I was recently asked by a colleague of mine to guest lecture at a seminar in higher education administration that he teaches. I’ve done this before and always enjoyed it, and I like to think I have something worth sharing after all those years in institutional research (including my recent experience on the consulting side). His students are refreshingly idealistic: they really aspire to have an impact on the way higher education works and how it benefits society.

But they often also have a big impact on me. That was the case in my most recent experience.

During the seminar, we discussed the various accountability efforts that are currently underway in higher ed, such as the College Portrait component of the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) effort at land-grant colleges and universities, and the University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN) among independent colleges and universities.

These efforts are, at bottom, about providing greater transparency to education consumers (prospective students and their parents) about the quality of the experience and learning offered by various schools. Both do this through access to information that consumers formerly lacked. But they differ in how they incorporate outcomes measures, and thus in their ability to demonstrate value and quality in the nuanced, "deep dive" kinds of ways that some consumers are seeking.

Both the College Portrait and U-CAN include information on the profile of their students (SAT/ACT scores, demographics and geography), academic programs, student life, and financial aid and cost-to-attend. They both include basic outcomes data on retention and graduation rates. They differ greatly, however, in their approach to student learning outcomes and measures of student engagement. The College Portrait includes both student engagement measures (based on the NSSE findings) and student learning outcomes measures (based on CLA or similar tests), while U-CAN includes neither.

As a result, the College Portrait comes closer to the kind of outcomes-based assessment that would let consumers quantitatively compare one school’s student outcomes to another’s. The interest in that kind of comparison has some of the hallmarks of a consumer revolution, a nascent demand to know what you’re actually buying with those huge tuition checks.

But during our discussion in the classroom, one student looked puzzled. She eventually asked a great question, one that should have come up earlier. Do prospective college students, or even their parents, really use these sources of information when they’re deciding where to apply or, ultimately, what college to attend?

I hesitated, thinking of my own experience as the parent of one current college student and one high school student. I also mentally ran through my many friends who have recently grappled with the daunting process of college admissions or are in the midst of it now. I had to answer her honestly: “Not to my knowledge.”

In fact, I can’t think of a single friend or fellow parent I know who works outside of higher education and is even aware of these accountability initiatives and the information they provide about colleges and universities. Nor have they been mentioned at any college admissions event or seminar that I have attended as a parent, although I have heard references to the NSSE and CLA.

So what’s going on here? What is the purpose of these initiatives and where do they take us? And how do they relate to what consumers want? Perhaps they were born in the context of the Spellings Commission and the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, along with a growing demand for accountability. Perhaps they serve a kind of transitional purpose, demonstrating greater transparency while acknowledging that the debate about appropriate measures of student learning outcomes and student engagement remains an open one, with much still to be researched and understood before there is anything approaching a consensus in the higher ed community.

In the meantime, I wonder where this leaves consumers. Are we at the beginning of a consumer revolution that will prove to have legs, or merely at the tail end of one that has already run its course?

This last question was discussed in the seminar and was still being discussed as I left the class. Perhaps it will become the topic of a seminar paper or two. Certainly it's worth thinking about further in the education community, so I invite your comments below. Let's get a conversation going. (This is my first blog post, so your thoughts are especially welcome!)