Progress Seen in Increasing Data and Transparency in Higher Education

For more on this issue, check out this post from Amy Laitinen on our sister blog, Higher Ed Watch.

Establishing a commission to study an issue is, in the words of President Obama, “Washington-speak for ‘we’ll get back to you later.’” This week, House Education and Workforce Committee member Rep. Luke Messer (R-IN) proposed yet another to study how to collect higher education data and which data points to include. The bill falls well short of resolving the concerns of students, families, businesses, and policymakers who don’t know what they’re getting for all the time and dollars spent on postsecondary education.

While the House bill, the Improving Postsecondary Education Data for Students Act, is still debating the question of whether we even need better data other members of Congress have rightly moved on. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) authored the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). The bill, also supported in the House by Education and Workforce Committee member Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), would collect student-level higher education data in state data systems from colleges and universities, making it available to students, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

The data would include remedial education rates, graduation rates, transfer rates, post-graduation employment, and student debt levels. And for the first time, it would move beyond the “first-time, full-time” reporting model currently in place – an embarrassingly incomplete glimpse of the higher education landscape, given that only a quarter of full-time undergraduate students lived on campus in 2008 and more than half of students were over the age of 23.

Some critics have expressed concern about students’ privacy if we collect outcomes at the individual level. Those complaints grew out of a fearmongering campaign back in 2007 during the Higher Education Act reauthorization that ultimately led to a ban on a student unit record system. But the data under the Wyden-Rubio bill would be anonymous, so student privacy would be protected.

Amy Laitinen, deputy director of higher education for the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program, has a rundown of the support proffered in recent years for improved higher education data over at our sister blog, Higher Ed Watch. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced late last year that better data would be at the top of the House Republicans’ agenda. He joins the Chair of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training Virginia Foxx (R-NC),  the congressionally created Committee on Measures of Student Success, the White House, the Chamber of Commerce, Young Invincibles and other advocacy and research groups, the National Governors Association, and many more education leaders in a chorus of voices calling for data and transparency in higher education.

The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act is a critical piece of legislation. It will help answer the questions of whether students are graduating from certain colleges and universities, whether they’re shouldering excessive debt or earning enough to pay back their loans, and how “nontraditional students” – the new majority – are faring in institutions around the country. In the words of Senator Wyden, the new legislation will move the debate from access to higher education to “access plus.” Stakeholders will be able to demonstrate the value institutions can (or cannot) provide their students. That’s the kind of information students and families need to ensure they sign up for a good investment – not another brushoff from Congress.