The Government Thinks Ranking Colleges Is As Easy As ‘Rating a Blender’

CollegeAn Education Department official who famously
declared that ranking colleges is just like “rating a blender” does
not deserve an “A” for effort, according to perturbed university
administrators.

The comment, made last November by DOE Under Secretary Jamienne
Studley, alarmed many university presidents who claimed that
federal efforts to establish an objective college ranking database
would be prone to error.

Months later, numerous administrators are still concerned that
an onslaught of new regulations based upon a misguided government
ranking system would cause more harm than good,
according to The New York Times
:

In interviews, several college presidents expressed deep
reservations about the idea.

“As with many things, the desire to solve a complicated problem
in what feels like a simple way can capture people’s imagination,”
said Adam F. Falk, the president of Williams College in
Massachusetts. Dr. Falk said the danger of a rating system is that
information about the colleges is likely to be “oversimplified to
the point that it actually misleads.”

Charles L. Flynn Jr., the president of the College of Mount
Saint Vincent in the Bronx, said a rating system for colleges is a
bad idea that “cannot be done well.” He added, pointedly, “I find
this initiative uncharacteristically clueless.”

President Obama’s “uncharacteristically clueless” idea is to
compile a database of colleges and universities that ranks them
according to factors such as graduation rates, employment levels of
recent grads, average debt, etc. Students could use the database as
a reference when deciding where to attend school, and lawmakers
would consult it when determining how much public money to dump on
the lawn of their local campus.

In a statement that likely set zero college administrators at
ease, a White House advisor clarified that this policy would only
hurt the bad universities:

“He is not interested in driving anybody out of business, unless
they are poorly serving the American people,” said Cecilia Muñoz,
the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. “In which
case, I think he’s probably pretty comfortable with that.”

White House officials claim to be increasingly concerned about
rising student debt levels, as is the general public. Certainly,
college administrators—especially those who work at
taxpayer-subsidized universities that spend millions of dollars
on fancy
stadiums
 and luxury
hotels
—should expect a reckoning.

But it’s hard to believe the federal government could cobble
together a central database with valid insights about which
colleges deserve to be driven out of business. Constructing such a
system is probably a little harder than rating a blender.

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