A report from the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan Illinois-based watchdog group, claims that City Colleges of Chicago's Kennedy-King College combined graduation rates with the Chicago-based French Pastry School.

The pastry school officials were unaware that City Colleges had changed the way their graduates were counted.

Kennedy-King received accolades for rapidly improving completion rates. The college became Aspen's first-ever recipient of the Rising Star Award.

The report alleges that by including the pastry school, City Colleges more than tripled the graduation rate, as reflected by the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, in 2013 to 25.9 percent. However, without the pastry school, Kennedy-King's four-year graduation rate would have only stood at about 14 percent.

Read the full article on graduation numbers by Ashley A. Smith at Inside Higher Ed