Two years ago, President Obama announced the idea of a college-rating system. Sadly, that has not occurred yet and now the U.S. Department of Labor released a framework for this rating system to only place colleges into three categories of high, middle, and low performing. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “The U.S. Department of Education has retreated from its controversial plan to create a giant college-ratings system, top officials revealed on Wednesday. Instead, by late summer the department is now promising to produce a customizable, consumer-oriented website that won’t include any evaluations of colleges but will contain what one official described as “more data than ever before.” In effect, it will be a ratings system without any ratings.
The as-yet-unnamed new system will allow students and others to compare colleges “on whatever measures are important to them,” said Jamienne S. Studley, deputy undersecretary of education. But Ms. Studley said the department had now decided to proceed with this different tactic because “we really heard that what people want is the customizable approach.” As with the department’s College Scorecard, the new website may include ancillary data that put the customized data into context, by, for example, showing a college’s graduation rate in relation to a national average.” Other categories being considered are data on graduates’ earnings and loan repayment rates. To see the whole article, follow the link http://chronicle.com/article/Education-Department-Now-Plans/231137/.