The federal government should provide more information about colleges to students and their parents, and should distribute it more actively, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress and the Hamilton Project. The report, “Grading Higher Education: Giving Consumers the Information They Need,” by Bridget Terry Long, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, mentions many existing sources of consumer information on colleges but deems them insufficient.
There have been a variety of efforts in recent years to provide better information to prospective students, including several voluntary reporting systems and the U.S. Department of Education’s College Navigator. Still, making information available doesn’t mean students and parents will read it—there is evidence, for example, that very few people look at campus crime statistics, which colleges must publish.
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4 Responses to Getting Better Information on Colleges to Consumers
nebo113 - December 2, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Education and learning are not products!
jffoster - December 2, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Why is this the job of the Federal Government?
becauseisaidso - December 2, 2010 at 3:51 pm
What format would be sufficiently passive for the information to be input? When I put information on the departmental website, students say, “Do I have to read all that?” If I send it in an email, they say, “Oh, I didn’t bother to read that.” If I tell it to them in person, they don’t take notes and say they forgot it. There is no way to get usable, retained information to people who are not already actively looking for it, which means they have to know what they don’t know. Which they don’t.
jffoster - December 3, 2010 at 6:57 am
Indeed, _because…_ (just above), and if these sorry excuses for “students” don’t learn, it’s all your fault.