Nearly a year and a half after President Barack Obama tasked his administration with developing a system to rate colleges based on access, affordability and quality, a draft of the proposal was unveiled Friday morning.

Rather than a fully developed rating of colleges – which is expected to come by the 2015-2016 school year – the Department of Education released a description of different types of metrics it is considering using to evaluate schools, and is asking stakeholders to weigh in on which ones it should focus on and how much weight should be given to each measure. Eventually, the administration wants to tie the ratings to the $150 billion in federal aid it doles out annually to colleges, which would require congressional approval.

The administration initially said it would seek to evaluate colleges with similar missions, but college leaders were concerned that four-year and two-year, public and private schools could be lumped together. One thing the department clarified on Friday is that it will at least have separate groupings for two-year and four-year institutions with similar missions.

"As a nation, we have to make college more accessible and affordable and ensure that all students graduate with a quality education of real value," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. "Our students deserve to know, before they enroll, that the schools they've chosen will deliver this value. With the guidance of thousands of wise voices, we can develop a useful ratings system that will help more Americans realize the dream of a degree that unleashes their potential and opens doors to a better life."

Obama first signaled he would seek to hold colleges more accountable for how well their students fare after graduation – and how successfully they get students to graduation – in his 2012 State of the Union address, when he put colleges "on notice," saying he would pressure them to keep tuition down. He also hinted at a push for performance-based college funding models in his 2013 address.

When he first announced the ratings proposal in August 2013, Obama said existing systems of rating and ranking colleges, including those of U.S. News, don't focus on the right measures of quality, and create the wrong idea of what students and families should be looking for in colleges.

Many of the metrics listed by the department – the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, net price by family income, completion rates and loan repayment outcomes – have been discussed at length during a series of negotiated rulemaking discussions held throughout the last several months. It's still unclear, however, which ones will be used and how much weight they will carry in determining school ratings.

"It's clear that it's a work in progress, which proves it's really difficult to rate colleges," says Robert Morse, chief data strategist for U.S. News. "If the government succeeds in getting all the data it says it's going to use in its ratings, that will be a good thing for consumers and prospective college students."

College leaders have urged the department to break down their ratings into institution sub-groups or to take into account student characteristics when measuring outcomes, since student backgrounds vary greatly between institutions.

"The absence of such an adjustment as part of the ratings system could create perverse incentives for institutions to shift away from taking more low-income and first generation students since it could negatively impact a school's rating," said Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, in a statement. "We know that we must continue to expand the number of students who get a college education and earn a degree in order to provide them with lifelong opportunities and ensure the long-term economic success of the nation."

The department also introduced possible measures that have yet to be developed. It said it is also examining whether it's possible to develop a different completion rate that includes the outcomes of part-time and transfer students. Current federal completion rates only count first-time, full-time students. Officials are also considering factoring in graduate student attendance and labor market outcomes – such as employment rates and earnings – to rate colleges.

But using measures could mean more work for colleges because the data would be difficult to collect, says Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.

"This puts a large burden on the institutions," Kelchen says. "Now they have to try to go out and survey their students, both graduates and drop-outs in some cases, to try to figure out what happened with their employment."

The department also suggested it might use a different measure of loan repayment than has been previously discussed. Rather than using student loan borrower default rates – those who fail to make payments for more than 280 days – the department said Friday it would consider measuring the percentage of students repaying their loans on time. That distinction could also be problematic, Kelchen says.

"You can have students who are 90 days late on their loans," Kelchen says. "They’re not in default, but they’re not in current repayment."





Although the structure of the ratings system is still vague, public feedback could give federal officials the opportunity to solidify a ratings system helpful to consumers, said Jennifer Wang, policy director for the youth advocacy group Young Invincibles.

"Right now, prospective students and their families lack access to comprehensive and usable information for one of the biggest financial investments they’ll ever make," Wang said in a statement. "Taxpayers should not write a blank check to schools that fail to serve students. The administration’s college rating system, if done well, will achieve these two goals."

For-profit colleges, on the other hand, were less optimistic.

"If after nearly a year-and-a-half of work, this is all the department can muster, it seems to support the long-held belief by many in higher education that while a college rating system is admirable in theory, it is not feasible to create metrics that definitively assess the quality of so many institutions across the country," said Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, in a statement. "With more than a dozen college-ranking systems currently in existence, the department would be better served to work with Congress to focus on creating policies and producing information that help students, and their families, in making educated decisions about their future."