Hobbyhorses and Progress

Today, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities announced a joint project of more than 600 colleges and universities nationwide to offer a standardized information sheet for prospective students and their families on the Web. It is called the University and College Accountability Network (UCAN). I was heavily involved in developing that form. Simultaneously and not entirely coincidentally the US Department of Education announced an upgrade to their "Cool" website which allows at least some limited search based on a number of criteria. In the trades paper for higher education there was some yammering about both efforts. The UCAN form was designed with two purposes in mind. First, it would allow students to make some simple but informative comparisons. At the same time however, as any transparency project should do, it encourages prospective students and their families to drill down to the campus site to understand complex issues in a more coherent fashion.

The USDE project was also announced today. It is an interactive website which allows students to search colleges by a number of factors. In substance it looks a lot like a set of sites called Mentor sites that are active in a number of states. The virtue of the Mentor sites is that they also often allow students to submit an electronic application. The USDE site does not offer that flexibility and probably should not.

One particularly amusing yammer was from some bureaucrat in Florida who believes he has found the Rosetta Stone in the term "accountability." His hobbyhorse has been to support a bureaucratic "accountability" system which reduces the role of private and voluntary accreditation and which tries to make the 3000+ institutions in the country uniform. This Florida official opined that he was "wary" of "flashy graphics." Interestingly, in the focus group work done as the UCAN form was being developed the graphics linked to sites on a college website which could give students and their families more information was a major point of support. The focus group participants really liked the visual nature of the form and the ability to drill down on things which were important to that student or family. You can rest assured that this same bureaucrat will respond with a post about the "guild" of higher education (accreditation) and the virtues of accountability whenever a story about higher education appears, regardless of the subject.

The former chair of a USDE Commission on higher education also did some yammering about the independent college effort. He was quoted as saying " “They’re making an effort to act like they’re making progress and personally it doesn’t seem like much progress to me. They’ve been the biggest opponent to real transparency, that entity has, so I just have skepticism about them being transparent.” His definition of transparency was a one size fits all model which was the opposite of true information. Miller tried to run his commission like a fiefdom. For that and other reasons the report seems to have had little effect on public policy. The independent college effort was a genuine collaboration involving a wide range of colleges and universities and a group of admissions officers as well as other technical experts as well as students and families and even staff from Capitol Hill.

In the development of the UCAN project two things became clear. First, as the form was being developed we did a lot of listening to both students and their families as well as other interested parties. What we found was that the visual nature of the form, which the bureaucrat from Florida condemned, was an attractive feature. At the same time, we also found that parents and students after getting the overview wanted a simple way to drill down on issues that were of particular importance to them on the campuses they were interested in.

My guess is that college information sources will continue to develop. Both the USDE site and the UCAN sites are steps forward with slightly differing purposes. The ultimate test of either of these will be whether parents and students use them to help think about college choices.