Late last week, the White House released a large amount of data related to college cost, alumni earnings, wealthiest universities, and other information to help students and parents make the best decision when picking a college.
Dependent upon what one is looking for, it’s likely to be found in the College Scorecard.
For example, the scorecard allows for the comparison of two schools on average annual cost, graduation rate, and salary after attending.
While these numbers are top level and are broken down into age and race on the surface, it at least gives a general idea of how affordable, pre and post degree, each school may be.
The University of Central Florida (UCF) has a healthy enrollment of more 50,000 students and cost just a little over $14,000 per year. Compare that to the University of Phoenix in Central Florida and the cost jumps to nearly $19,000 per year.
One is a public university and the other is a for-profit, private institution. Stark difference.
The scorecard also shows that the graduation rate at UCF is 66% while Phoenix barely walks 20% of the students enrolled, which is just 715. Of course there is a major discrepancy in enrollment and cost between the two, but at 715, Phoenix should have a much higher graduation rate than 20%, right?
Other information of importance included in the scorecard is that “[t]he college and universities with the highest earners have pitiful proportions of Black students and Pell recipients, and modest enrollment of women.”
Schools that are the wealthiest and have alumni that earn on average more than $80,000 per year have a 5% enrollment of Black students.
Obviously, diversity in numbers and wealth aren’t to be found on this scorecard.
Providing vital data for parents to look over is great as it may be used a tool to really judge if one school is better than the other for the prospective student. But it also gives a reminder just how far America needs to go in terms of race and economic diversity.
We are still too far behind.
