Colleges Not Thrilled About Obama’s Ratings Plan
Elections have consequences. Maybe the enormous number of people in higher ed who backed Obama will think twice before backing another progressive.
Michael D. Shear of the New York Times writes.
Colleges Rattled as Obama Seeks Rating System
The college presidents were appalled. Not only had President Obama called for a government rating system for their schools, but now one of his top education officials was actually suggesting it would be as easy as evaluating a kitchen appliance.
“It’s like rating a blender,” Jamienne Studley, a deputy under secretary at the Education Department, said to the college presidents after a meeting in the department’s Washington headquarters in November, according to several who were present. “This is not so hard to get your mind around.”
The rating system is in fact a radical new effort by the federal government to hold America’s 7,000 colleges and universities accountable by injecting the executive branch into the business of helping prospective students weigh collegiate pros and cons. For years that task has been dominated by private companies like Barron’s and U.S. News & World Report.
Mr. Obama and his aides say colleges and universities that receive a total of $150 billion each year in federal loans and grants must prove they are worth it. The problem is acute, they insist: At too many schools, tuition is going up, graduation rates are going down, and students are leaving with enormous debt and little hope of high-paying jobs.
Comments
The Federal government should play no role at all in education. The prospect of free and easy taxpayer money made the schools embrace them until all universities, unless they are like Hillsdale and reject government money, are essentially government schools, whether private or not. If schools trim their budgets, salaries, and useless courses, they could tell the Feds to go pound sand. That’s not likely to happen since some schools are waiting for the good times to roll again.