Why was the College Portrait Created? College Portrait is a source of basic, comparable information about public colleges and institutions presented in a common, user-friendly format. It is designed to be trustworthy source of reliable data for prospective students and their families.
Who is the intended audience for College Portrait? The primary audience for College Portrait is prospective students and their families. Other secondary audiences include: governing board members, legislators, policy-makers, education researcher, and college and university faculty and staff.
How were the components of College Portrait selected? The College Portrait includes information identified by prospective college students and their families, the higher education community, and policy-makers as important when comparing colleges and universities. More than 80 higher education leaders from 70 public colleges and universities helped with the development of the College Portrait.
What is the difference between VSATM and College Portrait? The Voluntary System of AccountabilityTM, (VSA) is a program created by public colleges and universities to provide greater accountability to higher education stakeholders through accessible, transparent, and comparable information. College Portrait is the name of the 5-page report designed to present the VSA data to the public. The VSA and College Portrait are sponsored by two nonprofit organizations in Washington DC – the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC). AASCU and NASULGC represent more than 500 public colleges and universities across the United States. Participation in the VSA is voluntary; however, over half of these 500 institutions – nearly 300 at last count – have decided to join the VSA project. Each of these colleges and universities will be posting their College Portraits within the next few months.
Why are College Portraits not available for all colleges and universities that are VSA participants? Institutions are continually signing up to be part of the VSA program and will generally post their College Portraits within 3 to 6 months of their original sign up date.
Why do some College Portraits have missing data? Because some data items are more difficult to collect than others, a few items have longer timelines and will be posted within 1 to 4 years.
Will the contents of the College Portrait website be updated? We are at the very beginning stages of the website. It will continue to grow and improve as institutions update and complete their College Portrait and we gather feedback from users.