Higher education has gotten a lot of attention during the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign. All three major candidates for the Democratic nomination – former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – have proposed different plans to reduce or eliminate student loan debt at public colleges.
However, the price tags of these plans (at least US$350 billion over 10 years for Clinton’s proposal) will make free college highly unlikely. Republicans, including leading presidential candidates, have already made their opposition quite clear.
But student loan debt is unlikely to go away anytime soon. What is important for now is that students and their families get better information about tuition costs and college outcomes so they can make more informed decisions, especially as the investments are so large.
What Colleges Will Reveal
Although colleges are required to submit data on hundreds of items to the federal government each year, only a few measures that are currently available are important to most students and their families:
First, colleges must report graduation rates for first-time, full-time students. This does a good job reflecting the outcomes at selective colleges, where most students go full-time.
