In September, President Obama announced the College Scorecard which gave a lot of data on the nation’s colleges and universities, but left out information on the graduation rates of low-income students who receive federal aid. Now, that information–long demanded by Congress–has been released, but there’s just one problem with the data: it’s wrong.
The figures released by the U.S. Department of Education focused on student’s who receive Pell grants–federal aid to student’s of low-income families to assist in college tuition or related costs–and whether those students actually go on to graduate or not. The same data used to show the success of these students was reviewed by independent organizations and found the Department of Education’s figures to be off by an average of 10 and up to 59 percentage points off.
“Ten percentage points is pretty worrisome for me,” said Mamie Voight, director of policy research at the Institute for Higher Education Policy said to U.S. News.
Along with the fudged numbers regarding Pell grant students, Obama’s College Scorecard has faced other problems, namely picking favorites.
Notably left off of the scorecard were several private, liberal-arts schools who do not receive federal funding. Following the websites launch, The Daily Caller was quick to pick up on the absence of Grove City College and Hillsdale College.
It is also notable that these two particular college, which consistently rank as top liberal-arts colleges in that nation, are conservative-leaning schools.
While many people may see the College Scorecards failings as no big deal, consider this: $31 billion of taxpayer money goes to these federal grants each year.
If these student’s who receive the federal aid money aren’t even graduating or using it for higher education, that $31 billion worth of the public’s money going down the dorm room drain.
Despite this colossal dollar sign and the implications for taxpayers, it seems the Department of Education still isn’t able to provide solid data to show what is happening with this money.
In the data and numbers department, the College Scorecard gets an “F.”
