Education Dept. Unveils New Scorecard to Help Students Compare Colleges
February 14, 2013
Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, the U.S. Department of Education released on Wednesday a “College Scorecard” that would help prospective college students “compare schools based on a simple criteria ” where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”
The online tool presents information about default and graduation rates, average borrowing amounts, price and postgraduate employment at a selected institution.
Some of the data in the new scorecard is a few years old, and most of it has been available from other sources, notably the federal government’s own College Navigator site, reports The New York Times. Further, the information is presented as averages and medians that might have little relevance to individual families. The scorecard does connect to each institution’s net price calculator, which allows individualized cost estimates, but it does not provide side-by-side comparisons of multiple schools, as other government sites do.
Additionally, the scorecard does not include information about learning outcomes, long-term student success or student satisfaction, factors that many in higher education say are equally valuable and are areas where institutions that value general education would likely perform well, reports Inside Higher Ed.
“It takes a very narrow focus on the whole idea of how one chooses a college and what one should consider,” said W. Kent Barnds, vice president for enrollment, communications and planning at Augustana College, in Illinois. “The criteria the scorecards rank colleges on, it dismisses some of the reasons students go to college in the first place, some of the reasons we exist.”
Related Links:
College Affordability and Transparency Center’s College Scorecard
https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-score-card
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/education/obamas-college-scorecard-needs-works-experts-say.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130214&_r=1&
Inside Higher Ed
Michelle Cormier Mott
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