Editorial: ‘Scorecard’ and ‘shopping sheet’ two promising student resources

Most prospective students evaluate colleges using a limited set of criteria: size, prestige,… Most prospective students evaluate colleges using a limited set of criteria: size, prestige, location, etc. But thanks to a recent government initiative, an institution’s financial merit — the economic advantage its graduates enjoy — might soon play a more decisive role in their selection process.

As part of the Obama administration’s push to increase higher education’s transparency, the government recently unveiled two tools — the “shopping sheet” and the “college scorecard” — which will enable freshmen to make more financially prudent decisions about which university to attend. The former — a personalized, single-page pamphlet — breaks down the annual cost students at a particular school incur, their loan default rate, how their graduation rate compares to national averages and other statistics. The latter allows users to compare tuition at universities across the country.

If the government mandates that schools release information relevant to these dossiers, American higher education will become a more economically beneficial enterprise. For far too long, students have relied on arbitrary or easily manipulated standards to determine the net worth of an institution. Now they’ll have the opportunity to enter college knowing almost exactly where they’ll stand when they leave. And although much of the required data can already be found online — see the US News & World Report rankings — it’s yet to be collated into a few easy-to-interpret documents.

These reports will be especially useful to aspiring liberal arts majors — many small, private colleges reveal almost no information about, say, their graduates’ subsequent careers. With the assistance of the Obama administration, however, high schoolers will be less inclined to invest in a costly degree that isn’t likely to yield high returns.

Republicans might decry these measures as unnecessary government interference. But unlike several recently proposed laws, the White House isn’t asking universities to do anything more than disclose certain records. If a college’s enrollment begins to drop as a result, then it’s probably not providing students with a professionally viable education.

With any luck, the ultimate financial value of an institution, not its prestige, will become the primary criterion by which it’s evaluated. And although it’s hard to imagine certain colleges will dramatically decrease their tuition simply because the government exposes their inadequacy, we at least hope they’ll think twice before demanding that cash-strapped students commit more money to an already dubious investment.