Dive Brief:
- The Obama Administration has released new data and metrics for its college scorecard system, designed to help families understand the value of higher ed spending based upon graduation rates, job attainment and other areas of institutional merit.
- Like many ranking systems, the federal college scorecard ranks elite colleges and universities high for upper-tier scores in completion rates and post-graduate employment outcomes, while negatively grading for-profit and minority-serving institutions.
- Officials say they hope to develop the scorecard to help students and families project or recognize institutional issues prior to enrollment.
Dive Insight:
At some point, colleges and universities will recognize that the only college score card which matters is the federal ranking system, which is most likely to be the tool the government uses to make decisions about institutional eligibility for financial aid disbursements, and to promote certain institutions as standard bearers for workforce development and value for the dollar.
This unfairly boxes out the majority of American higher education, as most community colleges and minority-serving institutions will never improve graduation rates because of their mission to educate disenfranchised student populations. Additionally, without accounting for state divestment in higher education, or the federal government's own reductions in grants and contracts awarded outside of elite institutions, it becomes a self-fulfilling edict of shrinking the higher education landscape and widening the achievement gap between haves and have-nots.