The Difference Between Aggregate and Detail Reports (3.5 minutes)
This lesson covers the StudentTracker for Colleges & Universities aggregate (summary) and detail (student level) reports and highlights the purpose of each as well as their key similarities and differences. Special attention is given to detail file exclusions.
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Transcript Welcome. The purpose of this tutorial is to explain the difference between aggregate and detail reports in StudentTracker. Institutions participating in StudentTracker for Colleges and Universities or STCU submit request files to the Clearinghouse and receive an STCU reports package. These packages are made up of three reports which you can learn more about in our other tutorials online. Please note that STCU premium subscribers may have an additional report in their package. This tutorial will focus only on the differences between the aggregate and detail reports. Both reports are specific to the students submitted in your request file. The aggregate report is a summary of the school's most commonly attended either first or last by the students matched from your request file. Please note for subsequent enrollment and declined or denied admissions queries it contains the first institution attended and for prior attendance or pending admissions query it contains the most recently attended institution. This does not apply to the cohort query. For more information on what is included on that aggregate or cohort report, please see the cohort query guide. The detail report shows the enrollment and credential information for each student based on the search date and search type in your request file. Please note detail reports exclude blocked records, however, they will be included in the aggregate report numbers. Let's highlight the main differences between these two files. The aggregate report is just a summary of information on institutions attended while the detail report shows information for students in your request file. It's important to understand the detail report will exclude information for students in the following circumstances:
- if blocked for release by an institution,
- if blocked for release by a student,
- if students do not have any records within the selected search window
- or if students were not matched.
The aggregate report is a summary and does not include specific student information. So long as a match was found and there are records for a student within the search window, they will be included in the summary information. Because the aggregate report is just a summary, it does not include more detailed credential and enrollment information. For example, term, institution name, enrollment begin and end dates and enrollment status. However, these may be included in the detail reports despite these differences. Both the aggregate and detail reports are FERPA compliant. For more information about STCU, please see our other tutorials online.
