College Portrait
College Portrait is a source of basic, comparable information about public colleges and universities presented in a user-friendly format. The primary audience for College Portrait is prospective students and their families. Other secondary audiences include: governing board members, legislators, policy-makers, education researcher, and college and university faculty and staff
About the VSA and College Portrait
The Voluntary System of AccountabilityTM, (VSA) is a program created by public colleges and universities to provide greater accountability to higher education stakeholders through accessible, transparent, and comparable information. College Portrait is the name of the 5-page report designed to present the VSA data to the public.
The VSA and College Portrait are sponsored by two nonprofit organizations in Washington DC – the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU).
AASCU and APLU represent more than 500 public colleges and universities across the United States. Participation in the VSA is voluntary; however, over half of these 500 institutions – nearly 300 at last count – have decided to join the VSA project. Each of these colleges and universities will be posting their College Portraits within the next few months.