US Federal Ratings Plan: A Few Answers, More Questions

The US Department of Education has just revealed the progress that it has made towards its planned ratings for colleges and universities. There has been over a year of public discussion since the Obama administration announced that it was planning on introducing a new system. Unfortunately, it seems that there is still a long way to go before a final product emerges and the administration’s forecast of a launch in August or September 2015 may be too optimistic.

Since the 1980s, the US News& World Report’s ‘America’s Best Colleges’ has been followed avidly by students and other stakeholders. These rankings have been criticised, sometimes with justification, but they do provide a reasonably accurate guide to some of the things that students, parents, employers and counsellors want to know: how likely a student is to graduate once admitted, the typical academic ability of fellow students, reputation among peers, resources available for teaching.

There is, of course, much that the US News rankings do not tell us. The international rankings produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Center for World-Class Universities, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education and now US News with its Best Global Universities are probably even more limited since they focus largely or entirely on research and postgraduate training. There is also a widespread feeling that existing rankings are unfair to schools that try to educate students from non-traditional backgrounds or underrepresented groups.

The demand for more information and for greater accountability comes when American universities are entering a time of increasing pressure and constraint. Costs are rising inexorably, even though many students are taught not by hugely expansive superstar professors but by poorly paid adjuncts and untrained graduate assistants. Many students graduate late or not at all and incur a large and growing debt burden from which bankruptcy rarely provides an escape. Meanwhile the more reliable global university rankings show American universities steadily losing ground to Asian institutions.

Many colleges and universities are facing a death spiral as stagnant or declining admissions lead to a fall in the number of graduates which in turn erodes reputation and undermines alumni contributions. Underlying everything is the grim reality that the overall quality of graduate of American high schools is apparently insufficient to supply colleges and universities with students capable of completing a degree within a reasonable length of time.

The federal government has become increasingly concerned over these trends and the failure of American higher education to provide a route to secure employment and middle class status. The new plan had its origins in a speech by President Obama at the University at Buffalo: SUNY in August 2013.

A succession of hearings and forums has been held and finally the Department of Education has come out with a draft framework. The department has indicated that it will publish ratings, not rankings, so that colleges and universities will be divided into three categories, high performers, low performers and those in between. Two year institutions such as community colleges and four year colleges and universities will be assessed separately and institutions that teach only postgraduates or do not grant degrees will not be included. The main source of data will be information collected by the federal government.

According to the document, ‘For Public feedback: A College Ratings Framework’, the objectives are to help colleges measure and make progress towards the objectives of access, affordability and outcomes, to provide information for students and families, and to help the government ensure that financial aid is well used.

The department has announced the indicators it is thinking about using. These include enrolment of low income and first generation students, family income levels and the average net price of an institution. Student outcomes could be measured by completion rates, transfer rates and the number of students going on to graduate school. More details can be found in ‘A New System of College Ratings– Invitation to Comment’.

Several questions remain unanswered. A rating consisting of three categories may be too crude. There will almost certainly be a large gap between those at the top of the high performing group and those on the edge of the intermediate category. Membership of the same large group will not help anyone trying to compare two universities. A small change in one or two indicators might push colleges out of the intermediate group into the underperformers where they could suffer financial sanctions.

If the department provides the scores or raw data for each indicator then it would be relatively simple for analysts or journalists to calculate numerical rankings.

The most disquieting thing about this document is that the department seems to have given little thought about how easy it would be to game much of the data. There are, for example, dozens of ways in which colleges and universities could increase the number of students who graduate on time, even if it means undermining the quality of their degrees and their value to potential employers. Rating institutions according to the repayment of student loans might encourage universities to close humanities and social science departments while coaxing students into programs for which they might not be suited.

It is likely that there will be more arguments and discussion before the ratings are launched and it remains to be seen how much credibility they will have when they do appear.