Trumping toward college transparency

The perfect storm is gathering around the need to increase transparency around college and careers. And in accordance with how public policy generally comes about, it might just happen. 

Recent developments at the federal level have gotten us to where we are today:

• Presidents George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s $700 million investment in statewide longitudinal data systems since 2005;
• Congress’ bipartisan college transparency bills first introduced by Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Rubio (R-FL) in 2015 and by Senators Hatch (R-UT),Warren (D-MA), Cassidy (R-LA), and Whitehouse (D-RI) in 2017;
• The Obama administration’s College Scorecard released in 2016; and
• The Gainful Employment and Borrower Defense to Repayment regulations intended to protect students against student loan fraud in the for-profit sector that are currently under review.

Clearly, the Trump Administration and many on Capitol Hill favor bringing for-profit colleges back into the fold with the proposed changes to federal student loan regulations. But, in order for them to stay in the game, the for-profit and career colleges must accept transparency as part of the bargain. And if we are really honest with ourselves, all colleges should be making their outcomes data publicly available, or what Steve Gunderson, head of the for-profit college association, promotes as knowing “the good, the bad and the ugly in all of higher education.”

The most recent Georgetown Center report, Career Pathways: Five Ways to Connect College and Careers, joins the choir in advocating for greater transparency. The modern American economy requires workers to have at least some education beyond high school. But matching particular college programs with careers has become much more complicated. Colleges now offer more than 2,000 fields of study and the job market now includes more than 1,900 occupations with distinctive skill requirements. The current lack of transparency between college and careers has fostered a “Tower of Babel” in linking the profusion of postsecondary credentials with the ever expanding number of distinctive career pathways.

Students also don’t know how to finance their studies, which is untenable given how expensive college is today. Tuition and fees at public four-year colleges has grown 19 times faster than median family incomes since 1980. In general college is a good career investment, but the burden is on students to make the right decisions without incurring more debt than they would be able to pay back. It’s hard to believe that when it comes to college — one of the most important and expensive investments in life — consumers actually know less today than they did a decade ago. For all these reasons access to information aligning college programs and careers has become crucial for economic success, and, as usual, several states (featured in Career Pathways) are taking the lead in making this happen.

The current data blackout is a lost opportunity. It means that underperforming programs can languish undetected. That’s bad for students, institutions, and taxpayers. It also discourages colleges from improving. With data in hand, institutions would know exactly how their students fare and harness that vital information to identify lagging programs and work to strengthen them. Instead, colleges are forced to rely on subjective impressions, which hamper their work to enhance the education they provide. 

Students and institutions aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from better data on college outcomes. Lawmakers need student outcomes data to inform their policymaking. At a time when public budgets are tight, researchers need student outcomes data to find affordable programs that provide the best results.

More data-based decision-making that ties college programs to careers can also make college a stronger source of upward mobility for the least advantaged and those left behind by economic change. It is a startling but proven fact that most of the increase in earnings inequality since the 1980s can be attributed to differences in individual access to college programs with labor market value.

With outcomes data in hand we can find out which programs excel at educating first-generation college students who go on to thrive following graduation. After identifying such programs, researchers could zero in on approaches that successfully support first-generation college students and ensure that other institutions can adopt the methods that we know work. 

The value of college degrees shouldn’t be a secret we keep from ourselves and our children. Government should be in the business of encouraging transparency in higher education, not subverting it. 

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Dr. Carnevale is Director and Research Professor of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, an independent, nonprofit research and policy institute affiliated with the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the link between education, career qualifications, and workforce demands.