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...
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