President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are quickly discovering their higher education reform proposal is not very popular among various colleges' representatives.

According to Inside Higher Ed, officials from the U.S. Education Department are traveling around the nation to gather feedback on the proposal. So far, many associations representing several colleges have iterated they do not care for various parts of the plan all too much.

Obama's proposal to apply a rating system to colleges and universities funded by the government to determine which received more or less was met with initially negative response. Duncan said the plan was not perfected and was not yet ready to be enacted, but with time, it would be. Now those who did not particularly like the proposal are becoming more articulate with their complaints.

"We are strongly requesting that the president and department rethink having a federal value metric," said David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). "We're encouraging them to see if there isn't another way to get after these shared values of affordability, completion, and accountability."

Warren added the NAICU would be willing to help the Obama administration come up with a better method for grading institutions of higher education.

David Maxwell, Drake University president and NAICU board member, said it is fair for the government to want to know what it gets for the hundreds of billions of dollars it invests in higher education for grants, loans and such. He said a rating system would only impede a student's choice and would not hold school's accountable.

"The real concern is that different students find different value in their college education," he said.

Also worried about the rating system are two-year institutions and community colleges, particularly its link to federal aid. The students who attend those schools are often of low-income and do not choose it based on merit, but affordability and geographic location. With less government funding, they could see enrollment dip dramatically.

Currently, there is no document in place and the rating system can still be molded. Duncan has also said he is aware of some of the ways the proposal could go wrong and stated that was why the administration is taking its time developing it. He said the system will take various factors, like enrollment and type of institution into account.

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