A vast majority of higher education groups that submitted a response to the President's proposed rating system expressed concern, a sentiment that has not changed since the proposal was introduced.
According to Inside Higher Ed, the Obama administration released Thursday hundreds of pages with responses to the rating system proposal. Since Obama introduced his higher education reform proposal in Aug., college and university leaders of both private and public institutions have expressed reservations.
Both the President and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have stressed that the proposal is still in need of fine tuning, but most of its criticism is based on the rating system. The rating system would grade federally funded institutions based on performance metrics and schools with better ranks would receive more funding.
In a letter signed by 19 higher education groups, Molly Corbett Broad discussed multiple practical concerns on why a rating system would do more to harm a school than help. She also questioned if the federal government should even manage the rating system in the first place.
"Beyond the many questions and technical challenges that surround the development and implementation of a proposed rating system, rating colleges and universities is a significant expansion of the federal role in higher education and breaks new ground for the department," Broad wrote. "Moreover, it is extremely important to note that a federal rating system will carry considerably more weight and authority than those done by others."
National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities president David Warren said the process of choosing a college is not an exact science. Therefore, it takes a "qualitative" approach and not a "quantitative" one.
By its nature, a metric is quantitative," he wrote. "Whereas finding a 'best fit' college has qualitative aspects that are equally as, or even more important than, the quantitative aspects."
It also did not matter if an institution was private or public, as an overwhelming group of leaders said they believed appropriating federal funds would actually hurt the low-income students Obama's administration aims to help.
"[The rating system] is inherently flawed in its strategy to tie the 'value' of a college education to federal funding for students through a single rating system," wrote Arthur Kirk, president of St. Leo University, a private non-profit school. "The purpose of the plan and proposed rating system is to increase access to higher education for all students, and especially to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet implementing a ratings system using data as it is currently collected through IPEDS will likely disenfranchise the very students it is supposed to help."
CLICK HERE to read the fact sheet released in Aug. by the Obama administration.
CLICK HERE to read Inside Higher Ed's full piece on the response to the proposal.
