Dive Summary:
- President Barack Obama plans to announce a plan to rate colleges and universities and link those ratings to financial aid.
- Under the plan, schools would be measured on tuition, graduation rates, debt and earnings of graduates, and the percentage of lower-income students who attend; federal financial aid to students would be based in part on those rankings.
- A few states have already moved to link aid to educational outcomes, but a national policy would need action from Congress and it is not clear how much support there would be for the proposals.
From the article:
... Almost all of the federal government’s $150 billion in annual student aid is distributed based on the number of students a college enrolls, regardless of how many graduate or how much debt they incur. Under the new proposal, students could still attend whatever college they chose, public or private, but taxpayer support would shift to higher-ranked schools. ...