Alison Griffin, higher education policy advisor to the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce and a senior vice president with Whiteboard Advisors, and James Kvaal, former deputy domestic policy adviser to President Obama and president of The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), write: In the past month, nearly 3 million students graduating from college this year walked across the stage to collect a diploma and a handshake. But millions more students lacked some of the data that might help guide them through one of the most important investment of their lives.  In large part, students don’t have information on things like graduation rates or graduate earnings because federal law imposes severe restrictions on the U.S. Department of Education’s ability to collect student-level information.