The University & College Accountability Network (U-CAN) was unveiled on Sept. 26 at a news conference by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), the largest organization representing nonprofit, private institutions in the United States. U-CAN is the first national consumer information resource created and provided directly to students and parents by colleges and universities themselves. More than 600 private colleges and universities have signed on to participate in the initiative, with over 440 profiles published so far. Another 150 profiles are expected to be published within the week.
Clark President John Bassett, as chair of the U-CAN advisory committee, participated in the conference and launch in Washington, D.C. "U-CAN is an initiative to give students and parents access to basic information about colleges they want to consider in a concise and usable format," he said. "It provides some basis for comparison and also opportunities to learn what is special about each college. We hope it will help direct each student to the colleges that are the best fit for him or her. It is certainly not competing with any other source of information, but we know from the focus groups we gathered that it will be very useful to many students and parents."
U-CAN profiles also include information identified by policy-makers as important for institutional accountability. Congress and the U.S. Department of Education have called for comparable, concise, relevant, and easily accessible information to help the public better evaluate and choose colleges.
The in-depth information included in the college and university profiles covers admissions, enrollment, academics, student demographics, graduation rates, most common fields of study, transfer of credit policy, accreditation, faculty information, class size, tuition and fee trends, price of attendance, financial aid, campus housing, student life, and campus safety. U-CAN will give consumers easy access to information on average loans at graduation, undergraduate class-size breakdown, and net tuition for hundreds of colleges. This information, which comes from the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS survey and the Common Data Set, is often difficult for consumers to find and decipher.