Since NAICU unveiled U-CAN last September with 600 private colleges and universities on board, the number of participating institutions has grown by 19 percent. NAICU has 953 member schools, which enroll 85 percent of all students attending private colleges and universities in America.

With a design driven by consumer focus groups, the U-CAN site has been lauded by students, parents, college admissions counselors and policymakers for its rich and consumer-relevant information and its colorful, user-friendly format. Since U-CAN went live, more than 358,000 users have visited the site, viewing more than 850,000 pages.

NAICU also announced that U-CAN "2.0" will be launched in mid-September, improving on a college search tool already noted for providing objective, comparable data on the factors that matter most to consumers. Those include such factors as student costs broken out by category, tuition trends, admission and graduation rates, average student aid packages and average debt at graduation.

Site enhancements will make it among the most searchable Web sites of its kind, and the improved site will also provide guidance on how to prepare academically and financially for college, find the right fit, and navigate the admissions and financial aid processes. NAICU is exploring the development and addition of a new element that would allow consumers to see how colleges are spending their tuition dollars.

NAICU serves as the unified national voice of independent higher education. With more than 1,000 member institutions and associations nationwide, NAICU reflects the diversity of private, non-profit higher education in the United States. They include traditional liberal arts colleges, major research universities, church- and faith-related institutions, historically black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, single-sex colleges, two-year colleges, and schools of law, medicine, engineering, business, art, and other professions.