Dive Brief:
- When providing information about graduate job placement, many schools rely on unreliable alumni surveys or outright misleading information, according to The Hechinger Report.
- The issue also extends to tuition and living costs, which colleges often obscure by not being forthcoming about off-campus living expenses, declines in aid after the first year and the amount of tuition certain scholarships will cover.
- Critics complain that there is little oversight or auditing of the figures about post-graduation employment that colleges present. In some cases, there is actually less oversight than there had been previously. Some states, like Washington, however, have begun enacting new rules requiring schools to disclose accurate information about policies like transfer credits.
Dive Insight:
At a time when costs associated with college have risen by 9-13% over the past five years, obfuscating the true cost of college attendance puts an added burden on students, often relying on grants and loans to help defray the load. As recent research has demonstrated, the burden hits community college students the hardest, with one national survey showing higher-than-expected rates of hunger and homelessness for that population.
With only about half of all students who enter college graduating within six years, there's even more pressure on schools to deliver value for students. Some schools, like Virginia Tech, are taking a proactive approach, publicly compiling data on everything from how much graduates make after they enter the workforce to the value the community and state receive from its research, sports and cultural programs.