Posted on 03/10/2010 7:00:59 AM PST by bs9021
Evaluating Higher Ed Transparency
Bethany Stotts, March 10, 2010
How much will my education cost? Is it a good value for me and my family? Will I be able to get a job when I graduate? These questions and others are often at the forefront of parents’ and prospective students’ minds when picking a college or university, but a new study calls into question whether higher ed institutions who voluntarily reveal information about themselves are providing misleading information to consumers.
The March report co-authored by Education Sector and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) education analysts alleges that the two public online databases into which colleges and universities voluntarily submit their “information on costs and outcomes”—U-CAN and VSA—
are either inadequate or deliberately ineffectual. “The U-CAN’s institutional profiles are attractive, but provide no new information…” write Andrew P. Kelly and Chad Aldeman, authors of the report. And, they write, “…the VSA’s College Portraits release new data on student engagement and achievement, but they do so in ways that fail to facilitate consumers’ ability to differentiate schools from one another.”
The study examines information released under the “Voluntary System of Accountability” (VSA) program set up by the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities, APLU and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). However, it is limited to “those who were participants and non-participants [in VSA] as of the end of September 2009,” according to the authors.
Kelly and Aldeman’s examination found that:
* The VSA “College Portrait” system does not provide cross-tabs or the ability for parents to compare statistics between institutions. “In other words, designing a college information clearinghouse that made comparisons difficult was not the result of poor web design, but was deliberate,” they write.
* Net cost estimate calculators provided by participating institutions are weak...
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
ping for later
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