U. of Illinois Law suspends Dean of Admissions Forum

[Samara]

I would not want to be Pless right now. I don't know how he could possibly get a job above the status of burger flipping without using political connections.

This is Illinois we're talking about...

Well, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that's his only real out, either. It's really the only way people in these kinds of jobs manage to keep their head afloat - someone steps in and the winds of nepotism quietly give them a job where they can just keep their head low until retirement.

Oh, I don't disagree. But many people in Illinois have done every well for themselves after doing much worse, so if has connections he may end up okay.

[Tanicius]

I would not want to be Pless right now. I don't know how he could possibly get a job above the status of burger flipping without using political connections.

This is Illinois we're talking about...

Well, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that's his only real out, either. It's really the only way people in these kinds of jobs manage to keep their head afloat - someone steps in and the winds of nepotism quietly give them a job where they can just keep their head low until retirement.

Oh, I don't disagree. But many people in Illinois have done every well for themselves after doing much worse, so if has connections he may end up okay.

Yeah, I'm sure there's something for him.

[c3pO4]

I would not want to be Pless right now. I don't know how he could possibly get a job above the status of burger flipping without using political connections.

This is Illinois we're talking about...

Well, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that's his only real out, either. It's really the only way people in these kinds of jobs manage to keep their head afloat - someone steps in and the winds of nepotism quietly give them a job where they can just keep their head low until retirement.

Oh, I don't disagree. But many people in Illinois have done every well for themselves after doing much worse, so if has connections he may end up okay.

He'll eventually get a job as a school administrator. Principle somewhere, or maybe admissions counselor. Could be at a private school. High school, college, whatever. They hire people off the street for thos jobs. With his experience, even with this scandal, he'll be fine.

[Tanicius]

He'll eventually get a job as a school administrator. Principle somewhere, or maybe admissions counselor. Could be at a private school. High school, college, whatever. They hire people off the street for thos jobs. With his experience, even with this scandal, he'll be fine.

lol, wouldn't be the first time something ridiculous like that happened...

Randi W. v. Muroc Joint Unified School District

[MrAnon]

What I found most intriguing about the whole report was this: Pless graduated from Illinois and his first job (and only job) was at the Univeristy. Why would a law grad, from a relatively good school, decide to take a $38,000 a year job right out of school doing something other than being a lawyer?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Pless wasn't exactly at the top of the class.

I heard he was top 15% of his class.

[ScrabbleChamp]

What I found most intriguing about the whole report was this: Pless graduated from Illinois and his first job (and only job) was at the Univeristy. Why would a law grad, from a relatively good school, decide to take a $38,000 a year job right out of school doing something other than being a lawyer?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Pless wasn't exactly at the top of the class.

I heard he was top 15% of his class.

I heard you make up random shit just for fun.

[bjsesq]

In order to verify the data Pless was giving to Smith and the rest of the administration, one would need to have access to LSAC (something very few people had) and compare numbers for every student. Everyone trusted Pless, based on his well-deserved (acknowledged even by the investigators) reputation for doing a good job. Fraud or no fraud, he was good at his job. Accordingly, everyone was comfortable with his position as the sole middleman with access to all the data coming in and going out.

Another point people seem to be missing is that one response to the 2009 scandal was to create a firewall between admissions and the rest of the administration in order to avoid improper influence on individual admissions decisions. This had the perverse effect of leaving Pless with even less oversight than he otherwise would have had.

Jones Day and the data forensics firm were hired by the university ethics office, and as independent investigators, they had no interest whatsoever in protecting the law school administration. In response to a student question, the lead attorney explained that the "how deep does the rabbit hole go" question was a primary focus of the investigation. While they couldn't completely rule out any misconduct by persons other than Pless, they found no evidence of such misconduct after reviewing some ungodly number of documents and emails.

None of this means that I think the administration doesn't bear some responsibility for his actions. An unhealthy focus on numbers and rankings gamesmanship, institutional pressure to perform in the form of ever-rising goals, crazy financial rewards for "success," and zero accountability all contributed to an environment where Pless, an arrogant, greedy little bastard, could thrive.

With all the pontificating and people claiming "facts" about shit they couldn't possibly know, this post was not appreciated enough.

+1, dude.

[MrAnon]

I'm a guy who has told you law school is a scam and that deans are greedy. if you had put your trust in me instead of Pless you'd be better off right now.

You know, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

hint: you're the broken clock.

Dude, bullshit on the idea that this asshat is even as right as a broken clock. This idiot wasn't making ANY proclamations about Dean Pless lying to us. There is no "I told you so" here. Whether law school is generally a scam has absolutely nothing to do with this.

That is an absurd statement. If I had gone into the Pless Q&A forum and posted that Pless was a liar and that the statistics he was laying out about UIUC were totally bogus you guys would have flipped your lids in addition to flagging it as off topic or some such nonsense. You can't have it both ways.

[MrAnon]

What I found most intriguing about the whole report was this: Pless graduated from Illinois and his first job (and only job) was at the Univeristy. Why would a law grad, from a relatively good school, decide to take a $38,000 a year job right out of school doing something other than being a lawyer?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Pless wasn't exactly at the top of the class.

I heard he was top 15% of his class.

I heard you make up random shit just for fun.

It is entirely plausible. Does anyone know with certainty what UIUC's placement stats are? Yes I thought so...

[MrAnon]

"The UI on Monday announced it concluded its investigation into inaccuracies found with the law school’s student profile data and issued a final report Monday. That report uncovered intentional inaccuracies in six of the 10 years reviewed."

So this hardly comes as a surprise to most of us. Of course it was intentional and of course it was going to be a long term issue.

The next obvious fact is that the dean of admissions of course did not act in a vacume. The rest of the administration was certainly aware.

Learn how to spell.

Also, how do you figure? The report explicitly states that Dean Pless was the sole administrator in charge of compiling and reporting the numbers without any oversight. So, it's completely plausible to believe that nobody else was involved. There is no information anywhere in that report to indicate that Pless had an accomplice. It was just a poor decision for Illinois to allow a single person to have full control over the compiling and reporting of the numbers AND to provide that person with merit raises based on how much the numbers increased each year.

Someone else knew! there was a tip! remember? Pless didn't come forward on this, right? Lets all bury our heads in the sand.

[minnbills]

That is an absurd statement. If I had gone into the Pless Q&A forum and posted that Pless was a liar and that the statistics he was laying out about UIUC were totally bogus you guys would have flipped your lids in addition to flagging it as off topic or some such nonsense. You can't have it both ways.

Accusing somebody of something without any evidence? No shit people would have flipped.

[MrAnon]

What I can't comprehend is why Hurd kept justifying giving Pless a raise based on numbers Pless was providing without any fact-checking or oversight. I can only imagine what my boss would say if I walked into her office and said: "Hey, I'm doing great work, here are some numbers I am providing to you to prove my point. Give me a raise now, as these numbers clearly show I deserve it. Also, don't bother checking the numbers. I am providing them to you, which is good enough."

I don't think Hurd, or anyone else, knew what Pless was doing, but it is absolutely their obligation to ensure the numbers they sign off on, and publish, are accurate.

Because it made Hurd look better too. It made everyone in the administration look better. It made the school look better. It creates a cycle of raises and higher tuition and everyone is willing to look the other way for more raises behind more tuition.

[Samara]

What I can't comprehend is why Hurd kept justifying giving Pless a raise based on numbers Pless was providing without any fact-checking or oversight. I can only imagine what my boss would say if I walked into her office and said: "Hey, I'm doing great work, here are some numbers I am providing to you to prove my point. Give me a raise now, as these numbers clearly show I deserve it. Also, don't bother checking the numbers. I am providing them to you, which is good enough."

I don't think Hurd, or anyone else, knew what Pless was doing, but it is absolutely their obligation to ensure the numbers they sign off on, and publish, are accurate.

Because it made Hurd look better too. It made everyone in the administration look better. It made the school look better. It creates a cycle of raises and higher tuition and everyone is willing to look the other way for more raises behind more tuition.

They went through reserves of money to try to game the system, it wasn't for higher tuition. Yes, tuition went up, but so did scholarships, evening it out.

*sigh*

[Kilpatrick]

"The UI on Monday announced it concluded its investigation into inaccuracies found with the law school’s student profile data and issued a final report Monday. That report uncovered intentional inaccuracies in six of the 10 years reviewed."

So this hardly comes as a surprise to most of us. Of course it was intentional and of course it was going to be a long term issue.

The next obvious fact is that the dean of admissions of course did not act in a vacume. The rest of the administration was certainly aware.

Learn how to spell.

Also, how do you figure? The report explicitly states that Dean Pless was the sole administrator in charge of compiling and reporting the numbers without any oversight. So, it's completely plausible to believe that nobody else was involved. There is no information anywhere in that report to indicate that Pless had an accomplice. It was just a poor decision for Illinois to allow a single person to have full control over the compiling and reporting of the numbers AND to provide that person with merit raises based on how much the numbers increased each year.

Someone else knew! there was a tip! remember? Pless didn't come forward on this, right? Lets all bury our heads in the sand.

Likely that's because the manipulation he did with the class of 2014 was so blatant that someone else in the office finally realized what was up. In previous years he changed the LSAT numbers for one or two people.

You should really stop making posts if you're not going to read the report or at least make some effort to actually understand what's going on instead of just endlessly trotting out your tired shtick.

[Tanicius]

That is an absurd statement. If I had gone into the Pless Q&A forum and posted that Pless was a liar and that the statistics he was laying out about UIUC were totally bogus you guys would have flipped your lids in addition to flagging it as off topic or some such nonsense. You can't have it both ways.

Accusing somebody of something without any evidence? No shit people would have flipped.

Yeah, exactly. We'd flip if anyone accused any law school administrator of wanton fraud unless there is actual evidence that they are committing it. With law schools like Cooley and NYLS, sure, go ahead and make accusations because the evidence is there that they manipulate data and trick students into wasting countless thousands of dollars. But even in those cases, manipulating data isn't the same thing as literally make shit up. Until Pless there has been no evidence of this ever happening at any school.

[vanwinkle]

That is an absurd statement. If I had gone into the Pless Q&A forum and posted that Pless was a liar and that the statistics he was laying out about UIUC were totally bogus you guys would have flipped your lids in addition to flagging it as off topic or some such nonsense. You can't have it both ways.

If we were discussing employment placement stats, sure. But this is about LSAT scores and GPAs of enrolling students, which nobody had been questioning. If you'd shown up and just started claiming the school was lying about its own admitted students' numbers, people would have flipped their lids and berated you, and rightly so, because you wouldn't have had any evidence to support it. It's not "having it both ways", it's two different subjects. Adcomms don't even typically handle gathering employment info, AFAIK that's done by a school's career services office, so it's not even remotely related.

So, yes, there's been evidence for a while that school employment data is misleading or inaccurate, but until now, there was no reason to believe that any school was willfully lying about enrollment stats. There's still no reason to believe that this is happening anywhere else, either; this is clearly the result of a single person's behavior at one school.

TL;DR: stop being full of shit.

[ScrabbleChamp]

It is entirely plausible. Does anyone know with certainty what UIUC's placement stats are? Yes I thought so...

Does anyone know with any certainty what any school's placement stats are? No. You keep harping on the idea that UIUC lied about the placement stats, yet two independent parties said they were unable to find any discrepencies in the placement data. Are you alleging that the independent parties are telling the truth about one aspect but lying about another?

[MrAnon]

That is an absurd statement. If I had gone into the Pless Q&A forum and posted that Pless was a liar and that the statistics he was laying out about UIUC were totally bogus you guys would have flipped your lids in addition to flagging it as off topic or some such nonsense. You can't have it both ways.

Accusing somebody of something without any evidence? No shit people would have flipped.

Yeah, exactly. We'd flip if anyone accused any law school administrator of wanton fraud unless there is actual evidence that they are committing it. With law schools like Cooley and NYLS, sure, go ahead and make accusations because the evidence is there that they manipulate data and trick students into wasting countless thousands of dollars. But even in those cases, manipulating data isn't the same thing as literally make shit up. Until Pless there has been no evidence of this ever happening at any school.

UIUC was the second school this year. Cmon. These are the only schools who got caught.

[MrAnon]

What I can't comprehend is why Hurd kept justifying giving Pless a raise based on numbers Pless was providing without any fact-checking or oversight. I can only imagine what my boss would say if I walked into her office and said: "Hey, I'm doing great work, here are some numbers I am providing to you to prove my point. Give me a raise now, as these numbers clearly show I deserve it. Also, don't bother checking the numbers. I am providing them to you, which is good enough."

I don't think Hurd, or anyone else, knew what Pless was doing, but it is absolutely their obligation to ensure the numbers they sign off on, and publish, are accurate.

Because it made Hurd look better too. It made everyone in the administration look better. It made the school look better. It creates a cycle of raises and higher tuition and everyone is willing to look the other way for more raises behind more tuition.

They went through reserves of money to try to game the system, it wasn't for higher tuition. Yes, tuition went up, but so did scholarships, evening it out.

*sigh*

And salaries went up and up and up and up apparently.

[Tanicius]

That is an absurd statement. If I had gone into the Pless Q&A forum and posted that Pless was a liar and that the statistics he was laying out about UIUC were totally bogus you guys would have flipped your lids in addition to flagging it as off topic or some such nonsense. You can't have it both ways.

Accusing somebody of something without any evidence? No shit people would have flipped.

Yeah, exactly. We'd flip if anyone accused any law school administrator of wanton fraud unless there is actual evidence that they are committing it. With law schools like Cooley and NYLS, sure, go ahead and make accusations because the evidence is there that they manipulate data and trick students into wasting countless thousands of dollars. But even in those cases, manipulating data isn't the same thing as literally make shit up. Until Pless there has been no evidence of this ever happening at any school.

UIUC was the second school this year. Cmon. These are the only schools who got caught.

What was the first school caught lying about LSAT/GPA data?

[chrisbru]

What was the first school caught lying about LSAT/GPA data?

Villanova.

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/02/villanov ... o-the-aba/


Also:
The majority of schools' placement statistics are misrepresented in the same way. This is NOT about employment statistics. We're only talking about admissions data, which is all that is relevant ITT.

[MrAnon]

What was the first school caught lying about LSAT/GPA data?

Villanova.

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/02/villanov ... o-the-aba/


Also:
The majority of schools' placement statistics are misrepresented in the same way. This is NOT about employment statistics. We're only talking about admissions data, which is all that is relevant ITT.

Absolutely missing the point. When you give the go-ahead to lie about employment statistics it creates an environment in which others with similarly crucial datapoints feel they can bend things a bit. Since virtually every school already bends employment data it stands to reason that there is a climate of data bending in all schools. How can you say oh they lie a little about employment data but I am sure everything else they tell me is true!

[Chupavida]

,

[ScrabbleChamp]

What was the first school caught lying about LSAT/GPA data?

Villanova.

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/02/villanov ... o-the-aba/


Also:
The majority of schools' placement statistics are misrepresented in the same way. This is NOT about employment statistics. We're only talking about admissions data, which is all that is relevant ITT.

Absolutely missing the point. When you give the go-ahead to lie about employment statistics it creates an environment in which others with similarly crucial datapoints feel they can bend things a bit. Since virtually every school already bends employment data it stands to reason that there is a climate of data bending in all schools. How can you say oh they lie a little about employment data but I am sure everything else they tell me is true!

Except you are assuming each department has direct interaction with each other. From my understanding, the Admissions office controls the compilation and reporting of admissions information, while OCS (or the like) control the reporting of employment numbers. In the case of UIUC, only one man has been proven to know exactly what was going on, and he didn't have control over anything other than admissions statistics. Your assertion is that lies in one department necessarily cause other departments to lie, which is not true, especially not in the case of UIUC, as other departments had no knowledge of the shenanigans in the Admissions department.

[MrAnon]

What was the first school caught lying about LSAT/GPA data?

Villanova.

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/02/villanov ... o-the-aba/


Also:
The majority of schools' placement statistics are misrepresented in the same way. This is NOT about employment statistics. We're only talking about admissions data, which is all that is relevant ITT.

Absolutely missing the point. When you give the go-ahead to lie about employment statistics it creates an environment in which others with similarly crucial datapoints feel they can bend things a bit. Since virtually every school already bends employment data it stands to reason that there is a climate of data bending in all schools. How can you say oh they lie a little about employment data but I am sure everything else they tell me is true!

Except you are assuming each department has direct interaction with each other. From my understanding, the Admissions office controls the compilation and reporting of admissions information, while OCS (or the like) control the reporting of employment numbers. In the case of UIUC, only one man has been proven to know exactly what was going on, and he didn't have control over anything other than admissions statistics. Your assertion is that lies in one department necessarily cause other departments to lie, which is not true, especially not in the case of UIUC, as other departments had no knowledge of the shenanigans in the Admissions department.

Its an environment of "make up whatever numbers you want." The schools wallow in it like Scrooge McDuck swimming in his money.