When Dana Lambert counsels students who plan to major in theater, they usually ask: Will I be able to support myself after college? Yes, it can be done, she tells them — though maybe not at your parents’ standard of living. But with many other families, says Ms. Lambert, a school counselor at West Milford Township High School, in New Jersey, that question never comes up. Should it? The federal government sure seems to think so. One of the most prominent pieces of information on its College Scorecard, the consumer-information website the Obama administration recently revamped as part of its college-accountability push, is the "salary after attending" for each institution. It’s a rather unintuitive data point — counting only federal financial-aid recipients, lumping together graduates and dropouts, and looking at earnings 10 years after initial enrollment — but it does send a signal.

November 18, 2015 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education