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Last year Google entered the college search business, and the Washington D.C. policy community has had nothing but good things to say about it. Punch in any university on your smartphone and a beautiful display of menus and easy-to-read statistics instantly appear. Graduation rates, tuition prices, student loan repayment rates, and expected earnings are all at your fingertips.
This feature runs on the US Department of Education’s College Scorecard and other government data. But Google’s college search has a major blind spot that its champions have either failed to notice or aren’t willing to call out: it only covers traditional four-year colleges.
Even worse, community colleges appear like any other business rather than institutions of higher education. For-profit colleges are also given short shrift. In other words, Google’s search-display magic is reserved for students interested in just one part of our higher education sector — the one that mostly caters to traditional, full-time students seeking academic credentials who are often from upper-income households.
Consider the University of Virginia. Google’s feature shows the median earnings of former students ($61,200 ten years out); graduation rates are broken down by full-time and part-time enrollment status; and a range of finance information appears, such as students’ average monthly loan payments ($202), the share of borrowers making progress repaying their debts (89%), and the total cost of attendance annually after grants and scholarships ($19,177).
Compare that with a nearby two-year school, Northern Virginia Community College, which enrolls more than twice as many students as UVA. Nowhere does Google show statistics on student loan repayment, earnings, or graduation rates. Instead, it lists the school’s address, provides links to the Wikipedia page, and notes that NOVA has six campuses. Instead of harnessing its search prowess to pull information from the Department of Education, Google opts to highlight upcoming events at NOVA — even ones not remotely related to the college, such as a Cubs-Brewers baseball watch party.
Many for-profit colleges receive similar treatment. Look up Fortis College, a relatively small for-profit college in Virginia, and there’s no dashboard to be found. While Google provides slightly more information than it did for the community college — namely, the college’s tuition and acceptance rates — it still pales in comparison to the detailed information shown for traditional universities.
What could explain such disparate treatment? Maybe the Department of Education’s College Scorecard doesn’t include the same information about community colleges and for-profit universities. In that case, Google is only making use of what data are available.
In fact, the College Scorecard includes identical information for all types of colleges. The Department of Education also appears confident in these data as it displays them all alongside one another in the College Scorecard, as is shown below.
It’s unclear why Google’s dashboard omits the two-year college sector and countless for-profit colleges. Maybe Google didn’t realize there are many types of higher education pathways. Or on a more cynical note, perhaps Google believes that prospective community college and for-profit college students don’t care about this type of information. Ironically, these students could potentially benefit the most from additional information, since community colleges and for-profit colleges have some of the weakest student outcomes.
Fortunately there’s an easy fix. Google already has access to all of the information it needs to include two-year and for-profit schools in its search display. The company simply needs to add it.
Google’s college search feature has a major blind spot that its champions have either failed to notice or aren’t willing to call out: It only covers traditional four-year colleges.
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