WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Saturday abandoned his two-year effort to have the government create a system that explicitly rates the quality of the nation's colleges and universities, a plan that was opposed by presidents at many of those institutions.
Under the original idea, announced by Obama in 2013, all of the nation's 7,000 higher-education institutions would have been assigned a ranking by the government, with the aim of pointing out low-rated schools that saddle students with high debt and poor earning potential.
Instead, the White House unveiled a website Saturday that does not attempt to give schools any kind of grade, but provides information to prospective students and their parents about annual costs, graduation rates and salaries after graduation.
The College Scorecard -- at collegescorecard.ed.gov -- provides a snapshot of what students of each school might eventually earn, how much debt they leave with, and what percentage can repay their loans.
Obama praised the new website in his weekly radio address, saying that by using College Scorecard, "Americans will now have access to reliable data on every institution of higher education."
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said students looking at colleges "deserve to know their investment of resources and hard work in college is going to pay off."
As part of the administration's education push, Duncan plans to begin a seven-state, back-to-school bus tour Monday. Obama is to appear at the first stop, in Des Moines, Iowa, for an event on college affordability and access.
"Everyone should be able to find clear, reliable, open data on college affordability and value," Obama said Saturday. "Many existing college rankings reward schools for spending more money and rejecting more students -- at a time when America needs our colleges to focus on affordability and supporting all students who enroll."
But the website falls short of what the president had hoped for. When he announced the plan at the State University of New York in Buffalo, Obama put colleges on notice, saying schools that performed poorly on his rating system would eventually lose access to billions of dollars in federal student aid money.
"I'm proposing major new reforms that will shake up the current system," Obama said in 2013. "Taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing students to go to schools where the kids aren't graduating."
quick opposition
Aides to Obama had described him as privately demanding bold action that would hold schools accountable, especially those that had low graduation rates and poor postgraduate income potential -- even as they continued charging students tens of thousands of dollars each year to attend. Administration officials said at the time that the rating system would be in place by 2015.
But the plan quickly ran into opposition. Critics, including many of the presidents at private colleges, lobbied against the idea of a government rating system, saying it could force schools to prioritize moneymaking majors such as accounting over those such as English, history or philosophy.
Officials at many schools said the government had no business competing with college rating services like those offered by U.S. News & World Report.
Charles Flynn Jr., president of the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York, called the president's idea "uncharacteristically clueless." Adam Falk, the president of Williams College in Massachusetts, predicted that it would be "oversimplified to the point that it actually misleads." And Kenneth Starr, who is the president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, called it "quite wrongheaded."
For months, administration officials dismissed the criticism, saying that the status quo was unacceptable and that the president was determined to make a rating system work.
In 2014, Cecilia Munoz, the president's chief domestic-policy adviser, responded in an interview to the complaints from college presidents by saying: "There is an element to this conversation which is, 'We hope to God you don't do this.' Our answer to that is: 'This is happening.'"
But more than a year later, the new card unveiled Saturday does not attempt to rank colleges. And a fact sheet distributed by the White House makes no mention of linking the availability of federal student aid to a government ranking of a specific college.
Higher-education leaders who opposed the ratings system cautiously welcomed the administration's approach.
Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, acknowledged the interest in having accurate data about earnings for college graduates, but she said the revised scorecard still needs work.
"Developing a system of this size and scope is a complicated and nuanced endeavor and the department has done so without any external review," she said.
Significant data limitations exist, she said, such as one single earning number for an entire institution -- regardless of whether the student studied chemical engineering or philosophy.
David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which opposed the president's rating plan, said Saturday that he supported providing more information to students and families.
"This is a step in that direction," Warren said. "It also appears that the tool will allow colleges and universities to tailor their profiles, which allows for showcasing the diversity of institutions nationwide."
customized comparisons
White House officials said the scorecard will allow students and parents to compare schools based on measurements that are important to them. Using the website, for example, a student could search for schools with average annual costs of under $10,000, a graduation rate higher than 75 percent and average salaries after graduation of more than $50,000 per year.
The website's list of schools with low costs that lead to high incomes contains some of the most expensive colleges in the country, including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University and Williams College, a liberal-arts school.
Tuition for low-income students at those schools is heavily subsidized by others who pay full price, and the data suggest that for students from families making less than $48,000 a year, they are a good deal. Harvard was the best bargain, at an average net price of $3,386 and median earnings of $87,200 for alumni 10 years out of college.
The University of Virginia, at 93.2 percent, topped the list of graduation rates from public four-year colleges.
Georgia Institute of Technology made both lists, making it one of the best values in higher education. More than 80 percent of first-time, full-time students go on to graduate from Georgia Tech, whose alumni earned a median salary of $74,000 a decade after graduating.
Administration officials said the data that power the scorecard also were being freely shared with companies and other organizations that offer online college search tools. White House officials said three such sites -- ScholarMatch, StartClass and College Abacus -- have begun using the data to enhance the information they provide.
Officials said they hoped the information would help students avoid making poor choices when deciding where to attend college.
"The old way of assessing college choices relied on static ratings lists compiled by someone who was deciding what value to place on different factors," the White House fact sheet said. "The new way of assessing college choices, with the help of technology and open data, makes it possible for anyone -- a student, a school, a policymaker or a researcher -- to decide what factors to evaluate."
Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times, Jennifer C. Kerr of The Associated Press and Michael Riley of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/13/2015