The Obama administration has scaled back its plan to rate colleges, aiming instead for new tools to help parents and students make more informed college decisions.
“The college ratings tool will take a more consumer-driven approach than some have expected, providing information to help students reach their own conclusions about a college’s value,” U.S. Department of Education Deputy Undersecretary Jamienne Studley said in a blog post Thursday.
Obama’s original plan, announced in 2013, was initially designed to measure schools on affordability and possibly determine federal financial aid allocations. During a time of rising college tuition, Obama sought to hold colleges accountable and make higher education more affordable.
““Higher education cannot be a luxury,” Obama said during the initial announcement at the University of Buffalo. “Every American family should be able to get it.”
College leaders across the country criticized the initial proposal for the rating plan, questioning the expanded role of the federal government in the higher education sector. And congressional Republicans questioned spending federal dollars to establish the system. There was also concern about accurately accounting for different types of institutions with varying student demographics, such as those serving a high number of low-income students and historically black colleges.
Education Department officials have not said which data would be used to create the final system, but they promised to unveil the new information later this summer. A framework of the rating plan, released late last year, included 11 categories of data for colleges — such as net price, percentage of Pell Grant recipients and completion rates — that will still be used in whatever plan is released this summer, officials told reporters this week.
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