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5 Experts Give the College Scorecard a Barely Passing Grade

By  Ann Schnoebelen
February 25, 2013

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Obama announced the release of the College Scorecard, a project he first proposed in a speech at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor last year. The interactive online tool provides comparable information on college affordability and value, to help students and families figure out “where you can get the most bang for your education buck,” the president said.

The Scorecard has met with mixed reviews, some saying it doesn’t offer enough context and uses flawed data, and others praising the effort toward increased openness. The Chronicle asked five experts in higher-education research and student aid for their thoughts on specific aspects of the Scorecard.

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In his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Obama announced the release of the College Scorecard, a project he first proposed in a speech at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor last year. The interactive online tool provides comparable information on college affordability and value, to help students and families figure out “where you can get the most bang for your education buck,” the president said.

The Scorecard has met with mixed reviews, some saying it doesn’t offer enough context and uses flawed data, and others praising the effort toward increased openness. The Chronicle asked five experts in higher-education research and student aid for their thoughts on specific aspects of the Scorecard.

Costs

The term “net price” could be confusing to high-school students, which worries Julie M. Morgan, director of postsecondary access and success at the Center for American Progress. Some may read through the accompanying text, but it’s likely others will simply try to interpret the graphics, she says, which could be problematic. Students might incorrectly assume “net price” is synonymous with “tuition,” she says. “It’d be worth taking it out to students and testing.”

Graduation Rate

Seemingly straightforward, graduation rates can be tricky statistics, several experts say. The data the Education Department uses to determine this number includes only first-time, full-time students, meaning that someone who transfers from one institution and graduates from another isn’t counted. That can lead to misleading figures, says Sarah A. Flanagan, vice president for government relations at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Ms. Morgan agrees, but she cautions against long, complex clarifications. “Rather than fixing things, we end up with a clunky sentence so that colleges feel good,” she says. “There’s always going to be a tension here with coming up with data that correctly portrays the colleges and something that’s easily communicated to students.”

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Loan Default Rate

This is not a meaningful statistic for most students, says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the Web sites FinAid and Fastweb. He suggests using “loan-repayment rate” instead, and simply reporting how much of the cohort that borrowed federal money is paying it back. “If you talk to a student about it, they ask, ‘What’s a default?’” he says. “But if you tell them ‘This is the percentage of students actively repaying their loans,’ it makes a lot more sense to them.” And at colleges with a very small number of borrowers, just a few defaults can significantly skew the numbers.

Median Borrowing

Giving a median amount is more accurate than an average would be, but the figure still isn’t perfect, Mr. Kantrowitz says. “With ‘median,’ you know that half graduate with more debt, half with less,” he says. “It gives you a sense of the distribution.” But it still feels incomplete. “I would like a figure for what percentage of students graduate with excessive debt by some sort of standard measure,” he says. “For instance, income figures would help say what percentage of student graduates have a total debt that exceeds their first-year salary.”

Employment

“It highlights a real shift in the national conversation about college, away from college as a liberal education to a professional education,” says Christopher S. Coogan, chief of staff at the Association for Institutional Research. “This is the data the public is clamoring for.”

Yet the focus on particular numbers concerns Ms. Flanagan, of NAICU. “So much of success in higher education is about finding the right fit, and there are qualitative parts to that. But there are many more quantitative parts,” she says. The Scorecard is meant to provide a more financially focused evaluation, Ms. Morgan says. “There are plenty of sources about information on majors,” she says, “but not a lot of clear information about value.”

What’s Missing

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Side-by-side comparison tool

A college search involves comparing and contrasting institutions with one another, but the Scorecard doesn’t easily allow for that, says Mr. Kantrowitz. He calls for a side-by-side comparison tool, something Mr. Coogan advises against. He worries that students would try to rank incomparable institutions, sizing up aspects of a local community college against those of a prestigious four-year university.

Accounting for diverse student populations

John F. Ebersole, president of Excelsior College, wants a card that better underscores the diversity of student populations and their needs. “We’ve got different audiences in higher education,” he says. “Our policy makers and politicians keep talking about higher education as if it was a fairly homogenous group, but it’s not.”

Contact information

For Ms. Morgan, one missing piece is simple: The Scorecard should provide contact information for the universities and their financial-aid offices.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
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