New ‘College Scorecard’ Website Compares Salaries After Graduation

“That’s why everyone should be able to find clear, reliable, open data on college affordability and value”. It offers data about college costs, graduation rates, earnings after college, the amount of debt students typically have at graduation and the percentage of students who are paying down their debt within three years of graduation. Besides, noted some college presidents, the criteria for such a scorecard would encourage schools to emphasize degrees backed by traditionally high earnings over others that pursued non-monetary missions.

Tring to make college more affordable, Obama has capped some student loan payments and signed legislation lowering certain interest rates.

The new, interactive college scorecard, collegescorecard.ed.gov, provides the first comprehensive data on costs and student outcomes at almost all post-secondary institutions in the United States.

The release of the scorecard preceded by one day new plans for FAFSA applications, which allow students to begin applying for financial aid starting October . 1 instead of in January.

“The old way of assessing college choices relied on static ratings lists compiled by someone who was deciding what value to place on different factors”, the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying the announcement.

The revamped College Scorecard replaces the president’s planned university rating system.

Amanda Ziadeh is a reporter/producer for GCN.

The Scorecard also lists a college’s annual tuition and a student’s average salary after graduating. So did the Golf Academy of America, whose graduates barely earn more than high school grads, 10 years out of school.

Mark Hamrick, Bankrate.com’s Washington bureau chief, said, “There’s no such thing as too much information when it comes to making some of the most important financial decisions made by prospective college students, in conjunction with their parents: Where to attend school and how much should they be prepared to pay”. Critics, including numerous presidents at private colleges, lobbied against the idea of a government rating system, saying it could force schools to prioritize moneymaking majors such as accounting over those such as English, history or philosophy.

The release of the scorecard follows a series of recent national and global rankings whose varying methodologies underscore UC’s standing as one of the world’s preeminent research universities. Green also pointed out that, as part of the University System of Georgia, GHC credits transfer easily to other schools in the state.

So, a college-bound student could find on the site the proportion of students at a particular school who earned more than they would have had they not gone to college but entered the job market right after high school. And she criticized the Education Department’s pursuit of the project “without any external review”.

Encouraging low-income and first-generation students to go to college – and to figure out which college best suits them financially as well as educationally – is a good way to build the educated workforce that this country needs.