Over the weekend, the Obama administration released an updated online tool called the College Scorecard, which offers new measures of student outcomes at specific higher education institutions, including graduation rates, median salary information and loan repayment rates. The scorecard aims to give prospective students and families more information about colleges and universities so they can make financially informed decisions about the student’s higher education plans.
The scorecard is not without controversy: as with any rankings system, questions over the quality of data come into play, and creating a single rating system for colleges with such variety in missions and resources is undeniably difficult. And, providing data-based scorecards highlights the tensions between attending college for its learning value and its professional utility. In a recent op-ed for The New York Times Magazine, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a professor at New York University, highlights the theoretical differences between “Utility U.” and “Utopia U.,” where, in his words, “If Utility U. is concerned with value, Utopia U. is concerned with values.” Appiah argues a utility-driven school aims to produce competitive professionals, and a utopia-driven one aims to prepare students for life. The Obama administration’s scorecard undoubtedly falls in the utility category, likely to the dismay of liberal arts advocates.
There is a lot of value in a liberal arts degree, and data cannot be the only foundation for decisions about pursuing higher education. But there is a certain amount of privilege that accompanies promoting a liberal arts degree: there are some prospective students who simply aren’t in circumstances where a liberal arts education is something they can afford to pursue. In the current jobs climate, a scorecard that focuses on financial utility and data will be immensely helpful to prospective students in need of information that can dramatically lessen the burdens of paying for college — burdens that, as we have previously noted, are only increasing.
While there are valid criticisms of Obama’s plan, his search tool is a welcome development for struggling families and students. Student loan debt in the United States has reached $1.2 trillion, but the new data the administration has released shows whether college graduates are successfully repaying their loans, giving students insight into whether a given school’s loan program will be financially feasible for them. This is a tremendous improvement over the government’s previous system, which only tracked when a college’s former students were so behind on loan payments that they defaulted.
College students are, at the end of the day, making an investment in their education. And graduating with large amounts of debt hurts the value of that investment. As consumers, prospective students are in need of accessible information about the cost of attending college. Making college accessible is one of the biggest concerns facing our country today, and this tool provides a tangible step in that direction.
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