Follow along as a four-year institution uses the Postsecondary Data Partnership benchmarking dashboards to research to their completion data in relation to regional accreditation.
Transcript
Sandra is her institution’s Director of Institutional Research.
Today, she’s meeting with Thomas, the Provost, and Nicole, the Director of Enrollment Management, to discuss the institution’s upcoming regional accreditation. Their accreditor requires that the institution:
- report longitudinal changes to its completion rate,
- disaggregates their completions data to identify equity gaps,
- benchmarks their completions data to provide context,
- and uses the resulting data to identify and implement improvement actions.
To begin, Sandra logs into the Postsecondary Data Partnership (or PDP) dashboards and clicks on the Outcomes Institution-level dashboard.
Next, she sets the filters. Because her school is a 4-year institution and use the 150% timeline to assess completion, she changes the “Outcomes at” filter from two years to six years. Because of the six-year lag, Sandra clicks on the “Cohort” filter and removes the years starting with 2015-16. She also changes the “Select Cohort” filter in the bottom left chart to “2014-15.” Now the group is ready to interpret the data.
Looking at the line chart, they see that the institution’s six-year completion rate improved from 57% for the 2011-12 cohort to 61.6% for the 2014-15 cohort.
Then, Sandra applies the Race/Ethnicity dimension to identify equity gaps. Because over 90% of the student body is White, Black or African American, or Hispanic, she applies the Race/Ethnicity filter to reduce the complexity of the line chart. Now, hovering over the 2011-12 cohort, they see that the 6-year completion rate for White students improved from 70% to 72.2%, which was a 2.2 percentage point gain. Looking at the 6-year completion rate for Hispanic students, they see that the rate improved from 55.4% to 64.2%, which was an 8.8 percentage point gain.
Unfortunately, the 6-year completion rate for Black or African American students dropped slightly from 50.5% in 2011-12 to 49% in 2014-15, resulting in a 1.5 percentage decline.
Looking at the equity gaps between these three student populations, they see that the 14.6 percentage point gap in 2011-12 between White and Hispanic students dropped to 8 percentage points in 2014-15. However, the gap between White and Black or African American students rose from 19.5 to 23.2 percentage points.
So, while there is good news to share with accreditors, there is also some sobering news.
Nicole asks if there were equity gaps beyond the race/ethnicity metric. Sandra sets the race/ethnicity filter to include all students and changed the dimension to “Gender.” Then, she filters out students whose gender was unknown.
Hovering over the 2011-12 data point for female students, they find the completion rate was 58.1% compared to 54.4% for male students, a gap of nearly 4 percentage points. In 2014-15, the completion rate for female students was 63.8%, or a 5.7 percentage point increase. Looking at the completion rate of male students, they find it was 58.1%, or a 3.7 percentage point increase.
Once again, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the completion rate increased for both student groups. The bad news is that the equity gap widened between female and male students.
Thomas asks if the intersection between race/ethnicity and gender might give insight into these results. Sandra applies the race/ethnicity filter to include only Black or African American students.
In 2011-12, the gap between male and female Black or African American students was over 14 percentage points. But by 2014-15, that gap had narrowed to approximately 5 percentage points.
Next, Sandra applies the race/ethnicity filter to include only Hispanic students.
In 2011-12, male and female Hispanic students had nearly identical completion rates. Over time, the Hispanic women’s completion rates steadily improved while the completion rate for Hispanic men fluctuated. However, by 2014-15, the gap had narrowed to within 3 percentage points.
Then, Sandra changes the race/ethnicity filter to include only White students. The completion rates of their White, female students improved by over 4 percentage points from 2011-12 to 2014-15. However, the completion rates of their White, male students declined by over a percentage point for the same period.
This helps explain the widening completion gap by gender that they saw earlier.
To satisfy the requirement to include comparison data in their accreditation reports, Sandra navigates back to the PDP home page and …
…clicks on the Outcomes Benchmarking dashboard.
Next, she sets the filters. First, she changes the Outcomes filter from two years to six years, then she clicks on the “Cohort” filter and removes the years starting with 2015-16. Then, she clicks on the Institution Type filter and removes two-year institutions to create her benchmarking group. She notes that they are now benchmarking against 10 other four-year colleges/universities.
Looking at the line chart, the benchmarking group’s six-year completion rates fell slightly from 69.6% in 2011-12 to 69% in 2014-15 while – during the same time period -- the institution’s six-year completion rate improved from 57% to 61.6%. The gap between the institution and its peers closed from 12.6 percentage points in 2011-12 to 7.4 percentage points in 2014-15.
Next, Sandra filters the dashboard to only include White students. The benchmarking group’s completion rates for White students fell from 71.1% to 69.0% while the institution’s rate improved from 70.0% to 72.2%. In fact, for the 2014-15 cohort, the institution had a higher completion rate than its peers for white students.
Next, Sandra changes the Race/Ethnicity filter to only include Hispanic students. The benchmarking group’s completion rate stayed nearly the same while the institution’s completion rate improved. However, despite the increase at the institution, the completion rates for its Hispanic students was lower compared to its peer institutions.
Then, Sandra changes the Race/Ethnicity filter to only include Black or African American students. In this case, the benchmarking group’s completion rate improved from 59.8% to 61.6% while the institution’s completion rate fell for this student population. In addition to this decrease, the completion rates for the institution’s Black or African American students were lower than those of its peer institutions across every cohort.
Sandra resets the race/ethnicity filter and then applies the Gender filter to only include female students. In 2011-12, 72.5% of female students at its peer institutions had completed within six years compared to a 58.1% completion rate for the institution. However, in 2014-15, they find while the peers’ completion rate remained the same, their completion rate improved. So, they are closing the gap with their peer group for female students.
But what about male students? Sandra changes the Gender filter to include only male students. In 2011-12, 66.1% of male students at the peer institutions completed in 6 years compared to 54.4% at the institution. Looking at 2014-15, the six-year completion rate of the peer institutions declined to 64.4% while the institution’s completion rate improved to 58.1%. So, the gap between the institution and its peer institutions narrowed over time.
Thomas reminds them of the widening gap in completion rates between White men and women and asks if their peers saw a similar pattern.
Sandra changes the Gender filter to include only female students then adds the Race/Ethnicity filter to only include White students.
Looking at the line chart, they see the completion rates for White female students in the peer group remained virtually unchanged over time while, for the institution, completion rates improved nearly 4 percentage points thereby exceeding the completion rate of its peers.
Then, Sandra changes the Gender filter to include only male students. Looking at the line chart, they see that at both the institution and its peers, the completion rates declined for this population, although the peer institutions experienced a larger decline.
Now that the team has reviewed the institution’s completions data, they are ready to draft the associated sections of their accreditation report.
During the time frame of 2011-12 and 2014-15, the institution’s completion rates improved.
Results show that while the institution has made improvements in the completion rates of its White and Hispanic students, it has not been successful with its Black or African American students.
In addition, results showed that, while male and female students’ six-year completion rates increased, the gap between these two populations widened.
Overall, the institution’s completion rates are lower than those of its peer institutions, although results differ by student population. The completion rates of the institution’s white students exceeded the completion rates of white students at peer institutions. However, the completion rates of its Hispanic and Black or African American students lagged behind those at peer institutions.
The institution will focus its improvement efforts on understanding how to better support its students to completion. They will need to study if academic momentum has been sustained for more recent cohorts, which will translate to improved completion rates long term. Luckily, they can use the PDP dashboards for this study as well.