HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students don’t know what they’re getting when they pick a college — data can fix that.

Most students don’t know how much they’ll pay prior to enrollment, let alone where their predecessors landed jobs after graduation. Were they able to pay off their debt? How meaningful did they find the work they were doing after they had graduated?

Besides slick brochures, television advertisements, and highway billboards, little exists beyond U.S. News and World Report’s often criticized rankings to help students and families make sense of what is often one of the largest investments of their lives.

Hidden for most is the fact that while 88 percent of freshman now say that “getting a good job” is their primary motivation for going to college, only 27 percent of alumni report having a good job upon graduation

Although three-quarters of college presidents believe their institutions should publish data to help “consumers” understand critical outcomes like debt load of graduates or job placement rates, few, if any U.S. institutions willingly offer up such information.

It should, therefore, be no surprise that there is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse among consumers of higher education.

Yeah, but the check has already cleared.