Five years after the Student-Right-to-Know Act went into effect, there are still concerns about reporting requirements and how they should be compared.
The Student-Right-to-Know Act was adopted five years ago as a way to help families make informed decisions about where a student should attend by requiring colleges and universities to report graduation rates and campus crime statistics. It was written in the wake of the 1986 murder of a Lehigh University student, poor graduation records for athletes, and the widely-acknowledged need for a uniform reporting system. Federally-aided colleges and universities are required to make the information available to students and employees.
But some admissions officials report that current reporting policies leave too much room for interpretation. “Currently, there are a number of concerns over the lack of standards, particularly for admission data,” said Andre L. Bell, vice provost and dean for enrollment at Bentley College in Massachusetts.
“Many of the problems arise when colleges and universities report selectivity information including academic profile data such as SAT score range and class range,” he said. “The big issue is about which population is counted. Do you count everyone regardless of special admission standards? For example, students in the English for Speakers of Other Languages program may not be put into the verbal scores. Everyone is supposed to be in the numbers, but not everyone reports that way.”
Furthermore, Bell said, many institutions are more concerned about image than accurate data, which may mean excluding categories such as special admittance and probationary students. “They may not want them in their average profile,” he said. “The concerns are that some institutions put the best face on the information. The question is `what’s the real information?'”
In the works are new rules that would go part of the way to meeting those concerns by clearly defining many of the gray areas and creating new categories for easier comparisons such as “first-time freshman student.”
Among other things, colleges will be required to find out whether a student who transferred out actually enrolled in another college under new rules promulgated under the Student Right-To-Know Act — rules that college registrars say will strain their already overburdened offices.
