U. of Illinois Admits to More Errors in Law School Data

The University of Illinois, which has already admitted that it had errors in the data on students in the Class of 2014 of its law school at the Urbana-Champaign campus, now says that there were also errors in the data reported on the three prior classes. The errors in the three additional years of data are relatively small -- a 0.2 difference in the grade point average for one year, a 1 point difference in the median reported Law School Admissions Test score in another year, and one point difference on the LSAT and a 0.1 difference in the G.P.A. for another year. All the errors inflated performance. The errors in the most recent year were discovered before the law school reported those figures to the American Bar Association (which accredits law schools) and to U.S. News & World Report, which ranks them. The earlier errors, however, were included in information provided to those and other organizations. The law school said that it has informed those organizations of the errors.