According to Inside Higher Ed, the Department of Education has recently changed its tune regarding a college rating system and instead opted for a system that will provide college applicants with a large pool of data for each institution.
As part of President Barack Obama’s education policy, the president originally intended to create a systematic ranking of all the country’s colleges and universities in an attempt to streamline the college selection process for applicants. However, the rating system has been completely reworked to allow the applicant, rather than the government, to make comparison between the institutions. (RELATED: Education Department Unveils Plan To Rate Colleges)
When President Obama had released information on his idea nearly two years ago, he wanted to use a point based system that would “rate [colleges] on who’s offering the best value so students and taxpayers get a bigger bang for their buck.”
The idea of connecting federal financial aid to these ratings had created concerns among many Republicans in Congress as well as the colleges themselves. The reasoning behind this pushback is that an arbitrary rating may not show how one institution may be a perfect fit for one type of student and not another. Essentially the system could not take into account all the factors that determine what makes one college “good” and a large part of that equation includes the students’ preferences. (RELATED: Conservatives Shrug At Obama’s Higher Ed Plans, Colleges Howl In Rage)
The new system will allow high school students to find an institution that matches their preferences without being influenced by a number, arbitrarily assigned by the government. In the past a fact-centric structure has been proven to more easily meet applicants needs as seen through databases created by private organizations.
One of these organizations is the University and College Accountability Network (UCAN), an organization that provides facts about private colleges in a consumer-friendly format. One of the thousands of institutions registered for UCAN is Gettysburg College.
In a comment Gettysburg College president Janet Morgan Riggs says she believes, “the new federal tool will be similar to UCAN in many ways … but the key to the new approach will be the variables chosen and the accuracy of the data reported.”
With a proven structure already in place in the private sector, the federal government has a baseline from which to launch its system. Last December, the government released 11 data points that would be targeted for the original ratings system so it is safe to assume that this data will still be provided without the numerical rating. The three general areas for the data are college access, affordability and performance.
Although the success of the system remains to be seen, many institutions are happy that the Department of Education has chosen to stray from its original ranking system in an effort to allow students to form their own opinions. By giving Americans the facts perhaps President Obama will exit office with a bright spot in education reform after all.