The Obama Administration is trying to make a college education more affordable and accessible, as it is widely seen as a necessity in life, but the GOP does not like how things are going as of now.
According to Politico, Congressional Republicans railed against the newly unveiled "framework" for the Obama Administration's college rating system. The centerpiece of the President's plan to hold colleges accountable for what they charge students, the system would rate schools on three key metrics.
The objective would be to give better performing schools more federal money so they can help prospective students with grants and scholarships. The rating system would also take funding from schools that grade poorly in those areas.
"They're getting involved in something they have no business getting involved with," Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), a former college administrator, told Politico. "Absolutely, it's overreach."
Members of the Republican Party critical of the college rating system say the task will be overwhelming when it actually comes time to implement the system.
"To a lot of Republicans, this Department of Education has been characterized by mission creep, and [the rating plan] is simply another manifestation of that," Terry Hartle, senior vice president of government and public affairs at the American Council on Education (ACE), told Politico.
Like the ACE, higher education lobbying groups have been skeptical of the college rating system since President Obama introduced the idea for it last summer. But he has said all along, and when he warned federally funded schools to be "on notice" in his 2012 State of the Union address, that he was building toward a change.
Arne Duncan, Obama's Education Secretary, previously stated the government has "a financial and moral obligation" to help its citizens complete a quality education without going broke. Recent studies have found that, despite the rising cost and the massive national student loan debt, employees tend to make far more in their average mid- and late-career salaries when they have a college degree.
Individual leaders at certain U.S. schools, like Patricia McGuire, the president of Trinity Washington University, worry about what the rating system would mean for her institution. Some schools simply do not produce high-earning graduates because they specialize in fields that are not exactly lucrative.
"It's an effort to boil all of what a university does down to a single score," McGuire told Politico. "And there's a lot at stake if the federal government says you're an 'A' institution or a 'D' institution."
