Accountability in Higher Education
Students, parents, and the larger college or university community are demanding that you be more transparent about graduation rates, the admitted class profile, and the success of your alumni. In fact, the U.S. Federal Government is requiring institutions of higher education to be publicly accountable for outcomes and results.
IPEDS is changing to reflect this new reality. Accrediting agencies and associations are responding to the call with new accountability reporting systems. ASR Analytics provides a framework for reporting to these entities, but with a twist...
Introducing the Accountability Framework for Higher Education
With so many accountability initiatives in higher education it is becoming increasingly difficult for Institutional Research departments to keep up. Talented analysts are spending exorbitant amounts of time extracting often duplicate information to make it available for accountability initiatives such as:
- IPEDS
- Common Data Set
- U-CAN - University and College Accountability Network
- College Portrait - Voluntary System of Accountability
- Achieving the Dream
- Access to Success
ASR provides a framework for your institution to deliver the required data in the specified formats for these initiatives while at the same time making it available for institutional decision making.
Problem
Accountability initiatives and systems are looking for aggregate or summary information. Things like retention and graduation rates, admission percentages, and average financial aid awards for many student populations. The student information systems that capture these data are transactional and not designed for this type of summary reporting.
As a result, institutional researchers and administrators are forced to write query after query; add up the summary result, and cut and paste the result into the file format required by the accountability initiative. Frequently, two people will attempt the same query and end up with different results. Even if they do get the same result, it may not be able to be reproduced the following year or term. This results in much wasted effort that would be better spent on analysis.
What’s worse, is that this data is highly useful for decision making, yet it is not saved in a manner that is conducive to strategic reporting.
Solution
ASR’s Accountability Framework for Higher Education solves these problems by laying a foundation for strategic reporting using the same data required of these accountability systems. Even better; we deliver it through the business intelligence platforms already in use at your institution. (Don’t have a business intelligence platform? We can help you with that too).
ASR’s solutions for accountability include:
- Automated extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of your transactional data into appropriate reporting data marts.
- Highly visual and interactive reports to match those of the accountability system.
- Customized scripts to produce required data extracts based on your unique ‘business rules.’
- Separate data marts that make the accountability data available for strategic reporting and institutional decision making.
Other options include:
- Dashboards to track key performance indicators against institutional goals.
- Models to determine key drivers for retention and/or recruitment to help predict enrollment and forecast future resource needs.
Contact us to learn more about our Accountability solutions: