<p>Hey if the government makes college more affordable then that’s great, regardless if you like the gov or not (I don’t really like the gov) its good because college is the easiest and best way to have a life.</p>
<p>@cartman3000. How does the rating system make college more affordable? The government does not have a good track record of making things more affordable. They do try to lower the cost for some but that is usually just accomplished by taking money from others. That is not changing the underlying economics.</p>
<p>Surest way to make college cheaper is to make schools with excessive administrative overhead ineligible for federal money in any form, whether it is student loans, research grants, etc. Just watch the number of administrators and their pay packages drop.</p>
<p>@MrMom62 - I have no idea how they would determine what is excessive administrative overhead in a fair manner. Schools have very different student populations, capabilities, cost of living, quality of infrastructure that has to be managed, etc.</p>
<p>Besides, they shouldn’t be giving grants or student loans based on their beliefs of what a good cost structure is for the school. That pollutes the entire process.</p>
<p>This will also be happening at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA ( a suburb of Washington, DC) on November 13. The public is invited to participate but you must register by November 10:</p>
<p>[Mason</a> Hosts Forum by Department of Education on College Affordability Initiative - Mason News - George Mason University](<a href=“The George | George Mason University”>The George | George Mason University)</p>
<p>“President Obama’s proposals to make college more affordable”
Yeah, well, the ACA was supposed to make healthcare more affordable, and look how well that turned out. Forgive my unfounded skepticism, but I don’t see how a rating system is going to make college more affordable.</p>
<p>@essse The logic here seems to be the classic:</p>
<p>“We must do something about X”
“Well, Y is something”.
“So let’s do Y!”</p>
<p>Unfortunately there is no correlation between Y and solving X, but at least people did something and felt good about it.</p>
<p>^^^^ the problem is that some schools take more money and graduate fewer students. </p>
<p>You dont think a measure like “average debt at graduation” has anything to do with the cost of college ?</p>
<p>^^^ No. Measuring the average debt at graduation has nothing to do with making a college more affordable.</p>
<p>Measuring that also doesn’t do anything about improving the number of people who graduate or how much a school charges.</p>
<p>That is like saying measuring the average debt of a Lexus buyer will make a Lexus more affordable.</p>
<p>This program is trying to make a specific college (lexus) cheaper, its trying to make college as a whole more accessible. </p>
<p>The problem is that many students don’t have access to the financial aid they need, primarily because more and more students default on their loans, so its tougher and tougher to get money. </p>
<p>The realitly is that not all colleges do as good a job with the money we give them. Some colleges graduate fewer students in a longer amounts of time with more debt. The proposal is to target money to schools that are better at this measurement. </p>
<p>Schools that would win
Private most-selective colleges
Most public schools </p>
<p>Schools that would lose
For profits
Schools that gap need
Generally any school with low 6 year grad rates or high debt at graduation numbers</p>
<p>Are you really arguing that you want your tax dollars to go to schools that do a crappy job instead of schools that do a good job ?</p>
<p>^^ That is an odd way of looking at solving this problem.</p>
<p>Using that same logic, we should give more money to elite top high schools than inner city schools since they do a better job of getting kids to graduate and.</p>
<p>We should also then give more aid to people who get accepted to colleges that are good enough to attract people who are more likely to graduate. Oh, and since they have larger endowments, the student loan burden is less. So they get even more money.</p>
<p>It really isn’t clear who really wins or loses since when you look at the data, you see that the second highest for profit college (WyoTech from TV commercial fame) has a higher graduation rate than the fifth highest state university, Penn State. So it will be interesting to see this program give more money to WyoTech than Penn State. </p>
<p>Oh, and of course, that means very little money to all those community colleges (the fifth best has a graduation rate of 50%).</p>
<p>Actually, it is clear who loses. I don’t think that is the result we want.</p>
<p>source: [College</a> Stats | College Completion](<a href=“Student Outcomes”>Student Outcomes)</p>
<p>The problem with tying graduation rates to dollars is that it won’t be too long before someone figures out being a diploma mill is more profitable than having standards. And once we have people running around with pieces of paper that mean nothing, then what have you achieved? They’ve again spent a lot of money for nothing.</p>
<p>I think the ranking system will decrease diversity among colleges. If there is one methodology, by which all schools will be ranked, schools will scurry to Obama’s orthodoxy. In short, I don’t like it.</p>
<p>I think the point is simply to put some pressure on colleges to justify the amount of their tuition and price increases and also to help educate the public about how they can get the same degree at a quality college for a fraction of the price of some private colleges. A lot of people think that if they are paying a lot more for their tuition they must be getting a better education or a more valuable degree, but if you look at the earnings of graduates you see there is often no correlation. There is not a lot of data out there about “return on investment” of these degrees. However, the state of Virginia published a study of all public and private colleges in the state and the results showed that graduates of expensive private colleges were often earning less after graduation than graduates of public colleges.</p>
<p>From the article of the first post</p>
<p>“This is an important issue for higher education and the communities we serve, and a unique opportunity to be involved in the process to advance critical higher education policy that will impact every student and educator in the country,” </p>
<p>Yes, it is an important issue and don’t mess education up! The Asian country I came from made colleges affordable for 100% high school graduate to get into/graduate from. (Even though top colleges are still about 10% admission rate) The end result is 400 college graduates fighting for one janitor position! That’s one of the unintended consequences - much like the not-working healthcare website. (Oops, it is not the healthcare web-site that is not working, it is the policies. I suspect the computer programs were unfinished due to conflicts of policies and no one knows how those policies should be translated. But that’s another topic.) </p>
<p>Make colleges affordable with tax payer money through better financial aid is definitely not a solution. Reduce the cost and encourage only qualified students to go into college will work better.</p>
<p>(This new ranking ‘idea’ is getting education into another disaster - I can see it will end up cutting most of humanities majors and increase STEM while most students are not fitting to go into STEM, and we are setting them up for failure.)</p>
<p>It’s just a ratings system to highlight value and return-on-investment in higher education as opposed to the difficulty of admissions/ prestige factor which is taking over people’s sanity and driving so many Americans deeply into debt. It’s not a national take-over of higher education. Why is it okay for private businesses to rank colleges but if a government program attempts to do so on a value basis it is a big scary thing? I believe this is intended as a tool to help people make decisions, much like nutritional information on food packages.</p>
<p>Because when government does it, it’s a great big hammer. And everything looks like a nail.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe part of the proposal is to tie federal aid to the ranking system. That’s a way of socially engineering the schools into some bureaucrat’s vision of “fairness”.</p>
<p>“If they start to measure graduate income and the colleges take these measures seriously, doesn’t that create an incentive to move away from offering less of the less profitable majors and doesn’t it create disincentives to take a risk on applicants who may seem to have potential but have not demonstrated it yet?”</p>
<p>Sure thing. I’d think an undergrad school would dump humanities, arts, education (teaching), journalism, and all other kinds of majors that might not “guarantee” jobs and high incomes. I’d think that the school would limit the number of freshmen who don’t seem perfect with great HS track records. </p>
<p>I think this pressure would lead to even more bifurcation in our society and lead to more indelible “tracking” at earlier, and earlier ages for our children. You’ll see more haves & have-nots from this. </p>
<p>Still, undergrad schools need to seriously better support and guide their students, ensure learning outcomes, and create bridges to careers/jobs. There is a lot of room for improvement. Just seriously doubt this school “rating” route is the best and most informed way.</p>
<p>Nice post !</p>
<p>I’m sure graduate earnings would be tracked by field, say within the teaching profession, not comparing apples to oranges (starting engineer salaries vs. starting teacher salaries). The state of Virginia did it that way, by major. I think knowledge is power- the more information we have, the better citizens are able to make informed choices.</p>