Spellings backs ideas to simplify college choices: Vast student data...

[DeepModem Mom]

collection would be required.

CNN/AP: Spellings backs ideas to simplify college choices
September 26, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Handed a plan to shake up college life in America, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is endorsing some of its key ideas and promising to get moving on them.

Her overarching theme is to make everything about college -- choosing one, affording one, succeeding in one -- easier for families. Parents should be able to shop for a college as simply as they shop for a car, she said, with a clear expectation of what they will get....

***

High on her list is the creation of a massive information system -- a way to judge how colleges and universities are doing in helping students succeed. It would require a vast collection of data on students, with a promise that their privacy will be protected.

The Education Department would work with states and colleges to make that happen, Spellings said Monday, commenting for the first time on a national commission's ideas.

The department would then use the data to overhaul its college Web site. The idea is for people to compare one school to another, right down to the typical salaries of graduates....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/09/26/higher.education.ap/index.html

[OhioChick]

1. Isn't much of this

data compiling already on collegeboard.com?

[sandnsea]

9. Who owns Collegeboard?

Who is going to get the privatized contract to create this database? Especially when what students really need is a centralized application and scholarship process.

[OhioChick]

11. College Entrance Examination Board.........

http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=11468731

[Hissyspit]

18. No, this would go beyond that. Do you trust Bushco to tell the truth in

ANYTHING they do?

[OhioChick]

20. Oh, I know that this would go beyond that.

I was only commenting on "Collegeboard" already having a hell of a lot of information on everyone.

on edit: spelling

[northzax]

2. or, for a lot less money

we could buy everyone a copy of the US News College edition, the WashingtonMonthly college edition and a halfway decent college guide. All would be about as useful.

[tanyev]

3. And then, the government can tell the students what school they

should go to, what field they should study, and what occupation they are best suited for! Won't that be grand?

[bluestateguy]

4. Didn't the Soviet Union do that?

nt

[tanyev]

6. Yes! And look how well that worked out for them.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. This story was covered on NPR's Morning Edition ...

and they kept emphasizing that this was being touted as a reason to introduce STANDARDIZED TESTING at all colleges, just like NCLB in K-12 ... all in all, sounds like one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. We already have the GRE, MCAT, etc. administrated to graduates, we have Barron's and Princeton Guides, the only excuse for this is to HOMOGENIZE colleges and CONTROL the curriculum -- just like NCLB.

K&R; this is very ugly news waiting to happen.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Academia is a thorn in their side -- they're trying to take it over...

as they like to do any of our institutions they can.

[rodeodance]

8. this whole adm. is baut more and more data on everyone. It seems to be

the solution to all problems.

[Anakin Skywalker]

10. Why Not Just Draft Most of Them?

Afterall, this shit War of Terror will go on forever.

[Scooter24]

12. Just wait till this is up and running...

and the Pentagon comes knocking at their door.

[Viking12]

13. What's that I smell?

An unfunded mandate? This is just a backdoor method for the RW anti-intellectuls to try and kill higher ed. They'll drowned us in their expensive paperwork bullshit so we have no resources to use to teach our students.

[silverweb]

14. Bullshit smokescreen

It's just another excuse for comprehensive government data mining and data-base building.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. a promise that their privacy will be protected

This administration is the vilest bunch of evil lying motherfuckers I have ever experienced in my life. They make the Nixon gang look like a bunch of amateurs.

Total Information Awareness is being implemented.

[GeorgeGist]

16. Will they include foreign colleges?

Most american cars suck.

[Hissyspit]

17. They have the exec, legislative and ALMOST the judiciary banches

They have most of the "mainstream" media. Now they are going after the "liberal" bastion of higher ed. Don't be fooled by any of this people. They want to destroy free academia as we know it, the same way they went after PBS. And many in academia, especially administrators, knowing that changes in some paradigms may be needed, of course - you can always try to maximize potentialities, will fall for this crap.

[anotherdrew]

19. "down to the typical salaries of graduates" this is madness

our nation is being run by a generation of mindless fuckwits.