Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 7, 1995 TAG: 9504070042
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-16 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This sad fact was brought to us anew this week by a news story in the Wall Street Journal about methods U.S. colleges use to fudge pertinent statistics presented in magazine surveys and college guidebooks.
In one particularly sleazy little example, a school claimed the average Scholastic Aptitude Test score for the 1994 freshman class was a stout-brained 1,286.
The numbers suggested that the institution in question, one particularly sunwashed enclave in the southern regions of Florida, had some of the most stringent entrance requirements in all of American higher education.
What brilliance.
What intellectual courage.
What nonsense.
It seems our institution of lower learning lops off the bottom 6 percent of bone-headed scores, a practice that raises the average by some 40 points.
The red-faced admissions director of this esteemed institution, when confronted with this fraud, conceded that there were "some ethical questions." But he insisted that the school had a more practical motive for such score inflation than might be assumed at first appalled glance.
Yes, said he, this grubby little manipulation was done in the name of ``marketing strategy.''
But of course. In the Darwinian world of college recruiting, a school must present its best possible face to the tuition paying public. It makes for an interesting situation.
A school that would swiftly give the boot to a student caught cheating on an anthropology exam delightedly cheats in its marketing campaign to get him on campus to begin with.
One of the guidebook publishers just threw up his hands.
``If they give us incorrect data, there is really nothing much we can do about it,'' he said.
Nor is there much that can be done about those who telephone newspapers with faulty statistics for the sports pages. Not that anybody around here would do such a thing.
But take it from one who has served for years transcribing the numbers phoned in for our high school statistics packages: You wonder about some of these stats.
Others do, too.
``Who calls this stuff in?'' they ask.
You tell them it's the coach or the scorekeeper or somebody.
``Well, I know for a fact that that kid [take your pick: doesn't hit for that kind of average; can't run that fast; doesn't jump that far; doesn't have that many home runs].''
You ask them how they know. They say they just know.
So you make some calls to somebody who can defend the numbers. They do. They also get testy.
You accept what they say because you have to accept what they say.
But you wonder.
Somehow, most all the troublesome calls seem to come in the spring, when the less closely watched sports such as track and field and the ball and bat games are played.
You also get calls during football season, particularly about the tackling numbers.
``How can you print this trash?`` the aggrieved guy at the other end of the line would ask. ``Lawrence Taylor and Dick Butkus combined never had that many tackles in a season.''
The reading public usually simmers down after being educated on the myriad methods used by the various schools to identify and count tackles. An equal-opportunity newspaper, we use whatever the tackle counters phone or fax into us, regardless of the methods used to gather those totals.
Don't get the idea that we're being overwhelmed by calls from the skeptics. Maybe one or two questioning calls a year come in.
And maybe those callers with the questions are just plain full of it.
I hope so. Because anybody who would phone in bogus stats, no matter what the reason (``I was just doing it for the kids,'' you could just hear somebody saying) would swipe a piece of candy out of the honor system box at work or shave strokes off a scorecard in a friendly round of golf.
That's sad, of course. Because one day, that individual will have to step into the Great Sporting Beyond. And I'd hate to be there when Jesse Owens strides up to ask about that suspect time in the 100 meters, or Walter Johnson wants to know about that strikeout total, or Babe Ruth has a problem with the home run tally he'd read about in the newspaper.
Questions from those kinds of guys you don't just blow off.
Ray Cox is a sportswriter for the Roanoke Times & World-News.|
by CNB