Mitchel Wallerstein (Photos: J.C. Rice)
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A culture of corruption at Baruch business school was so pervasive that grad students openly cheated and a professor gave out answers during an exam, claim four ex-students who intend to sue the city university.
“Cheating is their bread and butter,” said Ezra Glaser, attorney for the four whistleblowers, who filed a notice of claim against CUNY and the Zicklin School of Business on June 14.
The new charges come a week after The Post revealed that a Zicklin administrator was bounced after forging professors’ names to inflate grades for about 15 students to keep $45,000 to $75,000 tuition checks flowing.
Zicklin recruits mid-level Wall Streeters for the 10- to 22-month programs. CUNY has put the programs, endowed by well-known financier and Baruch alum Larry Zicklin, in receivership after a probe found them in a financial mess.
In the latest scandal, former grad students in the Class of 2012 — accountants Stacy Morton and Omo Isenalumhe, financier Daniel Carr, and studio manager Yana Nibelitsky — say they repeatedly complained to administrators about overt academic fraud.
“[Cheaters] would sit next to someone doing well and would look at their papers,” Morton told The Post. “The professors knew.”
After students alerted administrators in November and warnings were issued, the deceit continued. Dishonest dunces taped test answers to backpacks, texted one another, and made trips to the restroom to access crib sheets, the ex-students said.
The program director, accounting professor Aloke Ghosh, also committed offenses, at least two students wrote to administrators.
“Professor Ghosh walked around the classroom reviewing the students’ work and informed them that they had the wrong answers, and then instructed them to correct them,” Morton wrote.
Morton’s classmates claim they also witnessed Ghosh giving out answers during the final, worth 70 percent of their grade.
But Morton says Baruch officials did nothing. Her letter to President Mitchel Wallerstein, Vice President Ben Curtis and Provost John Brenkman went unanswered.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Wallerstein said when asked by The Post Thursday. Brenkman later said the school is looking into the allegations.
“These particular student complaints have undergone a preliminary review, and I have appointed a senior faculty member from outside of the Zicklin School of Business to serve as the fact finder and report back to me directly,” he said.
But Brenkman added, “It is totally premature . . . to conclude that there was any wrongdoing or lack of oversight by Professor Ghosh in this matter.”
When approached by The Post Thursday, Ghosh denied even being the program director, but then said he wanted to “address” the cheating allegations. When called that evening, he hung up on a reporter.
The four students who complained were eventually booted from the program without receiving their master’s degrees. Only Nibelitsky won an appeal, but her reinstatement came so late in the year she could not catch up.
The business school continued to collect money from Morton’s and Nibelitsky’s student loans.
On Friday, another group of Zicklin graduates, from the Class of 2011, told The Post they are coming together to demand tuition refunds — saying the grade-changing scandal has made their sheepskins worthless.
“If we could just give our degree back for a full refund . . . a lot of us would do that,” said an MBA claiming to represent a large group of classmates. “How do they compensate us?”
Additional reporting by Michael Gartland