After Obama’s proposal of a college ranking system back in august, theres no surprise that there might be some criticism coming from colleges. it means that if some colleges are ranked lowly, they’ll receive less federal aid, which means that less students will be able to enroll. but isn’t this what we need? it will require colleges to lower costs, cutting funding for amenities and focusing more on academics.
An alternative that was suggested was a rating system that is given in the hands of the students instead if the federal government. this wouldn’t be much different from consumer websites like amazon, allowing people the give their score and give colleges a better opportunity to compete and improve so that they may get higher ratings.
The concern among colleges is that the rating system created by the government may not be comprehensive enough. certain factors, like having a low graduation rate because the students there are primarily adults and active-duty military members, may be overlooked by the system and negatively affect the college’s rating. And if the College Scorecard is any testament of their diligence– or lack thereof- in updating their data, then they have every reason to be concerned.
Now the argument that the government will make is that the general public isn’t very well informed, so they need to do the thinking for us. But isn’t “informing the public” something that I already do? The thing they forget is that we have the internet and there’s plenty of sources out there that do what I’m doing here.
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