Metro State is one of more than 300 colleges and universities throughout the country participating in College Portrait, a Web site launched Sunday that provides prospective students with consistent, comparable and transparent information for prospective undergraduate students.

College Portrait is a product of the Voluntary System of Accountability project (VSA), a partnership between the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC).

“To some extent, the creation of VSA is a response to the U.S. Department of Education Spellings Report,” says Rich Wagner, interim associate vice president of Academic Affairs.

Issued September 2006, the report, entitled “A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education,” called for substantial changes by colleges and universities to increase the accessibility, affordability and accountability of higher education.

“Various institutions of higher education wanted to be proactive about the Spellings Report and the answer was College Portrait, which provides a common way for colleges to present information that can be readily compared.”

Wagner, along with Institutional Research Coordinator Ellen Boswell and Director of Web Communications Chris Mancuso, is part of a working group that has been tackling all the data and the tools required for reporting the data. “The lion’s share of the work has fallen to Ellen,” Wagner says, adding that other departments also assisted, such as Student Services and Assessment and Testing.

All participating institutions agreed to implement the VSA in three phases, the last of which will occur by 2011. “It is a work in progress,” Wagner says.

Using a common Web reporting template, College Portrait provides information on the characteristics of institutions and their student body including cost of attendance, graduation rates, degree offerings, student engagement with the learning process and core educational outcomes. The information selected to be presented was identified and evaluated based on input from student/family focus groups, feedback from the higher education community and research on higher education.

“College Portrait is designed to be a trustworthy source of reliable data for prospective students, families, policymakers and the general public,” said Peter McPherson, president of NASULGC. “It becomes the only voluntary accountability program that includes student learning outcomes and easily comparable information for a majority of the nation’s public four-year colleges and universities.”

Wagner said he believes that the site will highlight Metro State as a best value in comparison to the other institutions. “Our class size as compared to other colleges will also put us in a strong, competitive situation,” he adds.

The Web site, http://www.collegeportraits.org/, provides an overview of the College Portrait report and an interactive map with links to all participating four-year colleges and universities. Metro State is participating in the project, as are Colorado State University, the University of Colorado and the University of Northern Colorado.

In conjunction with the College Portrait project, Metro State developed its own College Portrait Web site, which provides the standardized portrait as well as links to other pertinent information about the College. The Metro State College Portrait Web site, at http://www.mscd.edu/collegeportrait/index.shtml, is currently accessible through Metro State’s prospective student and About Metro State  Web sites.