The Obama administration recently proposed a new college performance ranking system, aiming to define the value and utility of different colleges based on a set of three key principles: access, affordability and outcomes, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Many college students and professionals have expressed critical opinions on the metrics of the proposed system.
The U.S. Department of Education defines access as the number of students receiving Pell Grants or financial aid at the school. Affordability takes into account the price of universities and amount of debt students are left with upon graduation, while outcomes includes degrees awarded and transfer rates, as well as the rate of employment post-graduation.
Barry Toiv, the vice president for public affairs at the Association of American Universities said that the U.S. administration’s system seems to have a good understanding of how to evaluate the college career as a whole.
Tim Powers, the director of accountability and regulatory issues at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities echoed that it is always a positive thing when the U.S. administration wants to increase transparency and accountability.
The U.S. Department of Education has not yet developed specific metrics that will be used to compare colleges, and both Toiv and Powers said that the successfulness of the proposed system depends on the way in which the metrics are developed.
“The notion of rating universities seems like an unhelpful concept considering the complexity of these institutions and the varying needs of students,” Toiv said.
Powers echoed Toiv, saying that when U.S. Department of Education starts to compare the value of different types of institutions with diverse missions, it can cause issues.
“When the federal government attempts to define value, you’re going to have some institutions that might be really good at maintaining their missions but might otherwise not fit into the value that the government has defined,” he said.
Powers said that information released by the Department of Education about their methods is too vague to predict the impact that the new ranking system might have on universities around the country and prospective students.
“In terms of this philosophy, it sets a dangerous precedent and may have unintended consequences,” Powers said.
For example, prospective students might be dissuaded from applying to a school that could be an excellent fit for them based on the metrics chosen by the administration, he said.
He said that while students and families should have all the information to make an informed choice, the way that the government might rank a college cannot possibly capture the value of each institution.
Government professor Linda Fowler said that this kind of ranking system can not account for the huge variation that exists in higher education in the United States.
Fowler said that there are a variety of different kinds of higher education institutions, and that it is hard to come up with “a one size fits all” model for evaluating schools.
“I find it hard to believe that this is going to turn out to be more useful that the [U.S. News & World Report] ratings,” Fowler said.
She said it is valid to consider graduation rates and the number of students on financial aid that graduate, but trying to apply a common method of comparison seems unrealistic.
“A lot of schools have populations with students who are not prepared for college and have families and second jobs, and it isn’t reasonable to expect that they would have the same graduation rate as wealthy liberal arts colleges with a lot of financial aid available,” Fowler said.
She said that the proposed metrics may be so broad that they are meaningless and may create an incentive for schools to alter their policies in order to rank higher. For example, schools with low graduation rates might alter their graduation criteria in order to increase their ranking.
Chegg — a company targeted at aiding prospective and current college students with a variety of services — carried out a survey on the proposed Federal College Ratings system, revealing students’ opinions and recommendations.
Prospective students would be interested in seeing how satisfied current students feel at their respective schools, Chegg’s vice president of communications Usher Lieberman said in an email, although there are currently no plans to include this in the U.S. Department of Education’s proposal.
“According to our students, the ratings will likely be seen as another data point in the students’ decision-making process and not the primary vehicle by which students decide which schools to apply to and attend,” he added.
Jake Greenberg ’17 said that the U.S. administration’s proposed ranking system should require more factors emphasizing the school’s academic prestige on top of the three principles.
Other Dartmouth students expressed mixed opinions on current college ranking methods.
Kathryn Sachs ’18 said that some current college ranking methods are based heavily on outside professor perceptions of the university, which tend to favor research institutions rather than universities with an emphasis on the undergraduate education.
Kyra Maxwell ’18 also said that undergraduate teaching should be emphasized in ranking methods.
“I think its important to place value on the emphasis put on students,” she said. “There are schools that are carrying out amazing research but don’t have great teaching.”
