The Hechinger Report – Jon Marcus
“A powerful foundation has joined the chorus calling for more accurate information to measure what Americans are getting for the hundreds of billions of dollars per year they invest in higher education. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is pushing for clear and comprehensive information to be made easily available to consumers, taxpayers and policymakers about such things as how many students graduate, whether they get jobs, and access to universities and colleges by ethnic and racial minorities. In a report, the foundation points out vast shortcomings in the existing system by which the federal government collects statistics about universities and colleges—partly the result of resistance from higher-education lobbyists to what is known as “student-unit” or “student-level” recordkeeping, which would allow individual students to be tracked from enrollment through graduation.”(more)