This story is not necessarily related to fudging of numbers/stats etc but it does illustrate to what level schools will go to attract students: - Small liberal

This story is not necessarily related to fudging of numbers/stats etc but it does illustrate to what level schools will go to attract students: - Small liberal arts school - Is ranked Division 3 in the NCAA - Realized they are losing students - They start a football team! - Why? For a layout of $500,000/year for a coach + staff, using existing facilities (e.g. soccer stadium) etc they get ~100 additional students who want to be able to say "yeah, I played football in college" 100 students * full boat tuition is nothing to sneeze at and is a pretty good deal from an ROI perspective. It's not a small leap from "let's drop some cash for a very obvious improvement to our attendance" to "let's fudge some numbers that no one may ever really look at" for the same outcome.