AEI education expert Mark Schneider and Lu Michelle Yin explore the harmful consequences of low community college graduation rates and propose policy solutions in the latest edition of Education Outlook.

The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

President Barack Obama has been on a tour of college campuses touting proposals to lower student loan repayments for college graduates. He hopes to rekindle the enthusiasm of young voters, who in 2008 favored him over Sen. John McCain by more than two-to-one.

Ironically, these same young Americans...

We deserve accurate statistics on the payoff for attending a college.

Community colleges are subsidized through direct state and local government appropriations and through student grant programs. Every student who drops out represents an investment loss by the taxpayers in that student's uncompleted education.

Armed with better data, the theory goes, students and parents will vote with their wallets, putting pressure on low-performing colleges to improve while avoiding direct government intervention.  But these provisions are not working nearly as well as intended.

In their new research study, AEI's Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider used an experimental survey to test whether providing graduation-rate information affects the way parents choose between two public, four-year colleges in their state.

The 30 schools on the Chronicle's list are distinguished by high compensation received by the university presidents. One might expect them to have led their students to top academic performance, but this isn't the case.