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Taxpayers spend $140 billion a year on grants and loans for higher students. Our friends at Decode DC ask: Is the investment paying off?

The respond is that it's impossible to tell, thanks to limits on accountability, many of them embedded into constabulary and fiercely defended by the college-education lobby. While universities accept to report their graduation rates, there's no centralized place to find out whether low-income students who receive financial aid exercise—on an institution-by-institution basis, or nationally.

This coverage comes against the backdrop of the administration watering downwardly its proposed rating system, which would have immune students and their families to obtain information like this and compare campuses. Colleges and universities contend that the virtually efficient way of tracking graduation rates threatens student privacy.

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Jon Marcus writes and edits stories about, and helps plan coverage of, higher educational activity. A quondam magazine editor, he has written for The Washington Postal service, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired, Medium.com...