In regard to President Obama’s recently proposed scorecard
system, Heidi Macpherson, vice chancellor for academic affairs at UW-L, said,
“It may be useful for students who are seeking out universities and want to
make comparisons, but with any score card, it only tells part of the story.”
Macpherson is reporting for the evaluations given by Higher
Learning Commission , by which UW-L is currently accredited. HLC’s next visit
to the campus will be in the 2015-2016 school year. The institutions are judged
by their peers and a “quality initiative” of the school’s choice.
Macpherson said, “There are a number of different measurements
out there, and different organisations that are collating information. What I
can say is that generally, they use the same source data, but may interpret it
in different ways.”
UW-L chose “Firm Footing” as its quality initiative for HLC. The
program looks to increase student academic success by identifying populations
that would be deemed “at risk.” Such populations may include first generation
or transfer students.
There are many different ways that universities are graded and
ranked. It is important to do research and expand one’s search in fact
gathering. As Macpherson said, “All measures show interesting results, but they
only ever tell a partial story.”
College Measures is an organization that wants to improve the
decision making process of students, parents, and lawmakers. The group provides
data on the ability of schools to meet 4 goals: completion and
progression, efficiency, productivity, and gainful employment. Performance by
state and at the national level can also be found on collegemeasures.org.
Education Trust is an organization concerned with closing the
achievement gap. It states that college rankings, specifically that by US News,
aren’t practical. Education Trust’s College Results Online is a tool that
provides the demographics of universities, net price, average student loan
default rates, and graduation rates sorted by race and gender.
