The battle for a spot in the annual U.S. News & World Report college standings may soon draw to a close.
President Obama outlined his new federal ranking system for colleges in a speech on Aug. 22. The proposal would evaluate schools based on the number of low income students they enroll, the total loan debt that their graduates incur, and the average tuition rate they charge.
Hillsdale College would be one of the only institutions of higher learning in America that the new standings would not impact, because it relies solely on private funds.
“The federal government would exert still more control and harden the presumption that higher education is a natural sphere for governmental management. This, I think, is the greatest danger,” Provost David Whalen said.
The college ranking initiative would empower the federal government to alleviate ballooning economic burdens, particularly those imposed on the lower and middle classes.
“The bottom line is higher education cannot be a luxury. It’s an economic imperative. Every American family should be able to afford to get it,” Obama said. “I think we should rate colleges based on opportunity. Are they helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed?”
Hillsdale’s financial assistance would not change should President Obama succeed in obtaining enough congressional votes to tie government aid to the new ranking system.
“Such systems, especially one sponsored by the federal government, will result in various attempts to manipulate the rankings,” Whalen said. “This weakens the limited meaning such rankings have, and worse, it encourages a tendency to pay more attention to appearances than realities.”
Postgraduate job placement and percentage of freshmen who graduate would not be factors in the federal government’s assessment. Instead, colleges would effectively be rewarded with a higher ranking for reducing student costs and raising the number of low income applicants they enroll.
“If there’s a way to reduce costs—that’s a win. What raises my eyebrow is tying federal aid to demographics of students,” said Richard Moeggenberg, Director of Financial Aid. “At Hillsdale we have a need-blind admission policy. That means we look at the merits of a student to determine admission.”
The college would persist in its refusal to enroll students on the basis of race, economic status, or gender, regardless of its position on the new ranking scale.
“We will maintain our autonomy from being told what performance is,” Moeggenberg said.
In the same speech, President Obama promoted http://studentaid.gov, a website designed to help young people manage their debt and identify more government loan options.
“It’s a little hypocritical for Obama to say that we need to spend more money so that less young people are in debt when he’s creating a national debt for that same generation to pay back anyway,” junior Heather Buell said.
Should he determine that his method classifies colleges fairly, the president would seek congressional approval in 2015 to alter federal loan and grant allocations.
All federal financial aid for colleges would be distributed based on how well each school fulfilled the government’s new performance standards.
“If this ranking system did become significant enough by 2015 for it to affect money, then that’s a huge deal,” Moeggenberg said. “The president needs Congress to approve it before that happens though, and right now I don’t think anybody thinks this is a good idea.”
A congressional vote that would change a school’s expected income from the federal government by a considerable margin would force many campuses across the nation to adapt to unfamiliar fiscal budgets. Because of its position on funding, Hillsdale would not be one of those schools.