U-CAN: a consumer information initiative for parents and students

Parents Forum
1

<p>Trying to get an edge to influence the on-going national debate on accountability and transparency in higher education, the NAICU - the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities - plans to unveil a fully operational consumer information initiative dubbed The University and College Accountability Network, or U-CAN to be released in September. The new site will give prospective students and their families internet-based information on individual private colleges and universities including data on admission, tuition and graduation rates, enrollment, diversity, campus life and which types of financial aid freshmen receive.</p>

<p>
[quote]

The U-CAN consumer information project is ... an honest effort to better organize and communicate college selection information across institutions, so that students and their families can more easily learn the wide range of options available to them across the higher education universe. Each institution's informational profile will be displayed in a largely standardized template, so that consumers explore colleges and universities using a common base.</p>

<h1>The U-CAN project is unabashedly oriented toward the interests of prospective college students and their families, as determined through focus groups and other research, rather than toward the self-interests of the participating institutions. In this sense, U-CAN is not so much a tool for marketing the individual college, as it is a parallel initiative - in much the same manner as institutional information included on the Department of Education's COOL Web site, or in comprehensive college guides such as the Peterson's or College Board books.

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</h1>

<p><a href="http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.610/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.610/default.asp&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.603/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.603/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>In the battle to win the heart and minds of consumers away from USNews and the urge to rank, this site will, no doubt be just one of many non-ranking type web-based resource options available to students and parents by 2008. These sites will tap into the vast amount of highly dispersed "self-generated accountability information available in the institutions' publications and, increasingly, on their Web sites." Information profiles run the gamut from common data sets, mission statements, accreditation reports, student outcomes and student assessment, as well data on enrollment and graduation. The U-CAN site is rich with links (most of them actually seem to work although not all are compatible with firefox) to Cornell, Baylor University in Texas, MIT, Bates, Earlham, Bucknell, Syracuse University, Hamilton College, Elon University, Oberlin and Wooster in Ohio, Middlebury College, Chrichton College in Tennessee, Bridgewater College and Hollins University in Virginia, Seattle Pacific University, Roger Williams College, among other IHEs.</p>

<p>
[quote]
as independent colleges and universities wrestle with how to improve accountability, many are trying new and novel ways of assuring that they effectively serve their constituencies.... we will provide you with Web links to a smorgasbord of notably ambitious, innovative, and emerging approaches to higher education accountability at individual private colleges and universities, as well as efforts by institutions to better communicate this information to their constituencies....

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</p>

<p><a href="http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/Accountability/Institutional_Examples/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/Accountability/Institutional_Examples/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

3

<p>National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities issues a well-timed press release on the soon to be launched U-CAN project: "New Initiative Prepares to Give Families Better College Consumer Information"</p>

<p>Here is a link to the list of participating colleges - the number is expected to reach between 450 and 500 for the mid-September launch.
<a href="http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.613/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.613/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>At the heart of it all:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Why: NAICU has not been developing U-CAN in a vacuum. Members of Congress and officials at the U.S. Department of Education have been calling for better, consumer-friendly information about colleges and universities. Their concerns have been echoed by prospective students and parents in focus groups conducted by NAICU over the past year. While several members of the Annapolis Group (who also belong to NAICU) have promoted U-CAN as an alternative to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, NAICU does not take a position on the rankings.

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<p>Other related links also are of interest on the efforts to provide college consumer information by:</p>

<p>the National Association of State Universities and Land- Grant Colleges (<a href="http://www.nasulgc.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nasulgc.org/&lt;/a&gt;) </p>

<p>the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (<a href="http://www.aascu.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aascu.org/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>the Association of American Universities (<a href="http://www.aau.ed%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aau.ed&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.613/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.613/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

4

<p>Getting ready for the Sept. 26 launch - here is a link to the U-CAN blog site -the entry "Dechiphering Morse Code" is noteworthy given all the USNWR hoopla going on. The updated list of participating colleges tops 450- a list that includes Harvard, Dartmouth, Vassar College, Williams, Weslyan, Bowdoin...</p>

<p><a href="http://ucan-network.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ucan-network.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

5

<p>Just wanted to point out that Amherst, Hamilton, Swarthmore, Smith, Trinity College, Washington and Lee, as well as Bates are all signed up and ready to provide the promised complete information through U-CAN.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=390920%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=390920&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

6

<p>On a related note, the U-CAN site kindly provides a link to the Collegenews article "Annapolis Group to Study Alternatives to USNWR Rankings"</p>

<p>
[quote]
Katherine Will, chair of the Annapolis Group and president of Gettysburg College, ... announced the formation of a subcommittee of Annapolis Group presidents and institutional research officers to develop a common format for presenting information about liberal arts colleges to aid students and their families in the college search process. William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College, will chair the subcommittee.</p>

<p>The goal of the Annapolis Group Common Information Template Group is to provide easily accessible, comprehensive, and quantifiable data to aid prospective students and families. The database will allow comparisons among institutions where appropriate, but will not rank institutions in any way...</p>

<p>We applaud the various efforts and trust that one or several robust alternatives to the current rankings will emerge,” Durden said....

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</p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegenews.org/x7273.xml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegenews.org/x7273.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here is a link to an earlier (June) ANNAPOLIS GROUP STATEMENT ON RANKINGS AND RATINGS in which the Annapolis Group members declare their intent to work with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) and the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), among others to develop a common instrument.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegenews.org/x7131.xml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegenews.org/x7131.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

7

<p>Thanks for posting all of this info, Asteriskea! I just had a look at the basic format, available as a sample download for now. It looks really useful and user-friendly:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.603/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.naicu.edu/special_initiatives/id.603/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It gives most of the standard facts and figures, along with a lot of information that's hard to find elsewhere, for example, the history of tuition hikes; class size broken down into lots of increments and not justs <20 and >50; full-time faculty holding terminal degrees (Ph.D. or equivalent); % of freshmen living on campus; % of all undergrads students living on campus, and a lot more. The only glaring omissions I noticed in just a brief look were information on endowment and EA/ED statistics, but these could be buried on one of the secondary links. </p>

<p>There must be almost 20 links off the main pages to things as specialized as religious and spiritual life and special housing options. </p>

<p>If this initiative attracts the number of participating colleges that it promises, it could be a real threat to USNews. There would be little reason to pay for the full version, either printed or online, except to see the ranking numbers themselves.</p>

8

<p>Thanks so much, Asteriskea, for "keeping us posted" re this very useful information. It sounds like an excellent development, and I look forward to exploring the data once the program is fully launched later this month.</p>

9

<p>Many thanks MM88 and JEM for your posts on this thread. I too am looking forward to exploring the site once it goes live.</p>

<p>The boycott against USNWR has rightly garnered a great deal of splashy media attention and has generated much lively and worthwhile debate (a lot of it right here on CC) but U-CAN is still flying under most folks' radar, so it is important to keep in mind that the boycott movement and U-CAN, while completely separate, do share common roots, so arguably there is an indirect connection. Both initiatives are spurred by strong support for Congress and the U.S. Department of Education's call for greater accountability and transparency in higher education and that includes providing the John Q. Public with more and better web-based, free access to consumer information to evaluate higher ed choices. </p>

<p>Here are some details from the U-CAN site re: schedule and roll-out:</p>

<p>U-CAN will be publicly unveiled in September at a news conference in Washington, D.C. at which time the institution profiles will go "live" on the Web. The project will be promoted through a nationwide series of radio interviews with college presidents; local public relations efforts by participating institutions; direct mailings to college and high school counselors; advertising on Google and Yahoo; and through a presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Two weeks prior to the public launch, participating institutions will receive a communications toolkit, with important resources for reaching out to local media, policymakers, and other campus constituencies. Additional promotional activities are also being explored. So I guess it is now count-down to launch date.</p>

<p>"College presidents developing alternative to U.S. News rankings"</p>

<p><a href="http://bapaper.examiner.com/edition/baltimore/?haspdf=1%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://bapaper.examiner.com/edition/baltimore/?haspdf=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

10

<p>
[quote]
Two weeks prior to the public launch, participating institutions will receive a communications toolkit

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</p>

<p>I believe that communications toolkit would be called a spin manual in the dialect of English spoken here. Whether the spin will be believed or not is the $64 billion dollar question.</p>

11

<p>When all is said and done, we will still have to think through and do our own research while we cull through all the college information that is going to be thrown at us- the intriguing promise of U-CAN is the user-friendly, standardized common platform that will hopefully allow us to do precisely that from one site. When it comes to any pr blitz, isn't spin to one degree or another a given? (I guess too many people in my family work in advertising...after all the whole point is to entice us to use their rather than, or alongside, other available sites). We will always have to digest, discuss, and maybe even dissect, the format, content, and yes, even the validity of the data we are given. This is especially true because the NAICU is quite clear that they are not going to edit or verify any of data - participating institutions are fully responsible for the accuracy of their own information. This is one point which I hope will be given its due in the upcoming PR campaign. Again, from the U-CAN site: "U-CAN is not so much a tool for marketing the individual college as for providing basic information about institutions. However, the richness and diversity of private colleges and universities has been built into the U-CAN design, with space provided for narrative information, and through links back to the institution’s own Web site." CC folks are savvy consumers and will most likely continue to contribute to the national discussion on all of this long after the anti-ranking boycott letter issue is moot.</p>

<p>U-CAN will be most likely be just one of several alternative consumer information services that we will have to learn to love, hate, tolerate, or just ignore after 2008. There is still the upcoming EC conference at Yale and the Education Sector - Nesse non-ranking assessment project, etc.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.educationsector.org/supplementary/supplementary_show.htm?doc_id=404246%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.educationsector.org/supplementary/supplementary_show.htm?doc_id=404246&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

12

<p>The information provided in the profiled example does LOOK interesting. In case the format develops a reasonable critical mass, I'd consider it more than worthwhile.</p>

<p>How this will impact the USNews? I'd wager to say that it may actually help them in the long run, as readers will see one set of data and want to compare it to a "ranked" version. The best part of this is that the schools have now set themselves up to HAVING to deliever more data, and the schools that have been playing games will be uncovered more easily. If few people REALLY checked the publishing of the CDS, this will be different. </p>

<p>How does this play in the game of the Education Conservancy? That question is impossible to answer since the EC's "luminaries" can't describe their own agenda in a meaningful manner.</p>

13

<p>Education Week article, "Colleges Build Web Sites to Enable Campus Comparisons, Sans Ranks" gives a good overview of the information templates now under construction with highlights of the UCAN project as well as a nifty "Campus Comparison" pop-up box. There is also a nice little picture of LT of the EC for Xiggi's scrapbook.</p>

<p>
[quote]
It’s that time of year again, except that this time around, the voice is louder. Long-established college associations and a nascent national organization are either building or planning five free, Web-based college-information platforms that may diminish the U.S. News lists’ influence among high school counselors, students, and parents....</p>

<p>“There has been concern in the higher education community that Congress would feel compelled to impose reporting standards,” said Tony Pals, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, or NAICU, an organization of private higher education institutions. “Rather than let the government determine what those variables should be, what you’re seeing is associations working to provide that information.”</p>

<p>NAICU plans to launch Sept. 26 its University and College Accountability Network, an online platform with information on 500 of its 900-plus members—including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale universities, all longtime inhabitants of the upper reaches of U.S. News’ list...

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</p>

<p><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/09/12/03comparison.h27.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/09/12/03comparison.h27.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

14

<p>From the Skidmore website: "Group aims for September launch of University & College Accountability Network"</p>

<p>
[quote]
The Annapolis Group, an association of leading liberal arts colleges of which Skidmore is a member, has been particularly insistent in recent years on the need for an independent system for disseminating information and comparing colleges. Most objectionable, they say, is the "beauty contest"—a reputational survey in which presidents, chief academic officers and admissions directors are asked to rank their peer institutions.</p>

<p>"There is simply too much randomness in the results of this survey for it to have validity," said Skidmore President Philip A. Glotzbach. "While we may have some knowledge of our peer institutions, we can't possibly know them in the way we know our own. More importantly, while we may have a sense of other colleges and universities based on our experience in higher education, that impression may or may not reflect any given institution's current strengths or weaknesses."</p>

<p>For this reason, Glotzbach said, Skidmore will join the growing ranks of colleges that are refusing to participate in the US News reputational survey and instead will actively support NAICU's U-CAN initiative.</p>

<p>"The U-CAN site will provide accurate comparative data not only to the students and parents who need it to make well-informed decisions, but also to the public at large and to news organizations that are appropriately concerned about reporting accurately on the status of higher education," Glotzbach said. "For the first time, everyone will be comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges."...

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</p>

<p>The comparative data will draw from:</p>

<p>*Hard data: from numbers and percentages used in the Common Data Set, in U.S. Department of Education reports, and elsewhere;</p>

<p>*Soft data: includes narrative information and links to key pages on the Skidmore site that provide detailed information on aspects of academic and student life.</p>

<p><a href="http://cms.skidmore.edu/news/details-news.cfm?customel_datapageid_2316=80302%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://cms.skidmore.edu/news/details-news.cfm?customel_datapageid_2316=80302&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

15

<p>Update on membership which is now up to 512. New members include Brown, Grinnell, and WUSTL, which may have won a door prize for becoming U-CAN's 500th participating member.</p>

<p><a href="http://ucan-network.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ucan-network.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

16

<p>Just one day to go for the U-CAN unveiling and the NCES has given us a revamped user-friendly search engine, formerly known as COOL, well worth taking a look at dubbed College Navigator.</p>

<p><a href="http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>USA Today; "Need to pick a college? New websites can help"</p>

<p>
[quote]
The site, College Navigator (collegenavigator.ed.gov), provides no new information, such as net price or student performance; such additions would require legislative or federal approval. Nor are data on part-time or transfer students available.
The site also does not include the level of detail offered by some commercial sites. U.S. News & World Report, for example, lists the number of full-time faculty and average class size. The College Board allows users to include interests, such as drama, cheerleading or jazz clubs.</p>

<p>But Spellings says the new, more user-friendly site will better serve key audiences, including low-income students, their parents and families in which the kids would be the first to plan for college.</p>

<p>"We're on a journey here, and the fact that we've started … is a huge step forward," she says.</p>

<p>The site draws primarily from information that institutions must report to the National Center for Education Statistics as a condition of receiving federal aid. Institutions include two- and four-year public and private non-profit schools and for-profit institutions; credentials range from certificates to bachelor's degrees or higher.

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-24-college-navigator_N.htm?csp=34%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-24-college-navigator_N.htm?csp=34&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

17

<p>Countdown for U-CAN launch and the number of participating institutions now stands at 573. Among the latest to come on board are MIT, Hofstra, Rice, Baylor, and Vanderbilt.`</p>

18

<p>Launch press conference scheduled for today - some consumer tidbits from the U-CAN site:</p>

<p>Number of colleges and universities signed up for U-CAN, as of September 26, 2007: 600</p>

<p>Number of colleges and universities whose profiles went live on September 26, 2007: 450</p>

<p>Number of information elements provided in each profile: 47</p>

<p>Number of hyperlinks from an institution's profile to its campus web site: 25</p>

<p>Average number of hours it takes a college to create its U-CAN profile: 8 to 10</p>

<p>Number of states represented in U-CAN: 42</p>

<p>Cost to the consumer to use the web site: $0</p>

<p>Number of focus groups conducted across the nation with prospective students and parents: 8</p>

<p>Number of other college and university groups that are exploring creating similar web sites: 4</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ucan-network.org/id.11,id2.652/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ucan-network.org/id.11,id2.652/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

19

<p>
[quote]
Average number of hours it takes a college to create its U-CAN profile: 8 to 10

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Presumably that time estimate treats gathering the data as a sunk cost. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Number of focus groups conducted across the nation with prospective students and parents: 8

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Having been in a focus group for one of my alma mater's studies of alumni support, I have considerable skepticism about focus groups as a way of finding out what's really going on. But I'll see what U-CAN has posted, and assess that on its own merits. </p>

<p>I see the profiles still aren't live on the Web at this hour.</p>

20

<p>There are some oddities with how the search works (the lower search form seems to do more than the upper one), but the home page is up and live. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.ucan-network.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ucan-network.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>