College Scorecard?

The White House is trying to create a "scorecard" to help families determine the "affordability and value" of prospective colleges. As of now, the scorecard looks very limiting and misleading, in my opinion: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/scorecard

Fortunately, they are looking for feedback.  I understand that the types of statistics they are using for this scorecard are easy to gather, and seemingly can create a picture of a college's affordability and value; however, suggesting that each individual student's experience will be the same or even close to the same as the "average" this data creates is very misleading.  A student who attends a college with a high percentage of at-risk or lower-achieving students could get an excellent education there if that college places a high value on teaching and learning effectiveness.  The statistics at that college might look bleak, but a student with a lot of potential could take advantage of the high student-faculty ratio, the tutoring services, and leadership opportunities there, for example, to be very successful.


I appreciate the Government's efforts and intentions, but I fear that another shallow tool (shallower, in my opinion, than the U.S. News and World Report rankings that come out each year) will end up leading to "punishing" colleges that accept at-risk and low-income students, because they are worried about "raising their score" on this scorecard to get more applicants. There are so many factors that go into college value, and they vary greatly depending on the goals and purpose of the individual student attending.  In general, though, I believe that looking at measures of the effectiveness of teaching and learning that takes place at a college -- particularly in the areas of critical thinking and information literacy -- can be a good measure of the college's value, no matter what the financial data might say.

Of course, this data is harder to capture. But just because data can be easily obtained does not mean that it should be used. It's like the expression, "You get what you pay for."  Simplistic data leads to simplistic behaviors. Robust, qualitative data leads to robust, high-quality results -- but it is more complicated to gather and compile. Yet colleges and universities have been compiling this data for years, and in the last five years have been under a lot of pressure by accrediting agencies to compile even more.  The data is there -- now it needs to be read and used accordingly to place real value on a college education.