Obama revamps College Scorecards for prospective students

Students and families nationwide are asking about the value of a college degree — and both UNC and federal officials say they could do more to inform students about post-graduation prospects.

In his State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama announced a revamped College Scorecard, which provides information to high school students about costs and degree offerings of various colleges and universities.

“It’s part of a long-term commitment which started in 2005 to increase transparency and accountability in higher education,” said Mark Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research.

The College Scorecard is available at whitehouse.gov.

Rachel Fishman, an education policy analyst for the New America Foundation, said the scorecard is designed to help students decide whether the significant investment of attending a college or university is worth it.

“College has never been more necessary nor more expensive,” she said. “More information is a move in the right direction.”

But the scorecard lacks employment data, such as expected salaries, potential employment sectors and the average time it takes students to obtain a job after graduation, Schneider said.

UNC officials said prospective students cannot access employment prospects via the scorecard, which instead suggests they contact the University for that information.

“The last box is employment outcomes, and it asks UNC to give you data,” Schneider said.

But University Career Services Director Ray Angle said UNC does a good job of providing data to students.

“I can’t give out confidential data, but I can say our graduates in this major in the past five, six, seven years worked for these organizations,” Angle said.

He said one resource is the First Destination Survey at the UNC Career Services website.

The survey provides information not available through the scorecard, including where graduates work, their salaries, when they accepted their first offer of an after-college job and their career satisfaction.

Angle said the survey does not reach as many students as he would like because it is only available online.

Fishman said both UNC and the U.S. government could provide employment information to more students.

“It would be better if we could regulate it through legislation,” she said. “Like a nutrition label on UNC’s website.”

Angle said if more former students provided data for UNC Career Services, the system would improve.

“If we get 30 percent, that’s not all of the story,” he said. “It’s a lot of work to gather this data.”

Contact the desk editor at state@dailytarheel.com.