written record. The two men said they were inspired by Alan Lomax, the musicologist who more than half a century ago traveled the American South recording previously unknown blues musicians.

And like Lomax they hope to preserve the music and to bring it to a wider audience through a small, independent record label they began with two friends, called Amarrass Records. Yet they realize that trying to popularize Manganiyar music is a daunting task in India, where most young people would rather download Bollywood ringtones than listen to an ancient folk music.

Read the full article. View a slide show of a recent performance.

In Gujarat, Modi Claims Success in Dam Failure

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Last week an unlikely new tourist destination opened in Gujarat,” Hartosh Singh Bal wrote in The New York Times's Latitude blog. “Since Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister, proclaimed in a blog post, ‘Fantastic visual treat awaits you as Narmada Dam overflows!'” about 150,000 people went to watch the water flow over the partially completed Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river, he wrote.

“Although the dam may be a stunning visual spectacle, it's already a failure,' Mr. Bal wrote. In fact, he concludes, “What the tourists who gathered at the Sardar Sarovar Dam last week were looking at is not a technological marvel but an economic disaster.”

When the dam was first planned, rates of return varying from 12 to 18 percent - well over the government of India's minimum criterion of 9 percent - were projected. But the actual rate of return will be far low er.

The official Web site for the project quantifies its benefits as totaling about $395 million a year, after factoring in expected increases in agricultural production, power generation and water supply.

The project - which is nowhere near complete - had already cost $5.7 billion as of March 2010. Of the total expenditure incurred by then about $2.36 billion has been spent on the irrigation network. Since only about 27 percent of the irrigation canal network has been completed, building the rest could require another $6.3 billion. This places the total cost of the project at $11 billion, meaning that the benefit of $395 million amounts to an annual return of a measly 3.6 percent - far below the minimum criterion.

Read the full post.

In Gujarat, Modi Claims Success in Dam Failure

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Last week an unlikely new tourist destination opened in Gujarat,” Hartosh Singh Bal wrote in The New York Times's Latitude blog. “Since Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister, proclaimed in a blog post, ‘Fantastic visual treat awaits you as Narmada Dam overflows!'” about 150,000 people went to watch the water flow over the partially completed Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river, he wrote.

“Although the dam may be a stunning visual spectacle, it's already a failure,' Mr. Bal wrote. In fact, he concludes, “What the tourists who gathered at the Sardar Sarovar Dam last week were looking at is not a technological marvel but an economic disaster.”

When the dam was first planned, rates of return varying from 12 to 18 percent - well over the government of India's minimum criterion of 9 percent - were projected. But the actual rate of return will be far low er.

The official Web site for the project quantifies its benefits as totaling about $395 million a year, after factoring in expected increases in agricultural production, power generation and water supply.

The project - which is nowhere near complete - had already cost $5.7 billion as of March 2010. Of the total expenditure incurred by then about $2.36 billion has been spent on the irrigation network. Since only about 27 percent of the irrigation canal network has been completed, building the rest could require another $6.3 billion. This places the total cost of the project at $11 billion, meaning that the benefit of $395 million amounts to an annual return of a measly 3.6 percent - far below the minimum criterion.

Read the full post.