Bill Would Close College Calculator Loopholes

Could the end of colleges’ efforts to block price shopping be nigh? That’s the hope of Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This week, the legislators introduced the Net Price Calculator Improvement Act of 2013, a bill that would standardize the content of the calculators, protect student privacy -- and even allow for the creation of a federal, centralized location for prospective students to access the calculators of numerous colleges.

The last Higher Education Act Reauthorization in 2008 required all colleges to create and publish net price calculators. The Department of Education created a voluntary federal template that schools could use to meet the requirement.These tools are supposed to give a better picture of actual college costs by using a few limited pieces of students’ personal information to tell them what they are likely to pay out-of-pocket after subtracting need-based and merit-based aid. It was Congress’ main answer to higher education sticker shock.

But the calculators have been far from perfect. Some colleges bury the calculators on their websites, making it difficult for students to find or use them. Some calculators are tricky to navigate, use excessively complicated jargon, or require far more data from the user than should really be necessary--a study from the Institute of College Access and Success found that two of 16 schools surveyed in the early days of developing the calculators asked 48 questions before providing a net price, as compared to just 10 questions on the federal template. They sometimes show a net price of $0 -- but include a significant loan debt just below. Many of the calculators were designed by outside contractors, leading to questions about the sensitive data students were entering and whether it could be sold down the line.

Even if students can find their way to a usable calculator, there’s no way to easily compare results across colleges. A site called College Abacus tried to fix this problem by aggregating net price calculators. Students enter one set of financial questions and receive net price estimates for three schools (and they can see their estimate at each of the top 100 colleges or universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for a $75 fee, or the top 200 for $100). Or at least they could, until recently. The Rezolve Group, a third-party vendor that designed many of the calculators and operates the competing net price aggregation site studentaid.com (6 colleges for $49 and 10 for $99) recently blocked College Abacus’s access to its clients’ calculators.

The bill seeks to resolve the obfuscation and comparison concerns in a few ways. First, it would standardize the calculators’ content and ensure they are accessible. No longer can the link be hidden behind a series of clicks or buried in an unlikely subpage on the website. Colleges would have to ensure the link stands out on the page, and put the calculator on their pages with information about financial aid and cost -- a prospective students page, for example. And the calculator would have to produce the net price as the most prominent number on the page.

Calculators, as they do now, would have to include the full cost of attendance (tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, and other expenses), and the total estimated need- and merit-based aid -- federal, state, and institutional. The calculators would not be required to include active duty military and veterans’ benefits, but if they did, those figures would have to be listed separately from grant aid or else the calculator can’t include eligibility questions on the front end of the calculator. To protect students’ data, the calculators would have to clearly distinguish the required from the voluntary user questions. And in no case could colleges sell or give the students’ data to third-party vendors.

The bill offers a solution to the College Abacus problem, too. Under its terms, the Department of Education could develop its own price calculator that would compare the net prices for any school -- for free. An unvarnished comparison of the prices that schools are charging their students, simple to use and accessible to families, could make it a lot easier for students to understand their college options. And especially to students who are scared off their top-choice schools by high tuition, seeing their estimated aid packages and actual prices could open up new opportunities. Of course, the Department isn’t required to create the aggregated calculator--but it could act as a good fallback option for students if colleges continue to block efforts like College Abacus’s in violation of the spirit of the net price calculator law."