Oregon Senator Ron Wyden recently proposed a bill to the United States Senate that would require colleges and universities to provide prospective students with information about the costs and benefits of attendance. The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act would create a user-friendly website that helps future students determine the real cost of higher education.
The act, proposed to Congress in February, would allow students and their parents to visit one synthesized website to find important information about any public or private American college.
“We all understand higher education is the ticket to success, but it is not always clear what that ticket will cost or where it will take you,” Wyden said at a press conference held at Portland State earlier this month.
The act would make important school-specific data available to students before they make any commitment to a particular university. Statistics like average cost, likelihood of graduation, average amount of debt and time taken to graduate would all be gathered in one easy-to-use website.
“Going to college is more than an education, it is an investment,” Wyden said. “As in any investment, you need information.”
According to Kathi Ketcheson, director of PSU’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning, the majority of this information is already available on PSU’s own website.
“There is a ‘cost calculator’ on the PSU web page; this is federally mandated. Every public university is required to include this on its website,” Ketcheson said in an email. She also said that there are a few existing websites that help students evaluate costs of attendance.
Furthermore, she stated that PSU belongs to the Voluntary System of Accountability, an initiative composed of four-year universities that willingly share institutional information on the Internet.
If passed, Wyden’s bill would be an extension of the 1990 Student Right to Know and Campus Security Act. That act requires universities to disclose graduation and retention rates, availability of financial assistance, campus crime statistics, athletic program participation and other institutional information.
“Universities are also required to post their retention and graduation rates under the Student Right to Know Act. There is also a federal reporting requirement, coordinated by the financial aid department, that includes employment outcomes for some fields of study,” Ketcheson explained.
Social science senior Emily Perkins said that when she was choosing between colleges to attend, she mostly considered location, convenience and cost. Perkins said she wasn’t aware that PSU currently publishes institutional statistical data on the university’s website, but she does think it’s important for prospective students to have access to it.
“I do think information is important. Especially now that [higher] education is becoming more of an expectation than simply a leg up, I think it would be helpful for people to see how colleges stack up against each other,” Perkins said.
According to Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Jacqueline Balzer, PSU recently launched a new webpage that is essentially a road map for prospective students. The new webpage, located under the “About PSU” tab on the main site, provides links and information about numerous departments and services PSU offers. Lists of academic programs, information about campus security, refund policies, graduate employment records and more have been consolidated on a single page.
“We feel it is important to share this type of information with students and families,” Balzer wrote in an email.
The main difference between Wyden’s proposed bill and the 1990 Act is that Wyden’s bill would create a singular unified website to house all the information required by the 1990 act and more. Wyden’s bill wouldn’t greatly affect PSU because the university has already made public a majority of the information required by the bill.
“During the recruitment and admissions process, we send several communications to students about academic programs, costs and decisions they need to make,” Balzer said.