<p>The real question is:</p>
<p>How can colleges objectively measure that they are doing a good job with their students education, challenging them enough, developing them intellectually? High Schools and grade schools in the US and overseas routinely do such tests every few years to measure changes in students relative progress, and to try to identify any problems at an institution by comparing scores of groups of students with “expected scores” of that group. These tests are not the sole criteria, but they have been of value in identifying problems in High School, and would be expected to be able to have some value in identifying problems in colleges.</p>
<p>Obviously looking at Payscale data, and also eventual PhD and MD and Law Degree outcomes from your college’s graduates, helps - but in addition to the usual published data - differences in actual test scores vs. “expected” scores of seniors could indicate what is working and what is not working in educating college kids.</p>
<p>I believe that a challenging curriculum and student body should be beneficial to a student, all else being equal - but by how much (so we can make more accurate value comparisons of educational alternatives) and how to prove that?</p>
<p>My suspicion is that many colleges, not just Oberlin, have reams of internal data on educational progress of their student body (if in nothing else, in writing, which so many colleges require now, no matter what you did on your AP tests), but very likely colleges have data on other objective measures.</p>