SOME COLLEGES ARE NIPing -- CHEATING, THAT IS

The words seem harmless enough: "not in profile" otherwise known as NIP. But the implications should horrify even the most jaded bureaucrat. Many American college and universities, supposedly dedicated nobly to the search for truth and the life of the mind, have been caught cheating. Some of America's name schools, in order to look good in various ranking guides, deliberately falsified information, NIPed certain low-performing groups (some foreign students, those in certain remedial classes, those admitted on academic probation) to raise overall scores and gave different numbers to different published guides.

For example, one major university deliberately NIPed both international and remedial freshman groups, a total of 20 percent of the class. By eliminating the lower scores, they were able to raise the whole school's SAT average by about 50 points. A New Jersey school overstated its SAT scores by 200 points and offered a lame "they-were-fabricated-by-a-former-employee" excuse. One school reported that 80 percent of its freshmen came from the top 10 percent of their high school classes when the actual figure was 60 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports that administrators then spent the "following year figuring out how to play with some other numbers to preserve our competitive advantage and forestall a subsequent plunge in the rankings that would have to be explained to concerned alumni." One man in charge of assembling the ranking guide figures for a prominent Eastern college attended a meeting "that could only be described as a strategy session on how to cheat on the survey."

The not-in-profile epidemic of lying obviously mirrors an even larger problem: that of college cheating in general. Figures on the number of college students who cheat vary from 67 percent to 78 percent, depending on the survey you consult. The blame can be traced to many sources, but each case always involves institutional hypocrisy. Many colleges prattle on about teaching ethical standards, but their "politically correct" attitude toward traditional values includes what critic William Kibler calls "a laissez-faire attitude toward students' moral development." Should we be surprised when cheating students become cheating administrators?

Colleges and universities have always held special status as places of integrity and idealism. Traditionally, those who teach and those who support them have been revered in our society. Once, when the academic community spoke, it was with the voice of authority. Educators occupied the moral high ground and held the keys to an intellectual treasury more precious than gold. No more.

Cheating colleges deliberately deceive enrolled and prospective students, destroy donors' confidence, and compromise honest faculty members' sense of ethical standards. We must regain our sense of purpose, our consensus about the aims of human action.

Restoring traditional and time-tested academic and moral standards may be the hardest job of all. Most professional educators will complain about turning back the clock if we emphasize a core curriculum or traditional subjects like American history or expect students to develop and live by genuine moral standards. We must encourage discipline, not disdain; self-control, not self-expression and broad inquiry, not narrow pedantry. We're not trying to turn the clock back. We're trying to set it right. Now.

George Roche is president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, which receives no federal funding.