What colleges does the White House like best?
Just as summer winds down and students return to the classroom, the White House is rolling out a new online tool designed to make the search for the perfect college easier on students and families, using graduate earnings and debt as guides.
"As college costs and student debt keep rising, the choices that Americans make when searching for and selecting a college have never been more important," President Obama said in a video Saturday announcing the resource. "That's why everyone should be able to find clear, reliable, open data on college affordability and value."
Mr. Obama's "College Scorecard" allows the user to sort through higher education institutions based on a variety of statistics, including type of degree, location and size of the school.
But unique to the list compiled by the administration -- versus, for instance, rankings provided by U.S. News and World Report -- is information on graduation rates, average salary of graduates after attending and typical debt totals for undergraduate borrowers.
"Americans will now have access to reliable data on every institution of higher education," the president said. "You'll be able to see how much each school's graduates earn, how much debt they graduate with and what percentage of a school's students can pay back their loans - which will help all of us see which schools do the best job of preparing America for success."
The list, designed with input from students, their families and counselors, also includes information on financial aid and GI Bill benefits for veterans.
The president pointed to the proliferation of competitive college rankings -- which he said gave priority to those that were "rejecting more students" -- as a reason the White House decided to publish its own information index on schools.
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"Many existing college rankings reward schools for spending more money and rejecting more students - at a time when America needs our colleges to focus on affordability and supporting all students who enroll," Mr. Obama said. "That doesn't make sense, and it has to change."
While the scorecard does not specifically rank colleges, it does promote several schools as institutions where students can get the most bang for their buck.
Some schools, like Amherst College, Harvard University or the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, make the list of "23 four-year schools with low costs that lead to high incomes." The catalog uses the average net price for low-income students as its measure of a low cost.
In touting the college scorecard, the president called higher education a prerequisite for economic mobility.
"In an economy that's increasingly based on knowledge and innovation, some higher education is the surest ticket to the middle class," Mr. Obama said. "The country with the best-educated workforce in the world is going to win the 21st century economy. I want that to be America."
And just as Congress returns from its August recess, Republicans are launching fresh attacks against the Iran nuclear deal.
The deal "will leave Iran with the ingredients for a bomb and the infrastructure to build it," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Saturday in a video. "Rather than stopping nuclear proliferation, this puts the Middle East at the starting line of a nuclear arms race."
The House opposed the nuclear accord in a symbolic vote Friday. But the vote won't stop the deal, which lifts economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for a winding down of its nuclear program, given that Democrats in the Senate Thursday blocked the Iran disapproval resolution from advancing.
But that isn't stopping some in the GOP from continuing their attacks on the deal.
"Congress has spent several weeks reviewing this agreement and listening to the American people," McCaul, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman, said. "It is now clear that this deal will not stop a nuclear Iran - but will instead endanger America and our allies for years to come."