Posted on 12/22/2015 7:43:25 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Many welcomed the launch of a new Web site by the U.S. Department of Education last month, designed to simplify higher education decisions by offering information. By combining multiple sources of federal data, the scorecard lets families compare colleges based on a range of variables, such as student debt levels, graduation rates and average alumni salaries. (It does not rate colleges, as the president had initially proposed.)
But some critics argue that, while thousands of colleges are included, the site leaves out many schools which might be good options for students.
How do you "misplace" more than 700 colleges? By looking in the wrong places.
The College Scorecard released last month was touted by the U.S. Department of Education as, "President Obama's commitment to provide consumers with information about college costs and value in an easy-to-read format." In his Sept. 12 radio address, the president said: "Americans will now have access to reliable data on every institution of higher education."
Unfortunately, while the information is easy to read, it is hard to interpret.
And nearly one in four community colleges are missing.
How did this happen? We analyzed many positive and negative critiques and dissected portions of the Scorecard’s underlying dataset. We came to the realization that the department's data allows it to see the world through the fuzzy lens of federal federal financial aid and measurements that artificially look at subsets of data.
In a nutshell, the College Scorecard combines data from multiple sources -- primarily from the Education Department's own Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) – and publishes the results of both as a consumer-facing Web site and an analyst-friendly data download.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Source data and missing "conservative" colleges
NSLDS by definition only looks at schools accepting Title IV federal financial aid. There are dozens of schools such as Hillsdale College and Grove City College that do not want this aid and do not accept it. These schools and their students are therefore excluded. In addition, if a school does not report full data into IPEDS (there are just a handful of cases), they are excluded.
Several of these typically small colleges have claimed a government conspiracy to exclude them because they are "conservative." While we understand their frustration that not "all" institutions are included, it is difficult for the ED to report data it does not have. These colleges cannot have it both ways.
Bastion of the Constitution, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, is missing from the list.
Attending there must be harmful to liberalism.
There are all kinds of organizations that rate and give information about colleges and universities. The federal government does not need to waste the taxpayer’s money on this. Erase the entire Department of Education!
And the so-called “College Scorecard” wasn’t even necessary. There already were plenty of college search websites, long before the College Scorecard.
The College Board itself features a college search, and that college search includes the conservative colleges that the government’s College Scorecard doesn’t include.
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.