“Since the President took office, the Administration has worked to increase Pell Grants by more than $1,000 a year, created the new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college, capped student loan payments to 10 percent of monthly income, and laid out an ambitious agenda to keep college affordable. We have focused on improving college performance, promoting innovation and competition that can lead to breakthroughs on cost and quality, and helping students and families manage their student loan debt after college. As a key part of this plan, the President directed the U.S. Department of Education to develop and publish a new college ratings system by the 2015-16 school year that would expand college opportunity by recognizing institutions that: excel at enrolling students from all backgrounds, focus on maintaining affordability, and succeed at helping all students graduate. In response, the Department set out to design a ratings system that is clear, fair, and focused on a few key critical measures of institutional performance, while accounting for the diversity and complexity of the nation’s rich system of higher education. That said, many of the factors that contribute to a high quality postsecondary education are intangible, not amenable to simple and readily comparable quantitative measures, and not the subject of existing data sources that could be used across all institutions. Foremost among these are learning outcomes, which are central to understanding the value of an education but vary widely across programs and institutions and are communicated in many different ways. For many reasons—including the desire for simplicity of the ratings system, institutional autonomy and differences, and lack of shared approaches and data—it seems preferable at this time to concentrate on the core data elements addressed above and to allow institutions to provide additional information to prospective students as discussed below.”