College presidents are panicking about what they consider an oversimplified proposal from the Obama administration to rank colleges based on graduation rates, students’ accumulated debt and post-graduation earnings – and then dole out federal money accordingly, The New York Times reports:
“Applying a sledgehammer to the whole system isn’t going to work,” said Robert G. Templin Jr., the president of Northern Virginia Community College. “They think their vision of higher education is the only one.”
They are particularly piqued at being compared to a kitchen appliance:
“It’s like rating a blender,” Jamienne Studley, a deputy under secretary at the Education Department, said to the college presidents after a meeting in the department’s Washington headquarters in November, according to several who were present. “This is not so hard to get your mind around.”
The issue is transparency and accountability, the administration responds:
“We have a financial and moral obligation to be good stewards of these dollars,” Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, said in an interview. He said schools often did a poor job of providing information to prospective students and their parents, making the choice of a college complicated.
Schools with lots of liberal arts and education majors, as well as those serving low-income and minority populations, are predicted to fare the worst under a ratings system. It’s not just state schools that are worried:
Charles L. Flynn Jr., the president of the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx, said a rating system for colleges is a bad idea that “cannot be done well.” He added, pointedly, “I find this initiative uncharacteristically clueless.” …
“We think that entire approach is quite wrongheaded,” said Kenneth W. Starr, the president of Baylor University in Waco, Tex., and the prosecutor of the Whitewater investigation of President Bill Clinton.
Officials are developing a “version 1.0” rating system that could be unveiled by the end of the year.
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