White House releases snapshot of plan to rate U.S. colleges

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

White House releases snapshot of plan to rate U.S. colleges

BY ELVINA NAWAGUNA
WASHINGTON Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:06am EST

(Reuters) - The White House on Friday released a draft of its plan to rate U.S. colleges and tie federal aid to performance as a way to coax institutions to pull up their socks.

The U.S. Education Department will rate institutions on their performance, intake of low-income students, completion rates, affordability, employment prospects and student loan repayment rates.

"Relatively simple metrics like the percentage of students repaying their loans on time might be important as consumers weigh whether or not they will be able to handle their financial obligations after attending a specific school," the Education Department said in the document released Friday.

President Barack Obama in 2013 announced the move to start rating colleges as part of a plan to curb the growing cost of higher education and runaway student loan debt and to improve job prospects for college students.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/19/us-usa-education-college-ratings-idUSKBN0JX0CS20141219

[Igel]

1. Oh, good. NCLB for post-secondary.

Horrible, anti-accountability idea.

It says, "I'll hold students accountable and teach them responsibility by making sure they aren't responsible for their failures, just their successes; and I'll take over all accountability to keep them from failing." Next will be systematic abuses of the system for measuring outcomes, more restrictions and requirements on how to measure outcomes, more systematic manipulations of the more restrictive system followed by even more restrictions ...