Posted on 09/25/2015 10:43:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hillsdale, Grove City colleges among those snubbed by Department of Education
The new College Scorecard released by the Department of Education and the White House that ranks universities excluded several institutions widely considered among the best conservative colleges in the nation: Hillsdale and Grove City colleges.
The feds claimed Hillsdale, which offers a traditional liberal arts curriculum grounded in Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions, does not grant enough bachelor degrees to be ranked, while Grove City a staunchly Christian institution was snubbed because it refuses federal funding.
The College Scorecard was released last week and is a collection of graduate employment and student loan statistics from supposedly every institution of higher education in the country, designed to help prospective students identify which schools provide the biggest bang for your buck.
Americans will now have access to reliable data on every institution of higher education, President Barack Obama had said in announcing it. Youll be able to see how much each schools graduates earn, how much debt they graduate with, and what percentage of a schools students can pay back their loans which will help all of us see which schools do the best job of preparing America for success.
But the handful of schools in the nation that refuse to take money from the feds are nowhere to be found in the database. In addition to Hillsdale and Grove City, Christendom College, New St. Andrews College, and Wyoming Catholic College are absent from the list.
Hillsdales student newspaper asked the Department of Education why the school was omitted. It was told the reason is because Hillsdale doesnt confer enough four-year degrees.
Hillsdale does offer bachelors degrees, Denise Horn, assistant press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, told the Collegian. However, because the plurality of degrees it awards are certificates, not two-year or four-year degrees, it was not included on the scorecard at launch.
According to the graduation requirements listed by the college registrar, Hillsdale offers two baccalaureate degrees, each based on the completion of four years of study in the liberal arts.
The Department of Education doesnt agree that those specifications make Hillsdale a four-year institution.
Hillsdale is a predominantly certificate degree granting institution, Horn said. At launch, we focused our attention on predominantly two and four-year degree programs. We will be exploring ways moving forward to account for shorter degree programs and to incorporate them onto the website.
However, this explanation falls flat, as there are several schools on the scorecard that give substantially fewer degrees than Hillsdale, such as Burlington College in Vermont, the Daily Caller reports.
Representatives from Grove City College were told by the Department of Education that only schools that accept federal money like Title-IV funds made the list.
The department informed us that the site is limited only to Title-IV participating institutions, a Grove City representative told the Daily Caller.
We are concerned that Grove Citys absence from the scorecard will prove perplexing to families that seek out higher education institutions with our record of success.
In addition to receiving high marks from other college ranking systems, for many years Young Americas Foundation has consistently listed Grove City as a Top Conservative College.
Though Hillsdale does not accept federal funding, the college does submit some data to be included in analyses of accredited ranking companies such as U.S. News and World Report, which use data from the federal government to generate rankings. Hilldale is currently ranked 67th by the news outlet.
But the feds dont want to hear from Hillsdale unless the school starts collecting student race statistics.
At least under the current administration, College President Larry Arnn told the Collegian, they refuse to receive it unless we include data about race of students and other things that we have never collected, that is, we have not collected this data for more than 170 years.
While information covering the ethnicity of the student body is one of the data sets listed in the scorecard, there are many schools with certain sets of data listed as unavailable.
We may be the first institution of any kind anywhere to commit in its charter to admit students without regard to race, sex, or national origin, Arnn said. Never mind that. The federal government demands that we count our students by the color of their skin.
The White House declined to comment.
Hillsdale College, 1844. United States Department of Education, 1979, Arnn said. The latter has never been very good at history or even current affairs.
So Hillsdale didn’t make the list because it is not a “diploma mill”.
Strange that the Feds left off the University of Moscow, but, then, it’s not in the US and it’s probably not liberal enough anymore.
Any college that does not promote all the gay crap is not "true education."
It is obvious that thier papers were NOT in order, tovarich.
Those excluded all had just a little bit too much to think.
This is societal propaganda in it’s most blatant form. It is also societal shunning with the intent to make such colleges meaningless to the general public. These were tactics practiced by Nazis and Bolsheviks. The evil of such still persists in the minds and authority of many persons especially those in Washington D.C. If people on the outside believe that todays governing persons are of a different stripe such people are fools.
This lawless regime continues to do the things Goebbels only dreamed of...with the nodding, fawning approval of the apparatchik media.
Did they confuse it with Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College??
My daughter attends Grove City College, which has much in common with Hillsdale and was also excluded from this list. It upholds conservative Christian values and also declines any federal funding so that it can teach what it wants. However, Grove City offers primarily 4 year degree programs.
On its Facebook page, Grove City College prominently displayed a news article about it’s exclusion from this list. I think they saw it as a badge of honor. Most of the comments beneath the post were congratulatory, and many parents said they will now consider it as an option for their children.
I tried to use the website and, guess what, it didn’t work!
My daughter graduated from Grove City College too.
When my daughter graduated in Grove City College in 2012 ( a particularly bad time to find a job ), within 6 months, EVERY SINGLE graduate of Grove City had either a job related to their field of study or are in graduate school.
That says a lot about the quality of their education and the reputation they have from employers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.