Background checks rile professors

Krueger himself reportedly was given two background checks when applying for previous employment, neither of which unearthed his criminal record.

According to press reports at the time, Krueger killed three men on impulse at the age of 17. He received a life sentence. In prison, however, he was a model inmate, earning a degree in psychology and helping in drug and alcohol prevention programs. Because of his good behavior, Krueger was set free in 1979.

When the murder came to light last summer, some of his Penn State colleagues told reporters that he had been an exemplary professor.

The fact that Krueger's past never came to light in previous checks indicates that even when checks are run, a wide margin of error remains.

"One of the problems with criminal-record information is the accuracy of the information," says Peter LeVine, of Peter LeVine Associates, Inc., which evaluates prospective employees. "There is no standard."

Search methods can be superficial or sophisticated, and can yield all manner of personal data from local, state, or federal records.

But job candidates are likely to have lived, worked, or driven through any number of jurisdictions in their travels. Social Security numbers have been entered incorrectly; felonies have been recorded as misdemeanors; records have been sealed and expunged, sometimes rightly, sometimes in error. And while the existence of fingerprints may indicate an arrest, they may also indicate military service or past work as a bank teller. As to who is qualified to assess such background material - and to decide what role it plays in hiring - is anyone's guess.

Errors can happen, says Willie Freeman, security chief of the 43,000-student Newark, N.J., public school system. Calling the private screening companies "a dollar a doughnut," he believes that systems like Newark's - which pays the state of New Jersey $78 for electronic fingerprints to be checked against local, state, and FBI records - work well. "I don't know who would object to it," he says flatly.

Academics say their status as campus elites does not shield them from the indignities visited on the masses.

"We object to the fact that just because it's done elsewhere for all members of a certain profession, it should be done for other professions as well," says Mr. Knight. The American Association of University Professors does not object to application form self-disclosure questions which ask about criminal conviction, he says.

For all the fuss, no one pretends that the $39 Penn State and other schools now spend to check each new hire will reliably weed out the Paul Kruegers. Advocates and opponents alike agree that if nothing else, the trend reflects universities' efforts to protect themselves.

"If something did happen on campus, the potential negligence lawsuits could be avoided," says Representative Baker. Even with nothing more than the addition of a self-disclosure question on the application, he says, "at least there's been an effort ... at least they've done their due diligence."

Page: 1 | 2