Data, Evidence, and Information

The Department of Education recently released a new, more user-friendly version of its College Scorecard website, which is an important consumer resource that provides key information about college costs and student outcomes. Alongside improvements to the website’s user interface, including features that let students more easily compare different institutions, federally...

College choices are among the most consequential decisions individuals make in their lifetimes. Students are entitled to information that meets five principles: simple, salient, comparable, timely, and trusted. Consumer Information in Higher Education describes how research informs these five key principles and recommends improvements to three key consumer information tools in...

Over forty organizations representing students, colleges, scholarship providers, education advocates, veterans, consumers, civil rights advocates, and the business community write in support of the Understanding the True Cost of College Act. The common-sense solutions offered in the Understanding the True Cost of College Act are low-hanging fruit: a uniform financial aid offer...

This issue brief explores how colleges and universities can best use data to help drive student success and offers recommendations to both schools and policymakers. While data-driven evidence is a critical tool for colleges, building a culture of continuous improvement and finding the resources to implement success strategies are equally integral to realizing improvements in...

We don’t ask consumers to purchase a car without knowing in advance how much it will cost them, their options for paying for it, and how well it typically performs, but this is precisely the untenable ask we make of students deciding where to go college and how to pay for it. Three bills introduced today by Senators Grassley (R-IA), Smith (D-MN), and Ernst (R-IA), one of which...

Report details existing requirements that govern the calculation and provision of post-college employment metrics, documents weaknesses in existing data, and recommends federal and state policy changes to support comparable, accurate, accessible information for measuring post-college employment outcomes.