University scandal, reputation and governance

Abstract

A review of the literature on corporate governance serves to demonstrate the applicability of many governance solutions to the university setting. Based on a review of university scandals, most of which are recent but some of which took place decades ago, it is possible to categorize them as follows: sex scandals, drugs, cheating, hazing, admissions and diplomas, on-the-job consumption, athletics, and murder. Several examples are provided in the paper, along with their impact on various stakeholders. The paper then discusses a variety of solutions designed to either preempt the activities potentially leading to scandal, to deter them or to punish perpetrators. Some of these involve structural changes, institutional policies and procedures, fines, terminations, and sanctions. The paper emphasizes the proactive safeguards which govern and monitor to make sure that universities do not suffer on the back end and that their reputations do not suffer into the future.

Take-Home Exams in Higher Education: A Systematic Review

“…Freedman, 1968 [22] Personal reflections No Svoboda, 1971 [10] Personal comments based on experience No Marsh, 1980 [23] Hypothesis testing Yes Weber et al, 1983 [24] Hypothesis testing Yes Marsh, 1984 [25] Hypothesis testing Yes Grzelkowski, 1987 [26] Case study No Zoller and Ben-Chaim, 1989 [27] Survey + Case study Yes Murray, 1990 [28] Review No Fernald and Webster, 1991 [29] Case study No Haynie, 1991 [17] Hypothesis testing Yes Andrada and Linden, 1993 [8] Hypothesis testing Yes Ansell, 1996 [30] Collaborative THE (voluntary pairing) + final ICE No Norcini et al, 1996 [31] Hypothesis testing Yes Hall, 2001 [15] Pilot study with optional take-home test No Mallory, 2001 [2] Case study No Zoller, 2001 [12] Case study No Haynie, 2003 [32] Hypothesis testing Yes Bredon, 2003 [11] Multiple choice THE Yes Tsaparlis and Zoller, 2003 [33] Synthesizing from others Yes Giordano et al, 2005 [34] Hypothesis testing Yes Moore and Jensen, 2007 [35] Hypothesis testing Yes Williams and Wong, 2009 [1] Online survey, students reminded by e-mail No Frein, 2011 [36] Hypothesis testing Yes Giammarco, 2011 [6] Hypothesis testing Yes Lopez et al, 2011 [3] Case study No Rich, 2011 [4] Theoretical work No Marcus, 2012 [37] Review No Tao and Li, 2012 [38] Hypothesis testing Yes Hagström and Scheja, 2014 [39] Hypothesis testing Yes Rich et al, 2014 [40] Hypothesis testing Yes Sample et al, 2014 [41] Hypothesis testing Yes Johnson et al, 2015 [42] Case study Yes Downes, 2017 [43] Review No D'Souza and Siegfeldt, 2017 [44] Hypothesis testing Yes Lancaster and Clarke, 2017 [45] Review No…”

“…It could probably be accused of being naïve. Cheating does occur, and not only at the less renown institutions; in 2012, Harvard suffered an immense scandal when nearly half of the students in an introductory course in politics were accused of cheating on a THE [48,49] and similar incidents have been reported from Duke [50,51], West Point [52], Ohio State University [43] and University of Central Florida [37]. In the wake of the Harvard cheating scandal, Stanford University's stakeholders also expressed their concern about the increased use of THEs at Stanford [53].…”

Prevalent Crime in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions and Administrative

“…Researchers uphold that a university reputation is a key element second to learning in discussion about standards (Gray, Fan, and Lianes, 2003;Downes, 2017). A university with high records of criminal cases no doubt will lose its' reputation and this situation will lower the enrolment and withdrawal of some donors (Dawnes, 2017).…”

Integrity in higher education marketing and misleading claims in the university prospectus: what happened next…and is it enough?

“…If complying with the law is not a sufficient motivation to avoid misleading advertising, then the damage to a university's reputation when found out and 'named and shamed' should be a powerful reason to discourage poor behaviour (Downes, 2017. ) One would hope of course, that universities would behave with integrity because they believed it was ethically the right thing to do.…”

“…The 2013 paper also received some attention in the mainstream press including the Daily Telegraph (Paton, 2014, Doughty, 2014, while The Guardian interviewed the author for a report on misleading university marketing (Young-Powell, 2014). Two student newspapers picked up the story (Hopkins, 2014;Sandbach, 2014), as did a number of education websites where news items are recirculated or simply plagiarised (Best Education News, 2014; Schools Improvement Net, 2014).…”