The American Council on Education (ACE) issued a brief Wednesday that addressed the potentially damaging impact ranking systems have on higher education institutions. The ACE Center for Policy, Research & Strategy’s Rankings, Institutional Behavior, and College and University Choice brief uses research-based data to frame the Obama administration’s plan to rank colleges and universities based on value and affordability.
Announced last August by President Obama, the much debated proposed Postsecondary Institutions Rankings System, set to implement in the 2015-16 academic year, aims to hold colleges accountable for performance and control tuition fees. Under this system, the higher the institution rates, the more aid, grants and affordable student loan programs are received than the lower ranking colleges.
With the rising costs of college tuition, potential students and their families are facing tough financial decisions and the impending de facto ranking system is supposed to make those decisions less complicated. According to the College Board, over the last 30 years, average tuition has risen at public and private four-year institutions 231 percent and 153 percent, respectively. Public two-year tuition rose 164 percent over the same period. The ranking system intends to average college tuition with the share of low-income students and how many graduate with less debt. The brief takes a hard look at the impact of such a system and how much of a factor they are when deciding on colleges.
According to data released last month by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) out of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), location was more of a determining factor than a rank value, especially for low-income and first-generation students.
Twenty-five percent of low-income students said staying close to home was “very important” and 27 percent of first-generation students also stated selecting an institution near home was very important in contrast to 18 percent of non-first generation students.
HERI found that less than a 25 percent of all students said rankings were “very important” in their college decisions, with a 9 percent point gap between low- and high-income students and a 14 percent point gap between students attending low and highly selective institutions.
The brief outlines the notion that college rankings tend to place more value on the talents of incoming classes than on student outcomes and can negatively influence the admission process. If higher education institutions use popular rankings to determine their selectivity, then low-income students may be at a disadvantage.
