This repeats a lot of what’s been said here already but first: Thank you for doing this!
I’m glad that Potus gave up trying to rank schools. That’s very hard to do considering the different goals off different parents. Allowing parents to seek out info regarding their own goals is great.
Insufficient granularity of data:Yes. It would be best if there was a breakdown of earnings by major.
Data for different time horizons: needed. Kids who are going into med school or ph.d. programs or even an arts position at a great organization, or into politics, will earn peanuts beyond 10 years post graduation. Even people who have ph.d.s and are teachin as profs, earn a sparrow's salary for a long, long time. This means that top schools that produce people in these career tracks will have lower earnings data.
Fill data: the national organization for guidance counselors puts out data each year of the schools that didn't fill by X date. Fill data would be useful.
Data about what geographies attend, breakdown of gender balance
Better breakdown about types of majors--the current ones are a little broad.
These are things I wish I could see more of. But great job so far! This site was needed. I’m grateful to have sunshine on better earnings data.
Many upper middle class families with 2 hardworking married professional parents (earning $80,000-$100,000+ per person) know that their children will never receive “need-based” financial aid (nor should they). However, parting with nearly a quarter million dollars for one child’s Bachelors degree is an extremely difficult decision, as it can negatively impact numerous other life goals like retirement, charitable contributions, and eldercare. What we really want to know is:
Is this college worth the money AT FULL PRICE?
Does this College offer MERIT AID? (We know that ivies and NESCACs do not)
If this college does offer Merit Aid, what % of the student body receives it?
What is the average size of a merit award?
THANK YOU for your efforts to promote transparency in higher education.
@swimsing - you said “nor should they.”. But shouldn’t cost of living factor in? That money would get much cheaper housing and living costs in Atlanta vs San Jose, NYC, Boston.
While there have been many excellent suggestions to improve the usefulness of the “Scorecard” tool, has anyone considered the cost in terms of funding and individual privacy of attempting to do so?
I, too, would love to see the Scorecard include a breakdown in the data based on major. But how would that be accomplished? The tool pulled data from financial aid records and matched students with their subsequent tax returns (!). These students’ majors would not be reflected on any of these documents. So…now someone has to track down each student and determine his/her major to add as a data point? Privacy, anyone? Cost? Not to mention majors change, there are double majors, minors, and even students who end up working in an unrelated field.
Maybe better to rely on the self-reporting services such as Payscale for this type of analysis.
My other problem with the Scorecard, which I believe has already been discussed, is that it does imply that schools with a larger-than-average cohort of non-STEM, non-finance, etc majors are not as “worthy” just because the 10-year earnings for these careers will typically be less.
@Prezbucky Not everyone can get a PhD just because they want to. It is a measure that the school has actually prepared students girl higher learning and contributions to the field. @iglooo Also, earnings are not a stand-in for success; they, with the other data, show you what you can expect to earn so you have a sense of what you can pay back.
@TedMitchell
The typical user here at CC wants lots of slicing and dicing of data. I am one of them. But this is from the govt and is an attempt to help a common college applicant. With that in mind I would avoid calls to complicate or detail the data much further. In many ways the simplicity is better. For ex, I counsel many people and it is always a surprise to them that the middle 50% numbers on test scores do not mean what they appear to mean. The median range given in test scores here is much more accurate. But in some cases simplicity does not work. The fact that a school’s median debt is $12k is not helpful because I cannot tell whether that means that the school meets fin aid well or that the school has a lot of rich people who do not need much aid. Giving info about how much aid one income range is given vs another is helpful. No need to show cost of living numbers since the colleges don’t really do that anyway. Trust me, I have made the "but-in -California " argument many times to no avail. This is a good start, but I think you need to look at each number given to make sure that it is not capable of being read two ways. Finally, the limits of the data are acceptable to me but they do need to be noted.
This is the work of govt, esp as govt is footing part of the bill.
Thank you.
@CollegeDadofTwo I agree that the cost of living in a specific geographic area where a college is located should be considered when calculating need-based financial aid. But realistically, children of families making 200K+ per year (anywhere) aren’t going to get significant need-based financial aid. It would be nice if College Scorecard would shine a light on the mysteries of merit-based, and perhaps athletic-based, scholarships. Currently, word-of-mouth from other parents is the best way to find out what you can expect. Not terribly reliable info.
Not sure what you mean. How do you, a history major, get a sense of what you earn by looking at what your classmate who majored in CS or econ. I would think the variation in earnings among majors is far greater than where they got the degree. For the scorecard to be meaningful, they should have compared earnings of the same major graduates from different colleges. What’s the point comapring earnings from different colleges when it is really the major that greatly dictates future earnings.
"Not everyone can get a PhD just because they want to. It is a measure that the school has actually prepared students girl higher learning and contributions to the field."
Of course. But volition is the most important factor. A school does not have to be considered elite to adequately prepare a student for undertaking PhD work.
Agree 100%. With the idea that it’s an unwieldy and expensive undertaking and also that it’s a major privacy concern.
I’m a textbook example of why this doesn’t work well - I changed majors 3x (and colleges twice, so already out of this data). And for the last 20 years have been in a business that literally didn’t exist when I was in college - I sure as heck didn’t major in it or anything related to it.
I have read all the posts. Yes, there are certain valid queries which need to be addressed and it may not satisfy all! However, a very easy to navigate site with the relevant details, esp. for the parents who are interested to know the outcome of the college education, where a lot of their hard earned money is being invested. Yes, the same information can be obtained through other search processes though it will take lot more time.
@prezbycky Scorecard is not saying that these schools are elite: It is just showing that they prepare students fir further study and that is important.
The web page may have incorrect data for some schools as to the academic programs offered. For example, some schools without engineering degree programs show up when engineering is selected in “Choose a program”.
Also, the pay information listed for each school appears to be for the entire school, not just for the major or program selected. This can be misleading, since the correlation between major and post-graduation pay is often stronger than the correlation between school and post-graduation pay.
Has anyone taken a good look at the for-profit schools or 2 year CCs? I don’t have much experience with them and maybe this website provides helpful comparative information based on the fact that there is less national information out there on these schools. I tried to find our local community college on the website and nothing came up. I even checked the whole state in case I was doing something wrong.
Scorecard is not saying that these schools are elite: It is just showing that they prepare students fir further study and that is important.
That wasn’t my contention either. Someone else had referred to the consensus “elite schools”, so the discussion that followed was based on that loose definition.
Kirschner has a very quotable line there, but the are thousands of graduates every year that voluntarily take low paying jobs that they find fulfilling. It isn’t their fault that the market system doesn’t decide to reward their choice of work, be it life’s work or a more temporary thing, with great riches. I don’t disagree that getting a feel for how much an education will cost and the ability to pay it back is very important. But that, as many have said, is far less dependent on the school as compared to choice of major/profession. I think this tool is far too crude and misleading to really help. Tempting to ramble on but…
I agree. Don’t bother with per major data. Also all schools don’t have the same majors. As with any data chart there will be some effort required by the user to interpret and to search for further data.