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To the editor:
While we know from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's experience that a deathbed wish carries no more weight than any other wish, I can still hope that the College Transparency Act will become law -- sooner rather than later, as Representative Paul Mitchell asked. After working in higher education for roughly 40 years with multiple colleges -- mostly small, private colleges in rural regions -- I have repeatedly been shocked to learn how secretively most of these colleges operate.
Representative Mitchell's major concern was data reflecting outcomes of various programs and colleges. I find that just getting data about enrollment figures is almost impossible. Data from IPEDs is available--but it's three-years old. Data on college websites often report online and onsite enrollments as one. Endowment information, if it can be found, explains little about donors' wishes.
Even though private colleges have to report only minimal information, the strongest colleges are the most open. Berea has a catalog of information available to anyone who wants to know a lot about the college, but the tracking data Representative Mitchell wanted is not normally collected and reported; once a student graduates, Berea may track him or her to determine the kinds of jobs available to their graduates, but, from my experience trying to follow NSF scholarship students after they graduated, I can say that it is not easy to find even those willing to be tracked.
Websites for various higher education associations should include at least basic financial data for the office and funding awarded for various projects and the outcomes of those projects. In many cases, even if data is reported, the reader has to have a code to access it. How did the agenda for the next meeting of the board become confidential? Why can't faculty (and student leaders) attend an occasional meeting of trustees?
My wish is that not only will the College Transparency Act become law -- but that the law will apply to both private and public colleges and universities.
--Alice Brown
President Emerita
Appalachian College Association
