The debate over President Obama’s plan to rate colleges based on access, affordability, and outcomes is beginning to take shape, and lobbying groups and think tanks are already warning of unintended consequences.
The president’s plan has gained early support from proponents of bringing more accountability to higher education, but some analysts fear that a ratings system would punish colleges for accepting students from lower-income and other backgrounds who are less likely to complete degrees than their peers.
Once in place, the program the president has proposed would give larger Pell Grants and more-affordable loans to students attending higher-rated institutions.
Speaking on a panel at the New America Foundation here on Wednesday, one of the president’s key advisers sought to allay concerns about the proposal. James R. Kvaal, deputy director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, said “a core mission” of the ratings system would be to assist colleges that serve low-income students.
“It’s also important to us that this isn’t a system of punishment,” Mr. Kvaal said.
Mr. Kvaal was among four panelists to participate in the forum, titled “Higher Education’s New Caste System.” The panel, which was sponsored by the New America Foundation and the magazine Washington Monthly, was billed as a conversation about a broken higher-education system that puts low-income students at a disadvantage and perpetuates racial inequality. That theme, however, was largely eclipsed by a decades-old debate that has been reinvigorated by President Obama’s proposal: How do we best measure quality across diverse postsecondary institutions that serve students with vastly different levels of preparedness?
President Obama says his proposed ratings system, which would take effect in 2015, would ultimately measure whether colleges are giving students a good deal. The trouble is, there is precious little agreement about which metrics best answer that question.
Imperfect Metrics
The federal six-year graduation rate, which is often cited by policy makers as a measure of quality, is criticized among higher-education experts because it discounts significant numbers of college students. The figure does not include students who transfer into an institution from a community college, for example, or students who transfer out of an institution and eventually graduate from a different college.
Diana S. Natalicio, president of the University of Texas at El Paso and a panelist at the forum, said the federal six-year graduation rate fails to capture 70 percent of her students. The measure tends to “mislead rather than inform,” she said, and yet it plays a prominent role in shaping public policy.
Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive officer of the Lumina Foundation, said the problem was not the use of graduation rates, but rather the “obsession we have with single measures.”
“Graduation rates are an entirely legitimate measure but should not be the sole measure,” said Mr. Merisotis, who also participated in the panel.
The Obama administration has been careful to bill its proposal as a “ratings” system as opposed to a “rankings” system. The slight distinction in nomenclature appears designed in part to tamp down concerns that the president is merely promoting a federalized version of annual rankings done by U.S. News & World Report, a magazine that is frequently criticized for using selectivity and reputation as proxies for quality in its data.
“We’re not talking about a rankings system where if you can gin up a few more applications to reject, you’re going to leapfrog above a couple of institutions,” Mr. Kvaal said.
Washington Monthly, a co-sponsor of the panel, started publishing an alternate rankings system in 2005. The rankings, whose most recent edition was published last month, “give high marks to institutions that enroll low-income students, help them graduate, and don’t charge them an arm and a leg to attend,” the magazine said.
Kevin Carey, director of the education-policy program at the New America Foundation and guest editor of the Washington Monthly’s 2013 College Rankings, said there is a “distorted view” in the United States that excellence in higher education can be defined by how many students a college turns away. Mr. Carey, who is also a columnist for The Chronicle, said that view is harmful because it does not give colleges incentives to enroll students who face the greatest financial and preparatory challenges.
“That,” he said, “is a powerful, powerful headwind to change.”
