By Libby A. Nelson
WASHINGTON — A proposal to require states to collect and disseminate data on college graduates’ salaries seems to be attracting the rarest of accolades in Congress: bipartisan approval. For colleges, concerned about growing federal regulation, it’s cause for concern.
In a speech laying out a wide-ranging Republican agenda on domestic issues last week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor mentioned few specific legislative proposals. But a rare name-drop happened in his handful of sentences about higher education, when Cantor praised a bill introduced by Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, that would enlarge state-level data collection efforts to link graduates’ salaries back to their colleges and majors.
That bill, the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, was first introduced a year ago. Until Cantor’s endorsement, it seemed consigned to the same fate as most of the other higher education bills in the Senate: a quick death in committee. The imprimatur of the House’s second-highest ranking Republican suggests that transparency — requiring colleges to provide more information on what students will pay for a college education and what they can expect in return, from monthly student loan payments to postgraduate salaries — could become a rare point of accord between Congressional Republicans and the Obama administration.
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