Ratings Without ... Rating - Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

The federal government will not compare colleges or pass judgment on their relative merits as part of the ratings system the U.S. Department of Education plans to release before the end of the summer, department officials said Wednesday. Instead, the system will be more of a consumer-facing tool that students, their families and high school guidance counselors can use to learn more about how undergraduate institutions stack up, said Ted Mitchell, the under secretary of education. “We want to empower them to make comparisons based on measures that matter to them,” Mitchell said. The new tool will feature a broad range of data about college costs and outcomes, officials said, some of it publicly available for the first time. That information will be available to researchers, colleges and others, who can use it to rate colleges and compare them against one another. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/25/education-department-says-rating-system-will-be-consumer-tool-rather-comparison