Ted Mitchell, the U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary, said the primary goal of the college ratings system is to “raise the bar on public accountability for institutions of higher education.”
“I want to remind everyone that this is version 1.0,” Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell told the Education Writers Association this past weekend at the historic Southern Methodist University.
“The ratings system is intended to raise the bar on public accountability for institutions of higher education,” Mitchell said. “But let’s help the public remember that accountability runs in two different directions.”
Mitchell said the ratings system will be an important tool to help the federal government fulfill its “truth-telling” role about institutional performance on certain outcomes—such as access and completion. He also reiterated the administration’s intent to eventually tie federal financial aid to the ratings system.
“What we’ve stressed from the beginning is we know that this is an experiment,” Mitchell said. “We need to be clearer about the ratings system before we tie those kinds of statutory consequences to it.
“We’re focused right now not on that as an issue but on the issue of getting ‘1.0’ out.”
Mitchell said the department is aware that completion rates are calculated in disparate ways by the federal government’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which captures completion rates for transfer students and thus provides a broader view of who finishes college.
