Dive Brief:
- The Department of Education staff is actively updating data on the College Scorecard, meaning that the initiative is most likely here to stay, reports Inside Higher Ed.
- The scorecard has been applauded as a sign of higher ed transparency by some, but also criticized by many groups for lacking context and unfairly ranking down schools that take in high risk students.
- Though the Trump Administration never said it intended to eliminate the initiative, the plan to keep it going means that administrators will have to continue considering their institution's ranking on it.
Dive Insight:
The scorecard, which was established in 2015, has been met with hesitation from a lot of university administrators. Intended to give families a better idea of whether they are making a good investment in a particular university, it has been criticized by groups like community colleges, for failing to count many of their students and devaluing the type of education they provide. In other cases, universities have complained that the data is just incorrect, as updating the system — by collecting and validating the data — is a difficult and time consuming process, particularly with limited staff support, reports Inside Higher Ed.
Though it outwardly reflects transparency in higher ed, the scorecard's continuance could be an issue for universities, particularly those that take in high-risk students, which must manage a potentially poor ranking against institutional missions to educated underserved populations. The Trump Administration has pledged to make some updates to the service that were not included in the previous administration, such as using data from the Student Achievement Measure so that the tool is more accurate.