QUAD CITIES ONLINE: Government rating colleges, bad idea that’s likely to happen

Career College Central Summary:

In August 2013, the Obama administration announced that they planned to publish their ratings of college and universities by the 2015-2016 academic year, which is only a few short months away. The details of what they intend to do remain sketchy. Nevertheless it seems likely that they intend to push forward with this ill-advised endeavor.
But, you might ask, why is the Obama administration taking it upon itself to become the Consumer Reports of higher education? That's a good question.
Some of the proposed criteria the Department of Education intends to use in the ratings are not particularly controversial, among them the percentage of first-generation college students who enroll and the percentage of students from low-income families. However, efforts to measure the outcomes of the educational experiences of students are another matter, particularly if average or median income of graduates is a factor in this assessment.
Many leaders in higher education, including Augustana President Steve Bahls, have expressed concern about this. In comments submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, President Bahls asked rhetorically, "Is a college that prepares teachers and clergy less worthy than a college that prepares investment bankers? He added that in his experience "there is little correlation between a job's earnings and its inherent value to society." I share his concerns.
Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell has responded to this criticism by saying that the Department of Education is thinking about setting a threshold by rating colleges on the percentage of graduates who earn salaries that exceed some multiple of the minimum wage or poverty line in the short term.
However, when interviewed for an article published in Inside Higher Education, he also said that the Department of Education might use graduates' average or median salaries as a long-term metric to assess outcomes 10 years after enrollment or six years after completion of a degree. In short, the problem is not going to go away.

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QUAD CITIES ONLINE