Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

RICHMOND, Ind. — Earlham College is pleased to be a part of a national effort beginning today to supply prospective students and their families with unbiased information about institutions of higher learning. The Web-based University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN), a project of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), of which Earlham is a member, was launched this morning in Washington, D.C.

More than 500 independent colleges and universities participated in the U-CAN launch by providing institutional profiles containing comparable data and targeted links to individual Web sites for detailed information on specific aspects of an institution. U-CAN, which can be found at www.ucan-network.org, is designed to convey concise, consumer-friendly, searchable information on individual private colleges in a common format. The information provided in the institutional profiles is derived from the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS survey and the Common Data Set.

President Doug Bennett says Earlham is "committed to be a college showing leadership in matters of accountability, transparency and public disclosure."

"NAICU's U-CAN marks a new beginning in making useful information about colleges and universities available to prospective students, their families and others with an interest in knowing more about where high-quality post-secondary education can be pursued in the United States," says Earlham President Douglas C. Bennett, a national leader in calling for more accountability and transparency in the presentation of data. "At Earlham, we are proud to have been involved in the development of U-CAN from the very beginning."

U-CAN is the first national consumer information tool developed by colleges and universities — either private or public. For the first time, hundreds of institutions are working together to actively collect and provide consumer information directly to the public. With the launch of U-CAN, these colleges are responding to intense calls from Congress, government agencies and consumers for greater openness and clarity about the comparability of data.

NAICU says that their site was not developed to compete with publications that rank colleges and universities, such as U.S. News & World Report, but Earlham's Bennett finds this data presentation a refreshing change from the reputational surveys and arbitrary rankings of which he has been a vocal and harsh critic.

"At Earlham, we are committed to making public, in a professional and responsible manner, all the information we have that may be useful to prospective students, for purposes of college choice, and to the general public, for purposes of improving higher education. We are committed to be a college showing leadership in matters of accountability, transparency and public disclosure," says Bennett.

The in-depth information included in the college and university profiles covers admissions, enrollment, academics, student demographics, graduation rates, common fields of study, transfer of credit policy, accreditation, faculty information, financial aid, campus life and student housing, safety, class size and more. U-CAN's goal is to give consumers easy access to information on average loans at graduation, undergraduate class-size breakdown, and net tuition for hundreds of colleges.

The institutional profiles at the U-CAN site were developed after extensive focus group study with students and parents. According to NAICU's research, it is collecting information that was seen as most useful to focus group participants. Additionally, the profiles were developed to be highly "clickable" with more than two dozen targeted hyperlinks to take students to specific pages of an institution's Web site for more information. These links and narrative descriptions complement the profile's statistical data and provide an opportunity to see what makes each college or university unique.

U-CAN is provided at no charge for users to access and it does not charge colleges to participate. The site accepts no advertising or sponsorships.

For more information on the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, visit www.naicu.edu. To access U-CAN, visit www.ucan-network.org. To learn more about Earlham College, begin your visit at www.earlham.edu/fastfacts.

Contact:
Mark Blackmon, director of media relations
765/983-1256 — E-Mail Mark