For most high-school juniors, the college search is on. Many students are pouring through college guides — like the one from U.S. News & World Report — looking for schools that match their skills and aspirations.
Too often, though, these guides present an incomplete picture of the higher education experience. They tend to focus on “inputs”– things like tuition and fees, class size, and student test scores. Such data can be helpful but provide little indication of what prospective students can expect after they graduate.
The Obama administration is trying to establish a new college ratings system to, in the president’s words, “give parents and students the kind of clear, concise information you need to shop around for a school with the best value for you.”
For any ratings system to successfully measure which institutions are doing the best job educating students, it must focus on outcomes, apply equally to all institutions, and take individuals’ attributes, such as family income, into account.