The lists are required by the Higher Education Act’s 2008 renewal, and are intended to provide students and parents with information on how college prices stack up while embarrassing colleges with the highest costs and biggest increases. Every year, the department publishes the colleges with the highest and lowest sticker prices, the highest and lowest net prices (what students pay, on average, after loans and grants), and the biggest increases in sticker and net price. Critics of the lists, including many institutions, argue that the lists lack context and are not a meaningful way to evaluate affordability. This year, administration officials used the release of the lists less to shame individual colleges -- although Education Secretary Arne Duncan pointed out that some for-profit institutions now are twice as expensive, going by net price, as Harvard University -- than to criticize state cuts to higher education.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/13/education-department-focuses-state-role-cost-increases-annual-lists
