WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s proposed college rating system would set access, cost and results as key metrics, a top Education Department official said Tuesday, drawing immediate criticism from community college leaders.
Department of Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell addressed the Association of Community College Trustees to review the initial draft for a college ratings system, which was released in December. More recently, President Barack Obama unveiled a plan to make community college free.
“At the end of the day,” Mitchell said at the Community College National Legislative Summit, “we hope to have a ratings system that is also not a rankings system and whose chief goal is to shine a spotlight on the highest performing institutions.”
The draft, which the administration expects to be implemented in time for the start of the 2015-2016 school year, cites access, affordability and outcomes as the three main pillars upon which the ratings will be based, Mitchell said. Eventually, the plan would also “tie financial aid to college performance,” according to the Department of Education.
But, many of the community college leaders said the draft metrics would not accurately capture the success of two-year schools. They are worried that they may be punished if their schools don’t have high numbers of students transferring to four-year colleges to get bachelor’s degrees. Community colleges have different priorities, students and curricula from four-year institutions, the two-year schools say.
Don Singer, a trustee of the San BernardinoCommunity College District in California, outlined to Mitchell a hypothetical student who has a job but takes computer classes at a community college. The student, Singer said, benefits because he or she is now better able to use computers at work and her employer benefits from a more highly trained employee. But because the student didn’t transfer to a four-year school or receive a vocational certificate, the community college would be “punished.”
“When you do these rankings/ratings, can you capture the data that says you get neither a transfer or a certificate, but you, as a person and society, benefits by having gone to community college?” Singer asked Mitchell.
Mitchell also spoke largely in hypotheticals and of broad goals. He assured the community college leaders that the administration was working to create a statistical model that was both fair to all schools and effective in looking at the entire scope of how different schools succeed.
John Duffy, a trustee at Elgin Community College in Illinois, recounted his own story as a community college student.
“Long ago, I had a bachelor’s and two masters [degrees] and I suddenly wanted to go to Elgin Community College to take Astronomy 101. I was successful at Astronomy 101, but by all national statistics I’m a dropout and a loser,” Duffy said to widespread laughter. “Under these new guidelines and systems, how could I finally be ranked as a winner?”
