Scripps College In Claremont Pulled From Best Colleges List Over Flawed Data

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – A small, private women's liberal arts college in Claremont, has been pulled off the 2019 U.S. News & World Report's best colleges list over incorrect data.

Scripps College was one of five schools removed from the list after it "misreported data," according to a news release from U.S. News & World Report last week.

The other four schools removed from the list were the University of California-Berkeley, Mars Hill University in North Carolina, the University of North Carolina—Pembroke and Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island.

Prior to being pulled, Scripps College had been ranked No. 30 among national liberal arts colleges.

U.S. News & World Report said Scripps was removed because it misreported its average alumni giving rate, which is the percentage of living alumni with bachelor's degrees who donated money to the school. Scripps had initially reported that its average alumni giving rate for the combined 2016 and 2017 fiscal years was 27.3 percent. It later corrected that rate down to 19.9 percent.

Scripps College is now in the unranked category, which will last until the 2020 list is released.

"Misreporting is rare, and U.S. News takes misreporting very seriously," the company wrote in a news release. "In addition to the rankings, U.S. News publishes data provided by schools in order to assist consumers as they evaluate their education options."

The school, which was founded in 1926, has an undergraduate enrollment of just over 1,000 students.

Another L.A.-area school, UCLA, was ranked No. 1 on the U.S. News & World Report's public universities list. UCLA was one of the major schools embroiled in the nationwide admissions scandal.