Years after Star exposed business school rankings scam, UMKC settles with whistleblower
The University of Missouri-Kansas City has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who claimed he was fired from his job as a professor because he helped The Kansas City Star uncover a scheme to inflate the rankings of UMKC’s business school.
Not only did UMKC agree to pay Richard Arend $625,000 to drop his five-year-old lawsuit, but they issued a joint statement that gave Arend credit for training a spotlight on the tactics that former university officials engaged in, as The Star reported, to boost the school’s reputation in pursuit of students and donations.
“UMKC acknowledges that Professor Arend did bring genuine problems and issues to the media’s attention,” according to the statement announcing the settlement. “Further, UMKC acknowledges Professor Arend’s academic contribution to the University during his tenure at UMKC.”
Arend, now a professor at the University of Southern Maine, was fired in 2016 on what he claimed in his lawsuit were “trumped up charges of misconduct” after he “blew the whistle on misconduct and fraud at UMKC.”
He was a key source for The Star’s investigation, published in July 2014, that exposed how an official at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management worked to inflate the school’s status in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation. Professor Michael Song, The Star reported, embellished information supplied to the Princeton Review, which ranked UMKC higher than it deserved.
The Star also reported how Song arranged to have two visiting scholars write a paper for an academic journal that ranked UMKC No. 1 in the field of innovation management above Ivy league universities such as Harvard and MIT. UMKC incorporated that No. 1 ranking and other misleading claims fostered by Song into its marketing campaign.
The late business leader Henry Bloch told The Star that the rankings were important to his financial support of the school that bore his name. He was asked if, absent them, he would have given UMKC $32 million for a new building to house the school.
“No, I don’t think I would have,” he said.
Based on The Star’s reporting, then-Gov. Jay Nixon suggested the need for an independent investigation. The outside auditor hired to conduct that review confirmed many of The Star’s findings in a January 2015 report. Soon after, the Princeton Review stripped the business school of rankings for the four years that they they were based on erroneous or falsified information.
Song and another faculty member resigned and the business school renounced other rankings and honors based on falsified information.
Arend continued to press in faculty meetings for more accountability among university leaders, including then-chancellor Leo Morton, who he believed enabled the fraud and misconduct. He alleged in his lawsuit that he was targeted for termination as a result.
As part of their settlement, UMKC and Arend agreed to make no comments beyond their three-paragraph statement.
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Years after Star exposed business school rankings scam, UMKC settles with whistleblower."
