Fair is fair. If the for-profit sector must demonstrate that its graduates are achieving gainful employment, why not the public and non-profit sectors of higher education as well. And our "customers" deserve to know what their investment is worth.
At least those are arguments being made by advocates of the move afoot to repeal the federal ban on reporting such data. A "College Transparency Act" would make this data available, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Opponents cite student privacy laws, such a FERPA.
Should the bill become law, the National Center for Education Statistics would be charged with creating a resource parallel to the College Score Card.
As is so often the case, California is ahead of the nation on this. The Salary Surfer is an interactive site that enables students to see what degree and certificate holders from the Golden State's community colleges are earning two and five years out.
For instance, being a lawyer, I queried about law and got the following information:
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A couple of things jump out at me.
1. A paralegal degree resulted in a meaningful income jump two years after graduation as compared to the recipients' pre-graduation income
2. But three years later, their salaries had increased very little.
3. Meanwhile, those receiving only a certificate did much better.
What might I, as a parent of a high school student, infer from this? One hypothesis might be that those getting a paralegal certificate came into the program already possessing a four-year college degree.
Would parents and students be sophisticated enough to draw such inferences from the data? Maybe or maybe not.
But such data would sure seem to trump no data... don't you think?
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