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Yes, but until the USDA standardized food nutrition labels, it was hard for consumers to readily make informed choices.</p>
<p>I think its a great idea.
There is a lot of Fed money going to colleges that don’t graduate their kids. They will accept anyone because it is a numbers game. So much $ per student.
Also, lots of Fed money going to students who shouldn’t be in college, but what the heck… it’s free.
This will free up money to give to the more deserving students and colleges and reduce college costs.
Kids are coming out of college with way tooo much debt and can’t make enough money during the summer.
Back in my day, Pitt cost $6000/yr (room, board, tuition) and I made enough money in the summer at the steel mills to pay for college.</p>
<p>Well, costs are rising as Fed money pours in. Chicken or egg? I think the message is everyone deserves a college education. Remember how everyone deserves a house ended? It was not pretty.</p>
<p>Markets don’t work when there’s an information imbalance. That’s why for-profit student loan mills that prey on underinformed young people and veterans are able to thrive. Making information uniform and transparent helps markets function properly by promoting rational decision-making.</p>
<p>Now, that doesn’t mean that every rating system is based on accurate data, useful, etc. Nor does it mean that consumers will actually use the information. That remains to be seen here. But rating retailers is not anti-market.</p>
<p>There is already a procedure for not giving money to failing students. Every college has a Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirement and if students don’t meet that, their aid is suspended until they do. </p>
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This is what I think, too. But those who don’t want any accountability will make this seem like death panels for colleges.</p>
<p>Of course, the devil is in the details, and there are some colleges that do good work with underserved communities. I’d hate for all of them to be rated low. But what does Williams College have to worry about? The chances of this having any appreciable impact on colleges like that are extremely remote.</p>
<p>The colleges which actually have reason to fear from this proposal (probably similar to the ones who have lost Cal Grant eligibility due to low graduation rates and high student loan default rates) are probably firing up their lobbyists.
<a href=“http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-higher-education-government-cons-university-of-phoenix/full/”>http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-higher-education-government-cons-university-of-phoenix/full/</a></p>
<p>The for profit schools like the one on the above post DO have issues.</p>
<p>I agree with thumper that we need to keep politics out of this discussion.</p>
<p>I also think a lot of people (both college presidents and posters here) are having a knee-jerk reaction to something they have no reason to fear–at least not yet. I find it a little ironic that people in the critical-thinking business would react so vehemently without having those devilish details before them.</p>
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<p>That’s completely predictable. The sort of folks quoted in the Times article were fully on board when the Administration started making noises about the for-profits (i.e., their potentially disruptive competitors). But now that they’ve realized that the government can’t just write a rule turning off financial aid support to for-profits and would have to apply a uniform standard, it suddenly matters. </p>
<p>Sure the data is everywhere, and sure I don’t want government making decisions for me. But putting available data together and presenting it for the general public so that the general public, including me, can make individual decisions is not something I have a problem with. The gov is already doing it for hospitals…so I’m sure can figure it out for colleges: </p>
<p><a href=“Medicare.gov”>Medicare.gov;
<p>Also the government comparing hospitals is a great analogy to the government comparing colleges and universities…much that happens with a patient in the healthcare system that can impact things that are measured(readmission, satisfaction, timely effective care) are hardly different than a student in the education system - compliance, family support, socio-economic factors.</p>
<p>I think that what really scares some people is perhaps finding out in hindsight, once the raw data starts being compiled sans individual college manipulation, that they paid too much for an education that might have been gotten at less cost…</p>
<p>An early version of the college scorecard is already available:</p>
<p><a href=“Priorities | The White House”>Priorities | The White House;
<p>What’s missing is employment data (which I’m assuming they will get from the IRS). </p>
<p>It seems like it would be difficult to directly compare apples to oranges and assign them both values on the same scale.</p>
<p>Oh, brother. Talk about a boatload of “unintended consequences.” </p>
<p>^^ My thought also (re: IRS Data), and like the Hospital Compare, I’m sure the College Score Card will “grow” as they determine base-line data across all colleges and universities. </p>
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<p>What do you mean by oranges and apples? I’m sure that Score Card will continue to evaluate all colleges and universities against specific quantitative data so if you are referring to private vs. public - I 'm not sure there is a difference since both offer undergraduate degrees. If you look at the link currently, the data being collected is average net cost, graduation rate, median borrowing and loan default rate (so far) so it doesn’t matter if it’s private or public or non-profit or profit on the data points. </p>
<p>I looked at the score card that Gator88NE posted, and there isn’t anything more on there than is posted on other college info sites, and state sponsored info and application websites. </p>
<p>I think the highly selective colleges will do just fine. Most of them only admit top applicants who are likely to graduate and seek out employment. </p>
<p>My concern is that some colleges that have low graduation rates might be penalized for situations that are not under their control. Some have low graduation rates because they admit students with many risk factors. The college that admits at risk students and has a supportive enough environment so as many graduate as possible is doing a good job. </p>
<p>The current scorecard breaks colleges down by sectors (when comparing college cost):</p>
<p>Public, 4-year or above
Private not-for-profit, 4-year or above
Private for-profit, 4-year or above
Public, 2-year
Private not-for-profit, 2-year
Private for-profit, 2-year
Public, less-than-2-year
Private not-for-profit, less-than-2-year
Private for-profit, less-than-2-year</p>
<p>So, comparisons are done among institutions that primary grant the same level of awards and between public, private not-for-profit and private for-profit.</p>
<p>UC-Davis would be compared to UT-Dallas, and Yale to the University of Tampa. </p>
<p>Much of the data used in the scorecard is coming from the NCES (College Navigator).</p>
<p>It seems to me that a number of items in the existing scorecard are OK–like graduation rate and default rate. I don’t know about using median cost for private schools–is it really true that Yale is cheaper than Hood College? Well, not exactly.</p>
<p>If I were tweaking the scorecard, I’d expand the graduation rate metrics to show a comparison against statistically predicted graduation rates so people can see which schools outperform (or underperform) what one would expect based just on intake variables (selectivity, SES, etc.). But overall, this seems like a decent start that could evolve into something useful. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2014/01/16/evaluating-predicted-actual-graduation-rates-at-regional-colleges”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2014/01/16/evaluating-predicted-actual-graduation-rates-at-regional-colleges</a></p>