Scandals are threatening higher education.

Among the unfortunate curses affecting the image of higher education are the scandals taking place with unrelenting regularity. Whether they have to do with athletics, sexual assaults, murders, cheating, hazing, or corruption, the media are echoing those scandals, sometimes in excruciating detail. In some cases, like the “Sandusky affair” that made headlines for months and tarnished the reputation of Penn State University and its renowned football coach Joe Paterno, these scandals have a lasting effect on public opinion. We in academia have always been worried about the effect of these scandals on an issue very important to colleges and universities – enrollment. We have also asked ourselves how common those scandals are. Now a study recently published by Harvard University is providing data corroborating what we feared most, that scandals are extremely common in higher education and they are followed by a significant drop in applications to the institutions involved