Forbes magazine announced in its August issue that they will be removing Iona College from their “America’s Best Colleges” rankings. In 2010, Iona administration discovered that “student and operating performance-related data had been misreported to certain external government and regulatory agencies,” according to the press release.

Despite the fact that this issue has since been corrected, Forbes decided they would penalize Iona and other offending colleges by delisting the institutions for two years.

“They’re really late to the party,” said Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Brian Nickerson.

Nickerson expressed that he and the administration were very confused as to why Forbes was responding to a problem that is over and done with.

When the misreporting was realized two years back, the school took the necessary measures to rectify the situation.

A few of the steps taken included making changes to the administrative staff, forming an Integrity in Reporting Committee and submitting the college’s data for external audit.

The college came out of the issue remarkably unscathed; Iona was able to maintain all of its accreditations and the school was commended for its efforts in handling the issue.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education praised Iona “for a gracious example of how to respond to difficult challenges” in its visiting team report.

Associate Commissioner of the US Department of Education, Tom Weko, said in an email to Dr. Nyre, “In my experience here as an Associate Commissioner none have been more thorough or diligent about identifying and responding to data misreporting than has Iona College.”

Regardless of the college’s diligent response to the matter, Forbes decided to remove Iona from their ranking “as a penalty for their dishonesty,” according to the Forbes article.

“In our view, it’s fundamentally unfair,” said Nickerson.

Nickerson said that he and the administration made several calls to the Forbes editor and writer of the article to try to convey to them that the problems have been corrected.

“For reasons we really can’t tell, they said [implicated] institutions within the last four years [will be delisted],” said Nickerson.

Claremont McKenna College, Bucknell University and Emory University are the other institutions being penalized by Forbes for falsifying data.

Regardless of the setback, Nickerson says that they do not expect a significant backlash from Forbes’ punishment.

The administration had several meetings to prepare for any public reaction to the story, said Nickerson. The story seemed to die quickly and Iona tracked the online responses to make sure the buzz wouldn’t grow and negatively impact the college.

“It is not something we think is going to drive a lot of opinion,” said Nickerson.