A word rarely uttered on college tours sits atop the website of St. Olaf, a small liberal-arts college south of Minneapolis with an annual estimated cost of $51,860.
Next to clickable categories about arts and athletics appears the unlikely word “outcomes.”
And if you click on the word, a headline materializes promising “The Return on Investing in a St. Olaf Education.”
A few more clicks and you can learn what becomes of graduates after four years on its sylvan campus along the Cannon River. For example: Where will a St. Olaf education lead? Then there is “What Happens After Graduation: Recent Alumni Data,” along with retention and graduation rates, and “evidence of learning.”
This new level of candor sounds like an answer to growing concerns of parents, politicians, and foundations concerned about the value for money of a higher education–and of students worried about finding jobs and repaying college loans.
And it’s part of a new wave in higher education.
Concerns that the rising costs are leaving too many behind are increasingly accompanied by fears that today’s college graduates lack sufficient workforce skills–or that they aren’t learning enough.