Like this post if you want a rating (Accredited Colleges only)

The Obama Administration has been making a buzz for their new proposed “Rating Plan” for colleges. With the quality of higher education coming into question due to low graduation rates, rising student loan debts, and deficiency in learning during college, the evaluation of college accountability has been in the limelight. Not to be mistaken by “ranking”, Obama’s team is trying to tackle the college affordability dimension of postsecondary education with this new plan. The overall goal of this plan is (1) to allow students and parents to feel empower when going through the college selection process as well as (2) putting pressure on the institutions to keep low costs, deliver high-quality education and graduate more students (ACE 2014). However, countless policymakers and government staff have already rated this plan with the information Obama has provided – mixed reviews. One of the biggest discussions of this plan was the data that Obama’s team would use in order to “rate” the school. The database that can be potentially used is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). This already rose speculations since this data is self-selective by institutions, does not take into account part-time students, and those who are returning or had delayed enrollment.

I am personally interested on how this plan will work, but I still question some of the units of measure for the ratings. For example, one of the measures is a graduate earnings. In the article “Professor Obama Grades Us Colleges”, Tom Weko, who worked on the plan in March, mentioned that the plan committee is well aware the graduation earnings are muddy water. However, he states that they are coming up with an “intelligent” measure to use earnings in order to describe the quality of educational institutions. This still comes out as relatively speculative since this type of information is not so easily available for holistic ratings such as this one being proposed.

While reading the article about loose coupling, the idea of loose coupling in this rating plan also crossed my mind (Dee 2006). Maybe to avoid some of these speculations of ineffectiveness in the plan, a loose coupling methodology could be approached. Private colleges are already not on board with this plan since their sense of autonomy is being questioned. As Dee mentions, allowing the institutions to select indicators and measures of effectiveness, which must align with state law, would create a healthy reciprocal relationship. Incorporating some of this loose coupling tactics might help reinforce the plan.