A consumer education and accountability strategy
benefiting students and the higher education community

Transparency by Design is a groundbreaking initiative that will assist adult learners in becoming educated consumers of distance education. The initiative's members comprise a consortium of regionally-accredited, adult-serving, distance education institutions. The Transparency by Design initiative chose WCET, a division of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, to provide quality assurance on the standards of data reporting jointly developed by the member institutions.

In August 2009, WCET launched the website, College Choices for Adults, which gives adult learners new information to accelerate and better inform their decision making process. In order to align their personal and professional goals with their educational opportunities, adults seek to answer the question, "What will I learn?"  This information, in the form of program-level learning outcomes, measurements and results, has been difficult to find in the past but is the focal point of the initial release of this website.  The website will continue to grow over time, adding new features, new data (such as progress rates and student satisfaction data), and new institutions and programs.

In late 2008, Lumina Foundation for Education provided a grant to WCET to fund the development of the Transparency by Design initiative and the College Choices for Adults website. The Transparency by Design initiative supports Lumina Foundation for Education's mission to ensure that 60 percent of Americans are college-educated by 2025.

Transparency by Design can be traced back to the Presidents' Forum first held by Excelsior College in 2004. The Presidents' Forum is a collaboration of regionally accredited, adult-serving institutions and programs that have embraced the power and potential of distance education. The mission of the Presidents' Forum is to advance the recognition of innovative practice and excellence in serving adult students.