During his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama unveiled the Education Department’s new College Scorecard website, a massive dump of federal data on the nation’s colleges and universities, meant to help prospective students and parents determine which schools will provide the most value for their money.
This new website comes instead of the president’s long-discussed college ranking system.
“Many existing college rankings reward schools for spending more money and rejecting more students – at a time when America needs our colleges to focus on affordability and supporting all students who enroll,” Obama said in his weekly address.
As tuition costs and student debt have risen to record levels, Obama said the new website will give Americans “reliable information” on how much each school’s graduates earn, how much debt they graduate with, and what percentage of students are able to pay back their loans.
On the new website, users can search for a specific school and find all of its statistics, including average annual cost and graduation rate. Most of this information was already available, however the College Scorecard does provide some new information, including the average student’s salary 10 years after entering a school, as well as the typical monthly loan payments students can expect from each school. The Education Department teamed up with the Treasury Department to determine these new numbers.
With the new website, prospective students can also compare schools by searching for a specific degree and filtering results by cost, graduation rate, or average salary after attending.
“In the coming weeks and months, we’ll continue to improve the Scorecard based on what we learn from students, parents, counselors, and colleges themselves,” Obama said. “The goal is to help everybody who’s willing to work for a higher education search for and select a college that fits their goals.”
Watch the president’s address below:
