Moving smartly beyond college rankings

America is obsessed with ranking colleges and universities. The healthy school pride and academic rivalries of the past have long been replaced with more aggressive competition for spots in a variety of rankings. Skyrocketing costs means that students and families rely on this information to make critical choices about their futures. So it’s no surprise that the White House College Scorecard released recently caused so many mixed feelings. After all, it purported to be a one-stop-shop for those considering which college to attend.

To be fair, the Scorecard brings some good ideas to the table. It uses a standard measurement of wages 10 years post-enrollment, for instance, which helps future students account for additional time in graduate school while simultaneously increasing pressure on institutions to address both dropout rates and time of undergraduate completion. It also provides a percentage of students who, six years after enrollment, are earning more than a high school graduate. After all, if there’s absolutely no salary premium to a college education, why attend at all?

{mosads}Much has been written about the shortcomings of the data informing the White House’s assumptions. I understand the concerns and am eager to work on some bold solutions. This is how.

First, the data needs to be broken down by program or major rather than on the institution as a whole. That’s just common sense. A school with a large business program is going to have higher graduate earnings when aggregated. That’s no use to a theoretical prospective student of history, who needs data specific to his or her field.

Those theoretical students – and all real prospective students – need a solution. They need a way to evaluate real return on investment for their specific situations. That’s why USA Funds is investing in a solution where we believe it will make the most difference: in states. Each of the 50 states already collect necessary data to formulate such return on investment reports. However, only about one-third of the states provide tools to analyze that data – and USA Funds is playing a leading role to drive those efforts. Through four different grants, we are seeding 12 state-level initiatives that will help expand on the worthy start of the administration’s new College Scorecard.

If states have ownership over creating these reports, they’re likely to be more user-friendly for consumers and state policy makers, who can consider them alongside factors like geography and the local economy. They can better evaluate the effectiveness of their state’s institutions by examining the production of specific degrees against the needs of local employers, for example, or help state workforce systems examine the effects of their training programs based on employment and wage measures.

But plaguing the debates on the College Scorecard is a short-sightedness that focuses only on financial success as a positive outcome. Career success and satisfaction are measured on more than take-home pay. In higher education, that’s especially important. A more complete vision for return on investment should include qualitative measures like levels of workplace engagement and personal well-being, as measured through the Gallup-Purdue Index Report. This feedback provides more than just the warm, fuzzy feeling that higher education makes people feel better about themselves. States can actually use these responses to measure levels of civic engagement, effects on crime and poverty, or a community’s collective financial security.

At this point, all of these initiatives – from the new federal College Scorecard to the new state-level reports – are works in progress. But for students and parents who are plunking down tens of thousands of dollars for annual tuition – mostly in the hopes of landing a good job and having the money to pay for those degrees! – these new initiatives should be very welcome developments.

Our students invest more than just tuition dollars to attend college. They invest time away from their families and years of foregone wages. It should, therefore, become a top priority that they don’t simply complete their degree, but complete it with a purpose.

D’Amico is executive vice president of National Engagement and Philanthropy at USA Funds.