Move over U.S. News & World Report

[YankeeFan]

The feds want to get into the college ranking business:

President Obama plans to announce a set of ambitious proposals on Thursday aimed at making colleges more accountable and affordable by rating them and ultimately linking those ratings to financial aid.

A draft of the proposal, obtained by The New York Times and likely to cause some consternation among colleges, shows a plan to rate colleges before the 2015 school year based on measures like tuition, graduation rates, debt and earnings of graduates, and the percentage of lower-income students who attend. The ratings would compare colleges against their peer institutions. If the plan can win Congressional approval, the idea is to base federal financial aid to students attending the colleges partly on those rankings.

“All the things we’re measuring are important for students choosing a college,” a senior administration official said. “It’s important to us that colleges offer good value for their tuition dollars, and that higher education offer families a degree of security so students aren’t left with debt they can’t pay back.”

nyti.ms/18LHX3N

 

[User 11148]

Our dean, in our pre-semester college-wide faculty meeting yesterday, mentioned that she wants to hire a person for her staff to handle what she called "rankings management." The person, it was explained, would monitor how we stack up across the myriad rankings and offer up suggestions about how we could improve. I said even then I could see that position morphing into a very intrusive administrative empire. Who know I could be so prescient?

 

[Armchair_QB]

The feds want to get into the college ranking business:

President Obama plans to announce a set of ambitious proposals on Thursday aimed at making colleges more accountable and affordable by rating them and ultimately linking those ratings to financial aid.

A draft of the proposal, obtained by The New York Times and likely to cause some consternation among colleges, shows a plan to rate colleges before the 2015 school year based on measures like tuition, graduation rates, debt and earnings of graduates, and the percentage of lower-income students who attend. The ratings would compare colleges against their peer institutions. If the plan can win Congressional approval, the idea is to base federal financial aid to students attending the colleges partly on those rankings.

“All the things we’re measuring are important for students choosing a college,” a senior administration official said. “It’s important to us that colleges offer good value for their tuition dollars, and that higher education offer families a degree of security so students aren’t left with debt they can’t pay back.”

nyti.ms/18LHX3N

And if you mention extortion again, I'll have your legs broken.

 

[dixiehack]

Will margin of victory finally be taken into account?

 

[Armchair_QB]

Will margin of victory finally be taken into account?

Well, no. People would run up the score then and that's just not nice.

 

[Bob Cook]

Who will be the Ken Pomeroy of these rankings?

 

[Captain Obvious]

"Unless you go to a T12, you'll end up working a minimum wage job," according to posts on College Confidential and The Grad Cafe.

 

[Football_Bat]

No Frat Bro Left Behind.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The Feds can only rank elementary, middle and high schools. Not colleges. Because that would be government interference.

 

[Dick Whitman]

The Feds can only rank elementary, middle and high schools. Not colleges. Because that would be government interference.

My wife's elementary school was named a federal "Blue Ribbon" school two or three years ago. They continue to mention it in every scrap of paper they send out. I told her it's getting embarrassing, like the White Sox "2005 World Series Champions" billboard still facing the Dan Ryan eight years later.

 

[YankeeFan]

I told her it's getting embarrassing, like the White Sox "2005 World Series Champions" billboard still facing the Dan Ryan eight years later.

That drives me crazy!

 

[User 11148]

The Feds can only rank elementary, middle and high schools. Not colleges. Because that would be government interference.

I don't give a rat's ass about the "interference" ... but this not being my first rodeo, I can tell you what is going to happen. We are going to wind up paying some roomful of administrators ****piles of money so they can make sure that we maintain our vise-like grip on the federal/state tit. So, ultimately, to ensure that college remains "affordable" and "a good value," we're going to make it more expensive without remotely affecting anything of substance.

 

[dixiehack]

The Feds can only rank elementary, middle and high schools. Not colleges. Because that would be government interference.

I don't give a rat's ass about the "interference" ... but this not being my first rodeo, I can tell you what is going to happen. We are going to wind up paying some roomful of administrators ****piles of money so they can make sure that we maintain our vise-like grip on the federal/state tit. So, ultimately, to ensure that college remains "affordable" and "a good value," we're going to make it more expensive without remotely affecting anything of substance.

Job creators!