Obama’s newest bad education idea
President Obama announcing his plan to reduce college costs. (Carlos Osorio/AP)
President Obama’s newest education reform idea, aimed at making college more affordable, is a plan that on its face seems helpful to families but isn’t.
Obama said late last month that his administration is, by 2015, setting up a system to rate colleges and universities and then link federal student aid to those ratings by 2018. Should the federal government be in the business of rating schools? Here’s what Catholic University President John Garvey said when my colleague, Nick Anderson, asked a number of college and university presidents what they thought of Obama’s new plan:
I’m not sure it’s a great idea to have the federal government rate colleges. How would you feel about having the federal government rate newspapers? There is something squidgy about having the government, federal or state, oversee our intellectual life in any of its important sectors …
Among the data points that will be included in the rating scheme are:
* the percentage of students receiving Pell grants
* average tuition, scholarships and loan debt
* graduation and transfer rates
* advanced degrees of college graduates
* how much graduates earn when they leave school
* average tuition, scholarships and loan debt
* graduation and transfer rates
* advanced degrees of college graduates
* how much graduates earn when they leave school
The earnings of graduates? Really? Pity the school that has a strong poetry program and sends more poets into the world. Or social workers. Or teachers.
Transfer rates? Schools are going to be held responsible for students who decide to
The man who runs the nation’s largest jail system came to Washington on Monday to promote what he considers a potent tool in crime-fighting: universal pre-school. Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca is heading a lobbying effort by more than 1,000 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors to convince Congress to enact the Obama administration’s plan to expand preschool to every 4-year-old in the c