White House Outlines Proposed Ratings System to Lower College Costs

[See updated Chronicle article here.]

The White House on Thursday morning released details of President Obama’s plan to make college more affordable, with a proposal that seeks to measure colleges’ performance through a new ratings system. Following are highlights of a White House fact sheet on Mr. Obama’s plan, released in advance of his speech at the University at Buffalo that will address college affordability:

• Before the 2015 academic year, the U.S. Department of Education will “develop a new ratings system to help students compare the value offered by colleges and encourage colleges to improve. These ratings will compare colleges with similar missions and identify colleges that do the most to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as colleges that are improving their performance.” The ratings will be based on factors including access, such as the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants; affordability, such as average tuition rates; and outcomes, such as graduation rates and graduates’ earnings.

• The results, the White House said, will be published on the department’s College Scorecard, which itself was met with mixed reviews from many in higher education.

• The plan seeks eventually to tie financial aid to the results of the new rating system: “In the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the president will seek legislation allocating financial aid based on these college ratings by 2018, once the ratings system is well established. Students can continue to choose whichever college they want, but taxpayer dollars will be steered toward high-performing colleges that provide the best value.”

• According to the White House fact sheet, Mr. Obama will seek to reward colleges with a bonus for the number of Pell Grant recipients they graduate, and to require colleges with high dropout rates to disburse Pell Grants over the course of the semester, rather than in lump sums at the beginning of the semester.

The White House’s fact sheet also said that Mr. Obama would challenge colleges to embrace certain higher-education innovations as a way to drive down costs, including competency-based programs, massive open online courses, popularly known as MOOCs, and “flipped” classrooms.

Read the whole thing here, and follow along as The Chronicle gathers reactions to the president’s proposals from higher education throughout the day.

Reactions to the speech:

Molly Corbett Broad, president, American Council on Education: “Today’s proposals, which we continue to investigate, would seem to create a system of ranking institutions based on a set of outcomes-related data. The administration already has some of this data and will seek more. As usual, the devil is in the details, but we are encouraged that the administration has invited the higher education community to be part of this conversation. We will be vigilant in working to prevent tying the receipt of aid to metrics, which could have a profoundly negative impact on the very students and families the administration is trying to help.”

The Association of Community College Trustees: “The Association supports the goal of providing all students and families with pertinent and accurate information regarding institutional value based on sector; however, we also recognize that there may be complexities in implementing this system based on the currently available information. We expect that the Administration, which has been a strong supporter of community colleges, will remain mindful of the diverse array of higher-education institutions and the students they serve. Access to affordable, quality higher education is fundamental to the community college model and remains a primary priority for ACCT and our member colleges.”

Carmel Martin, executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, said Mr. Obama was right to call for an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to tackling college costs. “The federal government should continue to expand its support for student aid, including expanding access to manageable repayment plans,” she added. “States need to step up, not step back, on their support for public institutions. Institutions need to take responsibility for the value of their programs. And students and families need to be armed with better information about the costs and outcomes associated with educational opportunities.”