Higher education leaders have repeatedly called for improved diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, but many institutions continue to fall short. Data can play an integral role in this work; key among them are data on student demographics, including race/ethnicity. Meeting diversity, equity, and inclusion goals requires a thorough and nuanced…

Multiple studies show that outcomes, whether they be better degree completion rates or successful short-term workforce training, are negatively affected by inadequate funding (Kahlenberg, 2015). To bolster their case for underfunding, researchers and college advocacy groups produce studies that rely on an important federal dataset--the Integrated…

The Fall 2023 Enrollment Fact Book details current fall enrollment data including on- and off-campus enrollment by ethnicity, gender, residency, degree program level, and program category.

We cannot continue to ask students -- and their families -- to make one of the largest and most important investments of their lives without clearer information about what their time and money will yield. In partnership with RTI International (RTI), operating in an independent capacity, IHEP is gathering expert insights needed to support making…

This article presents the details of a business analytics minor that we created at our institution in the fall of 2019. In the two years since, our program has successfully met our enrollment goals. Out of over 50 minors offered at our institution, our business analytics minor is currently ranked fourth in enrollment. In this article we will…

The advent of Career Enrolment Data (CED) in Higher Education is an important development for graduate employability practitioners and other stakeholders seeking to understand, analyse and enhance students' career readiness. CED, collected annually from all students in participating universities, requires students to self-report on their own…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

The November 2022 60-Second Survey invited AACRAO members to share how, if at all, their institution uses degree-audit and/or education-planning technology to support students. There were 653 responses from 11 countries. The majority of responses were from the United States (n = 621) and Canada (n = 23). Sixty-three percent of respondents serve…

In higher education, academic advising is crucial to students' decision-making. Data-driven models can benefit students in making informed decisions by providing insightful recommendations for completing their degrees. To suggest courses for the upcoming semester, various course recommendation models have been proposed in the literature using…

Many postsecondary datasets collect gender data in ways that are not inclusive of all students. Many trans* students, those who identify as trans women, trans men, genderqueer, among other gender identities, are excluded when surveys collect gender data using only two categories. The American Bar Association recently became the first sector of…

College and university enrollment has decreased nationwide every year for more than a decade as educational consumers increasingly question the value of higher education and discover alternatives to the traditional university system. Enrollment professionals seeking growth are tasked to develop and implement innovative solutions to address…

Noncredit enrollment at community colleges has grown significantly over the past two decades. However, unlike credit bearing programs, noncredit programs are seldomly empirically examined and evaluated, particularly those that are not grant funded. The lack of data results in a gap in knowledge about program effectiveness, as well as the students…

Policy researchers have difficulty understanding stratification in enrollment in US higher education when race and ethnicity data are plagued by missing values. Students who decline to ethnoracially self-identify become part of a "race unknown" reporting category. In undergraduate enrollment, "race unknown" students are not…

This research explores the potential causes for student's lack of interest in enrollment in marketing analytics courses. We reveal that a misconception of marketing as a "soft skills" major of study persists, which leads to biased assessment of the relevance and applicability of curriculum in regards to future career. As a result,…

Analyses of student data in post-secondary education should be sensitive to the fact that there are many different topics of study. These different areas will interest different kinds of students, and entail different experiences and learning activities. However, it can be challenging to identify the distinct academic themes that students might…