President Obama's College Scorecard

Updated Friday 2/15/13

President Obama's State of the Union Address mentioned the new "College Scorecard" -- which is a new service provided by the U.S. Department of Education that is designed to help students and their families identify the colleges that best meet their needs. More specifically, the Scorecard is designed to help them pick the colleges that provide them the best education for the tuition they can afford. You will find the link to the current version here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-score-card

I encourage you to look it over, more specifically, to pretend that you are a student or a parent in search of a college. Try different scenarios. Assume that you have a clear idea of the type of college you want ... then assume that you only have a vague idea.

I myself have been greatly impressed by the U.S. Department of Education's "College Navigator" that provides the same information, but requires that you search for colleges by name. You will find the Navigator here:

http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/

However most people know of at least one college that provides the kind of education they want. If so, then the Carnegie Foundation's "Classification" search tool is a great way to identify similar schools that offer similar programs. For example, if a student was interested in Howard or Hampton  or Spelman or Morehouse or FAMU, the Classification search tool will quickly identify similar colleges. Then the Navigator will provide detailed info about tuition, graduation rates, financial aid available at the similar colleges

http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/lookup_listings/institution.php

My gut says that the Scoreboard will require a few more revisions before it becomes more useful to more students and parents than the Navigator + Carnegie Classification ... but I found two features of the Scorecard very appealing:

• The ability to confine one's search to programs that are online ("distance education"). The Scorecard allows students and parents to search for colleges that offer online programs in their fields of interest.
   
• The ability to confine one's search for programs within a specific discipline. For example, when I began my search with "Psychology" (my fifteen year old granddaughter's current career interest), a drop-down menu appeared that suggested more specific categories. When I specified "Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics" (which I am hoping she will consider), the specification of "Bachelors" degree yielded a surprisingly short list of colleges.

One feature that I hope the designers will add to future version of the Scorecard is the capacity to search for colleges by affiliations and conferences, e.g. to search for HBCUs, or Ivy League, or AAU membership, or NCAA conferences, etc.

Finally, IMHO the new Scorecard would be more useful if it were positioned as a portal to the existing College Navigator, rather than as a potential replacement. The Scorecard would identify small groups of colleges and universities that satisfied a student's broader selection criteria; whereas the Navigator would continue to present the detailed profiles that would enable students to make point by point comparisons of the colleges and universities with one another.