Obama to Propose College Ratings System

[Go Skins]

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/22/obama-to-propose-college-ratings-system-on-bus-tour/?mod=e2fb

 

President Barack Obama on Thursday will announce proposals aimed at combating rising college costs by creating a new ratings system and eventually tying federal student aid to institutions’ performance.

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The president will call for rating colleges before the 2015 school year on measures such as affordability and outcomes, including graduation and transfer rates.

 

Once that system is in place, Mr. Obama will ask Congress to allocate financial aid based on those ratings by 2018. Students at top-performing colleges could receive larger federal grants and more affordable student loans. The plan is expected to spur pushback from some colleges.

Mr. Obama also will urge innovation in higher education, encouraging colleges to pursue ideas including three-year accelerated degrees and massive open online courses. The president will return to some familiar ideas as well, calling for an expansion of his pay-as-you-earn program that caps student loan payments at 10% of monthly income and re-upping his funding requests for the Race to the Top program, which is focused on state higher education reforms.

 

The president will lay out his plan on a two-day bus tour that will wind through New York and into Pennsylvania. His first stop Thursday will take him to the University at Buffalo, with a speech planned later in the day in Syracuse.

 

The president’s college affordability plan is the latest in a wide-ranging series of proposals that the administration has dubbed “a better bargain for the middle class.”

 

Mr. Obama has said that making college affordable is a “personal mission,” as he’s pledged to shake up the current system. Tuition increases have far outpaced inflation in recent years. Incomes of middle-class families have not kept pace with the rising cost of college, resulting in a jump in student borrowing.

 

On Tuesday, the Education Department released a report showing that in 2011-12, 57% of undergraduates used federal student aid to help pay for college, up from 47% in 2007-08.

[Jamie_B]

Former Labor Sec and current public policy proffessor at Cal Berkley Robert Reich..

 

For many years, American colleges and universities have felt pressured by the college rankings of "U.S. News and World Report" to spend vast sums attracting star students and faculty -- which boost their rankings -- at the expense of scholarships to deserving lower-income students, because U.S. News' rankings don't take account of how many lower-income students attend. (Several years ago I tried to get U.S. News to include this criterion but getting U.S. News to alter the way it measures colleges proved harder than getting the Bureau of Labor Statistics to alter the way it measures unemployment.) Now President Barack Obama has come up with a plan for rating colleges based in part on how many lower-income students attend them. I haven't examined the ratings in detail yet, but I'm encouraged. He's also proposing legislation to give colleges a bonus based on the number of students they graduate who received Pell Grants. (The number and percent of Pell grant recipients is a good proxy how many lower-income students are enrolled because such grants are available only to students from low-income families. About 30 percent of students at the University of California at Berkeley, where I teach, are on Pell grants. By contrast, about 15 percent of students at Harvard are on Pell grants. Having taught at both institutions, I can tell you that my Berkeley students are every bit as bright as my Harvard ones.)

 

[sois]

So now colleges will have lobbyists to get their ratings up.  Aesome idea, bro.

[AmishBengalFan]

Berkeley students are hippies.  Hell, they're even touting them selves as "not-so-hippie-any-longer" because they only finished in 8th place out of ALL of the colleges in America, proudly proclaiming that they were no longer one of the Seven Worst.

 

http://berkeley.patch.com/groups/local-connections/p/berkeley-not-in-top-7-us-hippie-towns

 

The ranking for hippie-friendly cities was derived from "a formula based on marijuana availability and legality, number of stores selling hemp, local counter-culture icons, tie-dye availability, hippie festivals, progressive government, intensity of Occupy protests, and a Facebook poll," 

[Jamie_B]

Berkeley students are hippies.  Hell, they're even touting them selves as "not-so-hippie-any-longer" because they only finished in 8th place out of ALL of the colleges in America, proudly proclaiming that they were no longer one of the Seven Worst.

 

http://berkeley.patch.com/groups/local-connections/p/berkeley-not-in-top-7-us-hippie-towns

 

The ranking for hippie-friendly cities was derived from "a formula based on marijuana availability and legality, number of stores selling hemp, local counter-culture icons, tie-dye availability, hippie festivals, progressive government, intensity of Occupy protests, and a Facebook poll," 

 

 

What does being a hippy have to do with anything?

 

 

Edit: Reich also taught economics at Harvard, hardly a hippy campus, but again not sure what being a hippy has to do with anything.