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.