From The Columbus Dispatch

By  Encarnacion Pyle

The Columbus Dispatch Monday March 5, 2012 4:39 AM

If you’re a high-school senior or a parent of one, you know that sifting through all the information about college costs can be next to impossible.

Ohio has “portraits” of its public universities that allow students to compare schools by price, financial aid, student success and other key factors. But that might be one of the state’s best-kept secrets.

“It’s not something I’ve heard about,” said Jeff Stahlman, a counselor at New Albany High School.

Jim Bauer, a counselor at Dublin Coffman High School, said he just learned about the site and plans to tell students and parents about it.

“I think it is a great starting point for people going through the college-selection process,” he said.

President Barack Obama recently called for a national “college score card” to help prospective students make an informed decision about where to apply. He would like the score cards to include a school’s costs and graduation rate, as well the student loan debt and earnings potential of its graduates.

Former Ohio Chancellor Eric D. Fingerhut just wanted to give prospective students as much information as possible to make easy comparisons among schools. So in 2008, he asked Ohio’s public schools to join a national voluntary effort that was reporting college costs and academic effectiveness through a common web report: the College Portrait.

The portraits seek to produce comparisons — not ratings — to help prospective students find the right fit. Campus administrators often complain that rankings by such groups as U.S. News & World Report use flawed methodologies that prompt schools to skew their priorities to perform better in the areas ranked.

“This is really an effort to create a fact-based system of accountability for parents,” Fingerhut said.

Ohio was the second statewide school system to join.

“Although it was another thing for us to do, it was the right thing to do,” said Michael Williford, the associate provost for institutional research at Ohio University.

Ron Abrams, the executive director of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges, plans to encourage the state’s public two-year schools to take part in a new national accountability system that is being created just for them. Community colleges have long argued that they are different from four-year universities and should be judged on different measures.

They are often criticized, for example, for having low graduation and transfer rates. But the schools complain that the federal graduation rate doesn’t count what happens to part-time students or account for people who are taking classes for personal enrichment or to satisfy a job-training requirement.

“The profiles need to be different because we often serve a different kind of student,” Abrams said.

State officials said they’ve created an easier-to-find website for Ohio’s public colleges and universities called OhioHigherEd.org. They’ve also added several features, including a portal just for students where they can find information about planning, applying and paying for college.

The college portraits are there. So is a map of all the state campuses that includes mini-profiles, which attracted 1,600 unique visitors last month, said Kim Norris, spokeswoman for the Ohio Board of Regents.

Visitors can also chat live with a representative of the University System of Ohio or get a ballpark estimate of what they would spend to attend a particular school by using the “net price calculator.” The U.S. Department of Education ordered all schools to place the calculators on their websites to let students see an approximate cost after grants and scholarships are taken into account.

The sticker price for most colleges is relatively easy to find, but students usually don’t receive individualized information about financial aid until after they apply and are accepted, said Pauline Abernathy, the vice president of the Institute for College Access and Success.

The Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have teamed up to create a one-page financial aid “shopping sheet.” The idea is to provide “clear, comparable and consumer-friendly” information that will help students and families better understand the amount of financial aid they qualify for so they can compare schools before deciding where to enroll, Abernathy said.

“The bottom line is, students and families need better information than is available today,” she said.

epyle@dispatch.com