The New College Scorecard and Low Income Students: Examples of Missed Opportunities

Let’s begin with good news. The new College Scorecard was supposed to help first generation, low income, Pell eligible students find their way to a college or university where they will find success and experience a good fit, have affordable tuition, room and board, encounter academic quality and develop career enhancing skills. That’s an admirable goal. We most assuredly need more diverse students to progress to and through post-secondary education.

Here’s the other piece of good news. While the current version of the College Scorecard fails at achieving the above goal (and other goals too), it can be fixed because at least some of the needed data are available on the site now. And, while there are also important data points that are missing, improvements are still well within the realm of the possible.

To see how the Scorecard works for first gen, low income students, one needs to put oneself literally in their shoes. One needs to navigate the Scorecard through their lens, considering the information that we anticipate that they know and do not know (including from existing experience and accompanying literature), the questions they might have and the concerns they might voice or harbor silently. We also need to recognize the heterogeneity among these students, meaning that we need to recognize for the site to serve multiple pathways.

Surely, a detailed study of the actual user experience with the Scorecard would be optimal and I assume such a study will be conducted. In the meanwhile, a “surrogate” for these students – me – will road test the site using information available to one hypothetical student who is a stand-in for many but not all students. And yes, this is not the same as actual student users driving thru the site.

One recent thoughtful article did showcase the views of a handful of high schoolers at Florida public high school who were trying the site for the first time. In short, they liked the ease of the site but for them, it raised many questions in addition to providing some answers. And, we don’t know the profile of these participating students, so it is hard to gauge the universality of their observations.

I want to make raise two caveats from the get-go. No Scorecard, even a wonderful one, is a substitute for visiting campuses. Campus visits give you the “gestalt” of a place and no website, virtual tour, quantitative or qualitative data can substitute for the “real” experience – seeing the people, closing your eyes and imagining yourself on the campus, sensing the “vibe” to use a word from my generation. When I read about private airlines that offer families special flights to visit a pre-set number of colleges across the nation, I cringe. Low income students and many of the school counselors who advise them will not be able to visit some of the very colleges they should and could know about and in the case of students, attend. That is part of why many first gen students stay “close” to home. Yes, there are cultural explanations and cost considerations too.

What follows is a search based on the following hypothetical student: a first generation, low income, Pell eligible female student from the Caribbean with uncertain academic interests (perhaps psychology), SAT scores in the 400’s who lives with her grandparents in Brooklyn, NY. She attends a large public high school where she is a junior with grades that range from B to D, depending on the subject matter and her grandmother’s health (which places time demands on her). She plays a wide range of sports and enjoys watching sports on television.

Now, standing in the shoes of this hypothetical student, what happens when we access the Scorecard? Some of my earlier criticisms of the Scorecard, appearing in earlier pieces, are not being repeated here; so, this is a list of “new” observations.

1. Start with this: the site’s choice architecture assumes a fair amount of knowledge. And the one phrase that is visible early on the first page and should be clickable immediately is not actually clickable, namely comparing schools. The first searchable choice box on Page One relates to identifying programs in which the user (prospective student) has interest. A wee yipes. Many high school students do not even know what programs colleges offer, let alone what their own interests are. For many students, college is where they identify their passion. Students do not know, in all likelihood, that some programs have universality but others are only available in certain institutions. In reality, other than for specialized programs, many students do not enter the door of higher education with a major. Might these choices be re-ordered? How was the order picked in the first instance? It is not alphabetical. Is it order of importance? Our hypothetical student, if she picked psychology program at a four year institution, would see the names of 1,462 institutions. Solution: Rethink the ordering of the initial listing of search terms.

2. Suppose our hypothetical student wanted to find a school in or around New York City or some other major city, places where many first gen students reside. Try getting that search to go. The choices are done by state and region; it asks for zip codes to narrow the search but there are dozens of zips for New York City. If you put in NY State, you get too many schools; since only one zip is permitted, searching that way is too narrow. Hum. Solution: Why not add big urban centers to the list of location choices, something that would be especially helpful for kids seeking the urban experience?

3. Suppose our hypothetical student knew the name of one college – Marymount, the institution from which her favorite teacher graduated. She can find this institution easily if she knows it is in New York but if not, four colleges with the word “Marymount” appear.   And, if you didn’t know the exact name and typed Mount Mary, you’d get other colleges.

Let’s assume she actually finds the college for which she was searching: Marymount Manhattan College. Now, this is a college in the middle of Manhattan but the map shows it to be in Weehawken, which is actually in New Jersey. The wee symbol – a box with a line across it and the words national average – is barely noticeable and its meaning to a first gen student is not exactly clear (not to me either initially). Solution: The site needs to show the relevance of the black lines across the fields of color and how they enable comparisons.

4.  Now, if our hypothetical student scans down all the information related to Marymount, what is it that she can tell? Would she be able to tell that this institution, compared to many others, has many high income families and that the institution has a strong focus on the arts, journalism and communications? Would she know to check into housing options and housing guarantees, given that the college is literally in the heart of NYC, the map notwithstanding? Would she consider the costs and safety of commuting?

 If our student looked at the college’s website (which is hyperlinked) and saw at housing options, she would learn (not easily by the by) that only 700 of the college’s approximately 1700 students live on campus. And, importantly, there is no guarantee of housing after the first year. Well, that might be ok if you are from the area and are capable of living at home, but if you come from a distance, this could be an issue. And, this raises the unanswered and unraised question of whether our hypothetical student wants a residential or non-residential college experience. That whole issue is not even touched on in the Scorecard. And, there are vast differences between “commuter colleges” and “residential colleges.” Solution: Might new nomenclature be added? Think about the four designations (icons) under each college’s name: 4 year; private; city; small. What about adding something related to whether an institution is residential; commuter; or partially residential?

5.  Oh, by the way, what if, like our hypothetical student, you were interested in sports? Best as I can tell, there is nothing on the Scorecard related to athletics. That’s a big omission. Now, if our student were interested in athletics and saw nothing on the Scorecard and hyperlinked to the Marymount site itself, it appears that athletics does not play a sizable role at the college; there is no athletic department listed even. To be sure, there is dance. Solution: At least reference sports somewhere and perhaps add it as an icon (see above), like NCAA DI sports, to the existing list of identifiers.

 Let me stop there. I think the overarching point is clear: at each juncture of the search done by our hypothetical student, there are gaps and knowledge asymmetries. Remember, I am not even talking here about the accuracy of the date presented; I am referencing navigational capacity.   In a later piece, I will try another search, also for a first gen low income student with the names of two colleges he thinks he wants to attend. We can see how that search goes. In the meanwhile, applaud the possible but see its limitations, most especially those that actually can be fixed. Yes, solutions exist.