<p>"The rating system, which the president wants implemented before the 2015 school year, would evaluate colleges on several criteria, including average tuition and student loan debt, graduation rates, and the average earning of graduates. Obama says he will ask Congress to link the new rating system to the way federal financial aid is disbursed, with students attending highly-rated schools receiving larger grants and more affordable student loans." ...</p>
<p>First thought, great, a new college ranking system…another excuse for colleges to game the system to improve rankings…</p>
<p>Second thought…could this be the way to force colleges to share “outcome” data? Many of the “rankings” systems have been based on inputs (acceptance rates, yield…whatever)…but colleges have been reluctant to share most outcome data, such as employment rates, average salary, % admitted to grad school…etc…</p>
<p>Final thought…“link the new rating system to the way federal financial aid is disbursed, with students attending highly-rated schools receiving larger grants and more affordable student loans.” That doesn’t sound thought out…we all know the issues with “rankings”, and yet we’re going to drive grant size based on these rankings? A metric like average earnings of graduates is highly influence by geographic location…and that’s going to help determine grant size? Tuition at public universities are driven by complex state level dynamics, should UVA be “punished” for higher tuition than the University of Georgia (with its HOPE scholarships) or UF?</p>
<p>Some “planner” in DC will come up with a magic formula that balances all of these complex state level issues? Good luck with that…</p>
<p>
That was my thought. My other thoughts are, in no particular order: if you are worried about students not being able to pay back their loans, there is a REALLY simple metric for that: percentage of aid given that gets repaid. </p>
<p>This will only accelerate the “degree inflation” phenomenon, wherein a college degree is yesterday’s high school degree. Part of the metrics involve graduation rates, so colleges will just ram kids through who should have been shown the door. For an individual student, it is better to graduate than to flunk out (all other things being equal), but for the aggregate, it’s better to have the degree be meaningful. </p>
<p>Average earnings of graduates: highly dependent upon location, family connections, choice of fields, and the desire to obtain more degrees. Three years out of school, a biology major who is in medical school has functionally no income, and certainly is earning less than a store manager at the GAP who couldn’t find something to do with his music degree. But give them another five or ten years, and one will vastly out-earn the other. </p>
<p>We already have a rough metric for lifetime earnings of graduates: the endowment of the university. Wealthier alumni give more, on the average, than do less-wealthy alumni. I would not trust D.C. to come up with a nuanced metric that would account for lifetime versus immediate earnings, nor to properly balance them between the undergraduate school and the graduate school.</p>
<p>Shorter Aries: MORE government intervention is not going to solve this problem.</p>
<p>I refused to go into K-12 teaching because of nonsense on stilts like this. Guess I’ll have to start developing an escape plan from this job too. Alas.</p>
<p>"Three years out of school, a biology major who is in medical school has functionally no income, and certainly is earning less than a store manager at the GAP who couldn’t find something to do with his music degree. " - ariesathena</p>
<p>LOL! Too true.</p>
<p>Hate it. Terrible idea.</p>
<p>THIS is supposed to be a function of the Federal government???</p>
<p>Where in the world does this end. Good grief.</p>
<p>Here is a simple suggestion to rein in college costs at the top end. The need for Federal financial aid is</p>
<p>federal aid = college cost - institutional aid - expected family contribution</p>
<p>Increasing federal aid encourages colleges to raise the value of (college cost - institutional aid). So in the formula for federal aid from now on, cap (EFC + federal aid) at say $60,000 . In the future, Harvard et al. will be able to raise their list prices from the current $60K level to $100K or whatever, but all of the increased cost will be borne directly by families or by increased financial aid from Harvard, not by larger Pell grants and student loans. Keep the $60K level fixed for 10 years, and this will encourage a gradual decline in inflation-adjusted college prices.</p>
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<p>Ouch…that is bound to lead to some college closures…some of which might be a blessing, but others not so much. Also sounds like a way to make an already limited resource (available seats) even more limited.</p>
<p>@Beliavsky, controlling college cost by controlling college cost is crazy talk. Those silly bumpkins in the states are trying to do that now with public universities, but this really needs some DC leadership!</p>
<p>If I was an education lobbyist in DC, I would be very, very happy. </p>
<p>Let’s look at two of the proposed “metrics”, Tuition and the average earning of graduates.</p>
<p>Will students that enroll in private universities, receive smaller Pell grants, since the tuition is higher at privates than publics? Will privates (and their horde of lobbyist) be able to get this metric changed from simple tuition to something like % need met (and would that include loans….blah…blah…)? Then we award students going to the richest colleges with the largest grants, since a Vanderbilt can do a better job of meeting % need than an Agnes Scott (go Scotties!)? Will this cause college admissions to favor High SES students over low SES students (or would it be the reverse)?</p>
<p>With “average earnings of graduates”, we would be punishing students (with lower grants) that go to 4 year universities that focus on undergraduates, since on average a BS degree holder will earn less than a MS/MA/Phd. Will a student going to a technical school, be awarded larger grants, than a student going to a LAC (a bunch of engineers will earn more on average than a bunch of English/history majors)? Will students in the south get smaller grants than students living in the North East, where average salaries are higher?</p>
<p>How would we determine the average earnings? Survey’s are inaccurate; would this be a job for the IRS! Lets hire another 10,000 IRS agents!</p>
<p>Why are we doing this? Should we be focusing on the student’s need, when determining grants and not on awarding/punishing colleges?</p>
<p>if the federal government stopped paying student loans altogether, the cost of college tuition would decrease substantially. </p>
<p>The only reason that colleges can charge the fees it does is because they know that the government will give them money.</p>
<p>College costs are out of control because NOTHING is stopping it. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The more federal money that goes into it, the higher the costs will get. </p>
<p>econ 101 pure and simple</p>
<p>This is a recipe for a wider divide between classes. It will result in only the wealthy going to elite private colleges, conservatories, etc. and the middle class will be relegated to state schools and regional colleges. The poor will wind up at junior colleges and technical schools. And they’ll all go to school with other people JUST LIKE THEM socioeconomically.</p>
<p>Perfect.</p>
<p>The elite private colleges do not want to be taxed and so they HAVE to accept a diversified student body (wealthy, middle and lower income students) who will attend so that their average student body represents the USA population. Their endowments will help pay for the lower income students tuition, but they want the US Government to pay so they encourage more financial aid.</p>
<p>If they only accept students from wealthy families, Congress will tax them as of 2007. That’s when the game changed in college admissions.</p>
<p>I wonder if colleges will reduce expenses (to seem like a greater value) by eliminating professorships as we know them today and replacing those positions with part time instructors for low pay and few benefits.</p>
<p>Also, doesn’t this model favor research universities with their cheap labor force of TA’s?</p>
<p>There the democratic party goes again, controlling the people and not addressing the issues that the executive branch was DESIGNED to address.</p>
<p>Perhaps taxing private colleges would be a better idea…</p>
<p>I think I’ll follow this with interest. We need something other than USNWR and all it’s inherent jiggling and BS. I’m sure college would sooner or later figure out how to jiggle this system, also, but I will still watch with interest to see the metrics. So are so many unheralded colleges that turn out kids left and right who ultimately do well in life…could be interesting to watch. The basis for much of the data exists in the common data sets and in IPEDS, there are only a few pieces missing.</p>
<p>Perhaps USNWR and the federal ranking will end up pulling in opposite directions if one wanted to game both…</p>
<p>Most likely it would be the final death for USNWR…there’s not much left of that enterprise.</p>
<p>what are people’s thoughts on the collegevalue formula for assessing college value?</p>
<p>[Website</a> gives value scorecard to colleges - Worcester Telegram & Gazette - telegram.com](<a href=“http://www.telegram.com/article/20130813/NEWS/308139866/1116]Website”>http://www.telegram.com/article/20130813/NEWS/308139866/1116)</p>