Implementation of the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act: What We Can Learn from Experiences with Track Record Disclosure Requirements.

The Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security (SRKCS) Act, voted into law in late 1990, requires cclleges and universities to disclose graduation rates and statistics on campus crime. For institutions offering sub-baccalaureate vocational and technical degrees, the Act supersedes Track Record Disclosure (TRD) Regulations requiring institutions to provide information pertaining to graduation, job placement, and successful completion of licensure and certification tests. Among the problematic aspects of the SRKCS Act are that it does not offer operational definitions of graduation rates, explain how to calculate success rates for incoming transfer students, describe disclosure procedures, or consider the vast research literature on the inputs, processes, and outcomes of the undergraduate experience. Other concerns about the SRKCS requirements relate to their fairness, usefulness, and costs, and the possibilities for misusi"g information and overextending a college's capacity to manipulate the required data. In an effort to determine how successfully different institutions handle such legislative requirements, and to shed light on the feasibility of implementing the SRKCS Act, surveys were sent to 320 two-year institutions nationwide requesting information on their responses to ths previous TRD Regulations. Usable responses were received from 124 institutions for a 39% response rate. The study found that while 56.8% of the responding institutions stated that they were in compliance with the TRD Regulations, responses to individual survey questions revealed that only 31% had actually met the requirements of compliance. In addition, the responding institutions that 'lad calculated graduation rates reported a variety of divergent methodological approaches and interpretations of the wording of the TRD Regulations. (PAA) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************