That situation has been gone for quite some time now, but it can be difficult for colleges to keep up with the information requirements of many parents. The net cost issue has been touched upon; even with the advent of net price calculators, it’s difficult for families with businesses/self-employment income or separated families (very common) to forecast their net costs before applying. Unfortunately, a lot of that has more to do with the availability of financial aid than with the predictability of college costs; if financial aid did not exist, you could just use the posted tuition and room and board rates.
That’s true. Selectivity can skew graduation rates; for example, a school with low selectivity might end up with more students who are underprepared for college or unable to graduate in four years. This doesn’t tell you much about the quality of individual programs; a public university that is required to accept a certain percentage of in-state students by
law probably is going to have lower selectivity but they may have a great art history program or a great business school or a regionally well-respected medical program. How do you weight these different factors objectively? Different people are going to look at the same data and value each item more or less.