The college scorecard at www.whitehouse.gov evaluates colleges in four categories (with a fifth one coming later): three of these categories concern the cost of the school, leaving only the graduation rate to tell prospective students anything about the school’s quality.
As the government’s research shows, this non-corrected graduation rate skews heavily in favor of colleges that admit primarily wealthy, traditional students (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007161.pdf). Thus, the scorecard-system thwarts the president’s goal of helping low-income students succeed in higher education.
We suggest that the scorecard system could indicate the extent to which a university over- or under-performs, given the demographics of its incoming freshmen (for a baseline, see http://www.heri.ucla.edu/).