CECU Commends the President’s Commitment to Common Outcome Metrics for All Programs at All Schools

Steve Gunderson, President & CEO of Career Education Colleges & Universities issued the following statement:
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“There are two facts of life related to postsecondary education. First, every student and family deserve to know the success or failure of every program/college they are considering. Second, there are good and bad programs across all schools in all sectors. We should join now in a bi-partisan consensus to collect and share maximum transparency of such outcomes. And then, any school with bad program outcomes should improve or drop the program. It’s that simple.

“There will come a time when it is appropriate for policy makers to consider additional guard rails against enrollment in poor performing institutions. Such action might include denying access to title IV for participation in poor performing programs. But first we must get the metrics right. We need to agree on both the appropriate metrics and the calculation of such outcomes. This is a critical first step, and we commend the administration for beginning this important conversation.

“That said, we encourage the administration and/or the Congress to go beyond median earnings and loan debt. Prospective students need to know completion/graduation rates. And they also need to know the average time to completion. For example, our nation’s veterans want to move quickly from the battle field to a career. They deserve to know how long that process will be at different schools.
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“We continue to call upon the Congress to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. The current act is over 10 years old. Everything has changed in higher education except its foundational law. With the administration’s executive order, we call upon the Congress to discard those metrics from a previous era and join in the proper development and use of new outcome measures for all programs at all schools.”