It continues to be difficult for parents and students to make informed choices about colleges and majors. Currently, underemployment and unemployment are high for new college grads, and many students have no idea about typical outcomes for the colleges and majors that they are considering. This information is particularly important to lower income, and less educated families. These families are less likely to understand the importance of choice of major or choice of school on their financial prospects.
What is needed is a standard and comparable Monroney sticker of information that all schools are required to disclose to all prospective students for each major. Colleges should be required to track, and provide transparency to, placement and salary information for the school, and by major. The current opacity / misleading data leads to a significant disconnect between what many students imagine they will do when they graduate, and what they will actually do. That disconnect prevents informed decision making.
There is no good reason that colleges should not be required to collect employment data, and provide potential students with clear, standardized, and comparable information, so students can make informed decisions.
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