It is about to become easier for parents and potential students to compare 540 or so private colleges around the country — fifteen of them in North Carolina. On September 26, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) will launch a colorful, breezy, and information-packed web site about these schools called the U-Can Consumer Information Initiative.
This is the first step in a growing effort by colleges and universities to become more accountable to students and the public. As college tuition mounts, many Americans are forced to reconsider whether a college degree is worth its price, and whether intercollegiate athletics and campus parties are overwhelming the educational aspects of the college experience.
The concern came to a head a year ago with a report by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, a national committee appointed by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. It called for more transparency, perhaps in the form of a national database with easily compared information.
Spellings claimed that when her daughter (now a student at Davidson) was looking for a college, it was hard to figure out for a particular school whether her daughter was likely to graduate in four years, what the costs would be, and whether the school would prepare her for the career she wanted. “I found it challenging to get the answers I needed. And I’m the secretary of education!” she said at a higher education symposium last November.
Inside Higher Ed, an online publication, looked a little deeper. In an amusing article called “Right Under Her Nose?”, Scott Jaschik noted that most of the things Spellings wanted were already available – some of them on her own Department of Education Web site.
But many key facts are still difficult to find. This is particularly true for the most important kinds of information – about whether students learn much during their four years at college.
The renewed interest for accountability has spurred higher educational institutions around the country to repackage available information for the convenience of potential applicants. Accordingly, the “U-Can” Web site provides facts about such things as graduation rates, tuition costs, SAT scores, kinds of degrees awarded, debt load at graduation, and composition of students by gender, geography, and ethnicity. It also offers the schools’ own descriptions of life on their campuses.
Tony Pals, a spokesman for NAICU, acknowledges that the U-Can initiative stems partly from government pressure. But Hope Williams, president of an equivalent state organization, North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities, says that the chief factor was discovery of a “disconnect between the types of information that were available and the perception of what was available. “
The “U-Can” web site does not require schools to address the issue of student learning outcomes. Instead, it gives them the option to post more in-depth information voluntarily. For example, many schools take part in the National Student Survey of Engagement (NSSE), which asks students about their college experience. Did they write many essays? Were faculty members accessible? Although the NSSE does not literally measure learning, it reveals much about students’ experiences at particular schools.
The Collegiate Learning Assessment does quantitatively measure learning, by conducting tests in writing, critical thinking, and analytical reasoning. It is anticipated that effectively taught students will score at least as well as the school’s incoming SAT scores predict. If they perform worse than expected, the school might not be improving students’ skills sufficiently.
Without the inclusion of such critical measures, is the U-Can site mere window-dressing? Perhaps. But the organizations representing large public universities haven’t made nearly as much progress as NAICU. Also prodded by the federal government, they are working on a more ambitious scheme, requiring their members to report at least one learning outcome. Their web site is still under construction, however.
NAICU’s web site, on the other hand, is almost here.
The participating North Carolina schools so far are: Cabarrus College of Health Sciences, Campbell University, Catawba College, Duke University, Elon University, Greensboro College, Guilford College, Lees-McRae College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, Peace College, Wake Forest University, and Warren Wilson College.
Editor’s Note: Jane S. Shaw is executive vice president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh.