The News & Observer

As reported in NJ.com’s “Rutgers created fake jobs for graduates to boost MBA program rankings, lawsuit charges”:

But in a whistleblower lawsuit filed Friday, a Rutgers administrator charged that the university fraudulently burnished those national rankings by creating totally bogus jobs to show the success its business school graduates had in finding employment.

The lawsuit by Deidre White, the business school’s human resources manager, alleged the program used a temp agency to hire unemployed MBA students, placing them into sham positions at the university itself — for no other reason than to make it appear like a greater number of graduates were getting full-time jobs after getting their Rutgers diplomas.

“The fraud worked,” wrote White’s attorney, Matthew A. Luber of McOmber McOmber & Luber in Marlton. In the very first year of the scheme, they said Rutgers was suddenly propelled to, among other things, the ‘No. 1′ business school in the Northeast.

The university did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

By going through an outside temp agency, the lawsuit claimed the university was able to circumvent restrictions in the ranking systems that do not allow universities to count internal hires for purposes of their employment statistics.

White, 54, who alleged she was the subject of retaliation over health and other issues aimed at forcing her resignation or termination, said the university used more than $400,000 of its endowment to fund the fake positions and to pay what she called “kickbacks” to the employment agency.

Photo credit: NJ.com