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The proposal, introduced in the Senate as the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, would match up individual-level educational data with information on employment and earnings that is currently collected as part of the unemployment insurance program.</p>
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<p>This information would be available down to the program and institution level, enabling students to compare outcomes for a single major across multiple colleges, or vice versa.
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<p>Wyden and Rubio wrote an op-ed piece explaining their proposal.</p>
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Prospective students are making critical career and life path decisions when they choose a college and a program. But students are making these decisions with shockingly little information about how likely it is they'll graduate from a particular school, how much debt they'll have when they graduate, what their future earnings are likely to be and what the likelihood is that they'll make enough money to pay down their debts after they graduate.
<p>Okay, I go to college and major in history. Then I go to law school. Did I earn nothing because I went to grad school? Did I learn nothing because I went to grad school? </p>
<p>This is fine for degrees where a large portion of the students go directly into fields directly related to the major otherwise it’s just stupid. And you have to realize sometimes students make decisions that don’t result in the big bucks for good reasons. When my son was considering going to CMU (comp sci) starting salaries for grads ranged from over $100,000 (those who went to Wall Street and probably got caught shortly thereafter in the 2008 meltdown) down to some one who made something like $20,000 because he wanted to go back to his small home town and the only job available was as a high school teacher.</p>
<p>Should be amusing to see the various hyperbolic arguments about why this would be a Bad Thing. Countdown to NYT opinion piece like they ran last fall.</p>
<p>The purpose of all college everywhere is not to get a job. If people care a lot about this issue, they already know the majors to seek out and which ones to avoid. The Department of Labor already publishes information about occupational outlooks, so students and parents who are already too lazy or complacent to access this pre-existing information are probably lost causes. People for whom a job is the be-all and end-all of higher ed have a lot of choices. They can just go to vocational school. Or, they can accept merit aid offers or attend lower-cost in-state publics to lower their debt burden This suggested legislation simply perpetuates the blind cargo-cultism surrounding higher education: that one has a right to a job after getting a bachelor’s, that it’s a ticket to security. It isn’t and never has been.</p>
<p>“The Department of Labor already publishes information about occupational outlooks, so students and parents who are already too lazy or complacent to access this pre-existing information are probably lost causes.”</p>
<p>Really? There are scads of people out there who don’t know that the DOL publishes this type of information, and who wouldn’t know how to look for it even if they were to learn that fast fact. If the Wyden and Rubio bill can open up discussion about the existence of information about job placement, and can help students and families learn how to find it (whether at the DOL website or at college/university websites) I am all for it.</p>
<p>From the Inside Higher Ed (Feb 2012) article</p>
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<p>OK, as long as we have an accurate database, more information is a good thing. But then, I sure hope when states then require universities to add personnel to collect such information, universities don’t get slammed for adding more ‘administrative non-teaching’ positions.</p>
<p>From that same article</p>
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<p>But then you get articles and complaints about administrative bloat, as universities begin to measure these things.</p>
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<p>So now government decides which majors to support, rather than institutions?</p>
<p>Seriously, ALL of this information is available on the internet already. If someone going off to college can’t find it, maybe college isn’t the best idea for them. Do you really need the government telling you that a Masters Degree in Puppeteering is NOT a good career choice?</p>
<p>Then, if a student majors in say “accounting”, doesn’t work very hard, doesn’t bother to take the CPA exam, decides working at Starbucks is a better idea then being an accountant–how is that any reflection on the college that student attended?</p>
<p>If there’s anyone in America who doesn’t know that nursery school teachers earn less than cardiologists… well, publishing statistics isn’t going to help that, is it?</p>
<p>The relationship between a 17 year old’s future earning power and any decision that he or she makes regarding college, major, vocational planning, etc. ends up being “correlation does not imply causation”.</p>
<p>But carry on with our regularly scheduled broadcast of “Why every kid should either major in nursing or accounting and we should stifle the anthropologists”.</p>
<p>Exactly…and then when states and universities start collecting and publishing this information, they’ll be slammed for wasting resources to collect data on the obvious.</p>
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<p>You forgot to add engineering to the part with nursing and accounting.</p>
<p>The devil is in the details. Will the data be collected only from recent grads? Only from those who are collecting unemployment insurance? The data will only be useful if it is the right data.</p>
<p>I thought these guys were all for personal responsibility. If students have “shockingly little information about how likely it is they’ll graduate from a particular school, how much debt they’ll have when they graduate, what their future earnings are likely to be and what the likelihood is that they’ll make enough money to pay down their debts after they graduate,” whose fault is that? I guess these two think it’s the school’s fault.</p>
<p>Marco Rubio earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Florida before going to law school at the University of Miami. He now teaches courses in “Florida politics” at Florida International University (possibly to help him pay off all that college debt he accrued). </p>
<p>Sklrvr- apologies, but I am currently following a couple of threads from disappointed Freshman who are “majoring” in engineering but are discovering that- surprise- college math is harder than HS math, so I am laying off the engineers for today.</p>
<p>Those folks discover all on their own that you actually have to A- work very hard and B- have some sort of aptitude if you are going to complete one of these allegedly “golden ticket” majors.</p>
<p>If the schools are required to provide information and predictions based on “individual-level educational data,” I wonder if that includes SAT scores? "Student A, we predict you have a .08% chance of completing an engineering major, based on your math ACT/SAT scores. " </p>
<p>Wouldn’t this amount to expecting students to perform the sort of due diligence on their chances of successfully paying back the loan a rational system would allow lenders to perform? Young people are naturally optimistic. Tell them they have a 1 in a 1,000 chance of graduating, many will swear they’ll be the exception. </p>
<p>At present, colleges have little reason to not admit a student who will not graduate, when they’re trying to fill their class. Give colleges some skin in the game. Require them to repay lenders for a portion of defaulted student loans.</p>
<p>We see so many college kids posting here asking about their chances of admissions to a T-14 law school saying, “I haven’t taken a practice LSAT yet but I know I’ll score 172-174”.</p>
<p>For one, it will require a large increase in overhead staff to track it. For example, at our local public, few students use career services. Few students even use on campus advising for premed, prelaw. Thus, even with the small number of med school acceptances at this Uni, the college has no current way to count them. (Law school acceptances are tracked and reported by LSAC, so that info is available.) Add in every other department, and it will become a tracking nightmare. More importantly, why should students even report back the confidential information on their job status? Are the feds gonna make that mandatory, too?</p>
<p>btw: with that new staff to track grad outcomes, comes increased expense. I’m all for transparency, but if it means increasing the costs to run the college, what’s the point?</p>