College Scorecard: New Ratings Framework by Obama
The US News and World Report’s annual college rankings were launched in 1983, and ever since then they have been used in order to compare various institutions on the basis of quantifiable metrics, especially alumni donation and acceptance rates. In 2013, the US leader Barack Obama argued that the rankings mentioned above were actually incentivizing colleges to simply game the numbers as well as raise the costs. This in turn encouraged schools to invest more funds into the range of activities like alumni outreach. The latter led the whole system to the tuition raise. However, according to the American presidents, local colleges motivated by these systems, kept largely neglecting one crucial issue that is student outcomes. With that in mind, Obama pledged to completely transform the way the US colleges are ranked through shifting the main focus from what it called the institution prestige to an actual successful academic experience.
Introducing the New System
Earlier the US leader unveiled his famous ‘College Scorecard’ as an integral part of the pledge. Nonetheless, the new tool that has been offered is not an actual ranking system. As an alternative, it provides users with an access to various federal data on both the attendance-cost data, as well as student-debt data for over 7 000 higher educational establishment all over the United States. This in turn provides them with an opportunity to compare different institutions; students have a cool chance to make use of the so-called Scorecard given to both list and sort out school depending on the size, recent graduation rates, as well as approximate wages after attending. The up-to-date system created on the basis of more than two years of federal data does not translate the numbers mentioned before into proper ratings.
Remembering What’s Important
This month Barack Obama stated that every individual should be provided with an opportunity to find trustworthy, clear and open data regarding college value and affordability like whether they’re in need of finding a good job, deal with their loans and so on. According to his words, the interface of the tool was created in close collaboration with college students, their parents and professors.
Excelling at Different Specialization
Colleges tend to fare in a different way on the Scorecard depending on a particular metric. The educational establishments such as Kentucky’s Berea College or State University of NY Downstate Medical Center usually top lists when taking into consideration the post-graduation earnings of the students and average annual cost. At the same time, Princeton and Harvard tend to perform great when being sorted out by the graduation rate. In addition to that, the tool also offers highly comprehensive profiles for every educational establishment, specifying the percentage of its students, who pay down debt, and detailing the total typical debt per student.
The launch of the College Scorecard will ultimately help add more dimension to the true value of the education system provided by the colleges and universities. Its usage enables you to get a more holistic picture of what various US universities and colleges have to offer and thus, gives you an opportunity to make the right decision within the educational sector.