Is Your College Worth the Price?

When you're in the market for a new car, you read reviews of various makes, visit dealers and go for a few test-drives. You want to know about things like gas mileage, repair costs and resale value. That kind of careful consumerism is exactly what Education Secretary Margaret Spellings would like to bring to the process of picking a college. "We need to make higher education more accountable," says Spellings, "by opening up the ivory towers and putting information at the fingertips of students and families."

Making data more accessible is a major recommendation of a new report from a commission Spellings created to study the future of higher education. With the annual bill at $40,000 for elite private universities, college is a huge investment and a source of enormous future debt. But it's almost impossible for students to compare schools in different states to see which ones are really worth those big bucks. Families generally rely on what they hear from relatives, friends and guidance counselors. Rankings, like U.S. News & World Report's influential survey, say something about how hard it is to get into a school, but little about what happens to students afterward. And the news is often not good: Although nearly two thirds of high-school graduates enroll in college, more than 40 percent drop out. Even those who graduate frequently lack the skills necessary to succeed at work.

Spellings and others would like a national database that discloses things like graduation rates, how well students are educated and how much they earn afterward.