Colleges Balk
Private colleges balked. They said the data-system exposed students to potential invasions of privacy, and a single test couldn’t capture what students learn in a variety of liberal- arts programs.
“They don’t want any strings attached,” Spellings said in a telephone interview. “They want free money.”
To fight the commission’s recommendations, schools won help from lawmakers such as Lamar Alexander, a Republican Senator from Tennessee who is a former University of Tennessee president and U.S. Education Secretary. Legislators prohibited the government from instituting a student record-tracking system or requiring a standardized test.
Providing Data
Colleges say many institutions are now providing some of that information voluntarily. More than 800 private schools give data about cost and debt through the online University and College Accountability Network.
About 300 public colleges such as the University of North Carolina have adopted the “voluntary system of accountability,” which provides students with “college portraits” spelling out similar information and, in many cases, the results of a standardized learning assessment given in freshman and senior years.
A national database would be more effective, especially in providing employment and earnings information, said M. Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, which supported the recommendations of the Spellings commission.
A bill proposed by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat -- and co-sponsored by Florida’s Rubio -- would require that colleges disclose costs and debt and how much students can be expected to earn in the workforce. The legislation would establish state-based systems to link individual transcript data -- excluding information that would identify students -- to employment and earnings.
‘Spreadsheet Mentality’