

Why Colleges Are in This Mess - tokenadult
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i27/27a00101.htm

======
tokenadult
"When the Bush administration's Commission on the Future of Higher Education
aimed to bring more accountability to colleges and universities, the only
member of the panel who refused to sign the document was David Ward, who
represented the nation's biggest higher-education group.

"It was a clear act of defensiveness.

"College lobbyists eventually succeeded in killing the commission's proposal
to develop a national system to track the progress of each student in the
country. They also resisted efforts to make the accreditation process more
open and to establish a consumer-friendly database that would allow parents,
students, and policy makers to compare institutions."

It's still remarkably difficult to get relevant data from colleges about how
well the colleges are doing by their enrolled students. Perhaps current
economic conditions will prompt more of the people paying for college
educations (often parents now afraid of losing their jobs) to seek more
information about whether or not colleges are a good investment.

