The federal government finally released graduation rates for low-income students, but some say the data is off — way off.

From the Hechinger Report:

There’s finally federal data on low-income college graduation rates—but it’s wrong

The U.S. Department of Education has released college-by-college graduation rates for low-income students receiving federal grants, for the first time ever—information advocates, and Congress, have long demanded.

But there turns out to be a problem: A lot of the numbers are wrong.

In comparison to reviews of the same data by independent organizations, the Department of Education figures—released in conjunction with the Obama administration’s long-awaited College Scorecard, which is meant to provide consumers with helpful information about universities and colleges—are off by an average of 10, and as much as 59, percentage points.

That’s a wide margin of error in the realm of statistics.

“Ten percentage points is pretty worrisome for me,” said Mamie Voight, director of policy research at the nonpartisan Institute for Higher Education Policy.


 
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