A week after the Collegian reported that the Department of Education’s College Scorecard excludes all schools that refuse to accept federal funding, including Hillsdale College, the department still refuses to make any changes to the list.
Though attracting national media attention because the Scorecard did not include schools that refuse to receive federal funds, none of the independent institutions have been added to the list so far, and no statements have been released regarding the list’s incomplete state.
“The Scorecard is designed to assist families in making the choices about institutions and institutional value,” Provost David Whalen said. “The pure basis of that choice cannot and and should not be ability to repay Title IV federally guaranteed student loans.”
Title IV schools are those that accept federal funding.
“By excluding Hillsdale College, the implication is that we are somehow inconsiderable—not worthy of the time or effort it would take to include those schools that prize their independence from federal funding,” Whalen added.
President Barack Obama claimed in his release of the Scorecard that it includes information about “every institution of higher education” in the nation.
The Scorecard represents higher education in America today, Whalen said, yet important educational institutions “suddenly dropped off the radar.”
Officials from Grove City College, another school excluded from the database, requested a public clarification from the education department to make clear that the Scorecard is not, as advertised, comprehensive.
“However well-intentioned, the Scorecard as it exists now is incomplete and does not fully disclose comprehensive data that families need to make informed decisions,” Grove City College President Paul J. McNulty, said in a statement Tuesday. “For now, the department should, at the very least, include a disclaimer that the Scorecard is not comprehensive or reflective of all college and universities.”
“With the College Scorecard, the department is committed to doing what the president asked us to do: provide information to families and consumers to help them make a college choice that’s smart for them,” Department of Education spokeswoman Denise Horn said in a statement. “As of now, institutions that do not participate in Title IV federal financial aid are not included on the site, because they are not required to send us data. The department is listening closely to concerns from users and other stakeholders and will work to address those concerns in future updates to the tool.”
The Department of Education has not retracted its statement calling Hillsdale a “predominantly certificate degree granting institution.”
The Scorecard was created using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s database, which is required by federal law to collect information such as student loan accrual, graduation rates, post-graduation employment statistics, and gender and racial demographics from all schools accepting federal funds.
Though not required, Hillsdale College has collected and submitted data for inclusion in the IPEDS system.
“We have tried to submit IPEDS data, but have been denied,” Whalen said. “They will not accept our data at all because we decline to collect the racial profiles of our students. We, on principle, do not pay attention to ethnicity, and we don’t collect the data.”
Instead, the college submits data individually to ranking institutions around the country to be included in their deliberations. When the college collected the data for the 2014-2015 academic year and began submitting it, Hillsdale’s information was excluded from the IPEDS database.
“It was just this past academic year that we were refused,” Whalen said. “We started to submit the data and boom, it bounced back. They told us that unless we submitted the information we were declining to submit, none of our data would be accepted.”
The data not submitted included a racial demographic profile, required by federal law in order to be included in the IPEDS database.
Robin Wilkins, an administrator at the IPEDS database helpdesk, explained that information for the database is collected in a series of surveys, in which all fields must be filled.
“You won’t be able to submit an incomplete survey,” Wilkins said.
College administrators have been fielding questions about whether or not Hillsdale is considered a legitimate institution by the Department of Education since the Collegian’s report last week.
“Since last week’s story, we’ve had concerns from parents, from prospective students and their parents, from donors and supporters across the country,” Whalen said. “A good bit of worry and concern.”
A footnote of the Scorecard’s explanatory documents does mention that the Scorecard only includes Title IV institutions in the universe of schools considered.
“Whether or not there was any intention to exclude and harm conservative schools, the effect is the same,” Whalen said. “We are harmed. We have been slighted. And we now have to go through a tedious and distracting explanation for why we do not appear on the list that is to all appearances comprehensive. It’s not a disaster or a cataclysm, but it is more than a nuisance.”
“Given the Scorecard, the universe just shrank,” he added. “The universe just got smaller, less independent, less real.”
