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Mass. To Implement New System For Evaluating State Higher Ed.

Higher education officials in Massachusetts approved a new system Tuesday for evaluating the state's public colleges and universities.

The Vision Project, passed unanimously by the Board of Higher Education, requires all schools to measure and report their performance along a standardized set of metrics, including student success on licensing exams and the number of minority or low-income students who graduate each year.

Higher Education Commissioner Richard Freeland, who designed the project, says schools will use the ratings to improve the quality of the system as a whole.

"We're setting high national leadership aspirations for public higher education for the first time, and we're going to hold ourselves accountable to the public for achieving them," Freeland said.

At the same time the metrics are designed to measure how Massachusetts' education system is tied to the needs of the state economy.

"That vision is that we produce the best educated citizenry and workforce in the nation, and we need to lead the nation in academic research that drives economic development," Freeland said.

The Vision Project will also rank Massachusetts' public higher education system against those in the other 49 states.

This program aired on May 4, 2010. The audio for this program is not available.

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