Moshe Porat, a Bala Cynwyd resident and former Dean of the Temple University Business school was convicted by a jury on Monday (November 29) for having falsified the school’s rankings. He had been charged with conspiracy and wire fraud in Federal Court. The New York Times reported today –
This case was certainly unusual, but at its foundation it is just a case of fraud and underlying greed,” Jennifer Arbittier Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said in the statement on Monday. She said Mr. Porat had misrepresented information to “defraud the rankings system, potential students and donors.”
Temple kicked out of U.S. News Rankings in 2018
In July of 2018, the Inquirer reported that – U.S. News on Wednesday revised its rankings of the 2018 Best Online M.B.A. Programs after about two weeks, saying Temple’s Fox Online M.B.A. had been removed as the nation’s No. 1-ranked online program due to “unintentionally misreported data,” dean Moshe Porat said in a statement on the university’s website.
Porat was indicted in April of this year. At that time, AP wrote – According to the indictment, Porat ordered his staff to send inaccurate information about the program after learning that U.S. News & World Report lacked the resources to audit any of the data submitted by the schools.
Acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said, “This was not a victimless crime. The victims are students and graduates and donors to the Fox school, as well as other universities and their students that were cheated out of their legitimate rankings. When a university’s statistics and metrics are tainted by fraud, the resulting harm extends far and wide and creates a loss of faith in the value of academic institutions.”