Feds release info on college rating system
Last year, President Barack Obama announced his administration would, by the beginning of the 2015 academic year, rate America’s colleges “on who’s offering the best value, so students and taxpayers get a bigger bang for their buck.”
Friday, after delays, controversy and much anticipation, the department released not the ratings themselves but a broad description of what the ratings will look like, along with an invitation for the public to weigh in.
It has been anticipated by university leaders around the country, who have been critical of the government’s proposed rating system. Some see the ratings as an expanded and unnecessary role of the federal government, and have questioned tying the value of a college education to federal funding through the ratings system.
Carlton Brown, president of Clark Atlanta University said, “I’m not really in favor of a rating system. I think it’s almost impossible to do them in a fair way.”
He added, “Ratings and rankings tend to move institutions toward a homogenization of approaches” to educating students.
But the framework released is “a tremendous improvement” over what he had seen before.
The newly released rating framework identifies three main elements of institutional quality: affordability, access and outcomes.
Specific proposed measures include the rates at which colleges enroll low-income and first-generation students, and school affordability, including the percentage of students who receive Pell Grants and family income levels.
It’s possible the department will include the value the labor market assigns to degrees from different colleges, by tracking whether graduates can get jobs, earn a living and pay back loans. That has been controversial.
The department will publish separate ratings for community and four-year colleges and is “considering accounting for differences in institutional characteristics such as degree and program mix and selectivity.” It also seeks to recognize “performance improvement over time.”
The department will solicit public input on the framework until Feb. 17. It is hoping to publish the ratings before the school year starts in the fall of 2015.
