It makes perfect sense. Now that college has become such a huge financial burden for so many families, why wouldn’t people want a sense of their return on investment?

Melissa Korn writes at the Wall Street Journal.

Colleges Are Tested by Push to Prove Graduates’ Career Success

College admissions officers trumpet graduates’ success in finding well-paying jobs. But the schools often have a hard time getting solid proof.

Boiling down employment outcomes to a single metric isn’t easy, many college officials say, since hurdles stand in the way of gathering meaningful figures and conveying them. Others say they are leery of tying the nuances of educational success to dollar figures.

But with student-loan debt outstanding hitting a record $1.1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the issue of quantifying graduate success has become increasingly important as colleges come under pressure to prove the education they provide is worth the investment.

Bonnie Mann Falk was dismayed at the lack of information on student outcomes that she and her daughter, Mollie, got from admissions officers during the college hunt this past fall. Mollie, a 17-year-old high-school senior from Long Island in New York, plans to study retail management and sought assurance she could find a job in that industry.

Ms. Falk, an accountant, grew tired of hearing admissions officers say they didn’t have detailed information on hand. “While true, it doesn’t mean you can’t track that. It sounded like a canned response to me,” she said. Mollie, who had checked out several schools, has been accepted to Syracuse University, where the business and communications schools offered ample job data, including starting salaries broken down by major, Ms. Falk said.