Federal College Ranking System

Federal College Ranking System January 12 The federal government  wont be competing with the US News World Report rankings anytime soon. Try as they might. Bev Taylor, Founder of Ivy Coach, has been quoted today on the pages of Americas oldest daily college newspaper Yale Universitys The Yale Daily News. Or maybe its Americas oldest independent daily newspaper. Dartmouth has the oldest college newspaper though it wasnt daily at the time it first came out back in the 18th century. Anyhow, who knows. Enough of this tangent. Bev was quoted today in a piece in The Yale Daily News written by Tyler Foggatt and Rachel Siegel entitled White House college rating system draws criticism. The piece focuses on a new federal college ranking system by the Obama administration in which colleges are judged based on issues like accessibility to low income students, employment rates for graduates and affordability. The administration intends to supply more federal aid to universities that score highly in this particular ranking. So where do we at Ivy Coach stand on this particular ranking? We understand it could have merit for students and parents who are heavily concerned about affording the costs of attending a highly selective college. But heres what Bev had to say, as quoted in The Yale Daily News: Bev Taylor, the founder of Ivy Coach — a New York-based college consulting firm — said that even if the Department of Education were to produce accurate ratings, it is unlikely that they would have a significant effect on the college choices of certain groups of students. There’s always going to be students and parents who look at the prestige of a university, and not the cost, Taylor said. And so if a school is going to be more highly rated because it has a lower sticker price, it’s not going to matter to this group of applicants.  Taylor added that applicants not focused on cost effectiveness will probably default to using the U.S. News and World Report college rankings as a res ource, since the U.S. News rankings are currently the most widely read. The fact is that a college ranking system that is, in large part, based on cost isnt going to be the ranking system embraced by a sizable percentage of the applicant pooland the applicant pools parents. This pool will always default to rankings like US News World Reports, which, for years, has maintained the most widely accepted college rankings. While youre here, read about a White House report  emphasizing the need for more and better college counseling training among school counselors at American high schools.