Speculative reform jumps the gun on notions of data-driven reform, requiring administrators to anticipate and act to ensure problems (and the data that would show them) do not materialize. Speculative reforms are incapable of delivering the outcomes they promise, as they are fueled by a fear of the future that their reforms do not extinguish. In…

The University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) is an urban research university with a special emphasis on fostering diversity. In 2021, the Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence created a Faculty Fellows program to develop comprehensive resources and support in four areas: teaching and learning, service and engagement, research and creativity,…

This article explores utilizing a post-graduation success lens to help community college leaders frame the challenges of achieving equitable improvement for their students. Specifically, it posits that providing and exploring customized labor market data presented in an accessible format can help institutional leaders provide a "true…

For decades, assessing income has served as the tried-and-true method for creating financial aid packages--scholarships, grants, and loans--for the nation's college students. Each year, students and families living with low and moderate incomes submit income documentation to colleges, states, and the federal government in hopes of qualifying for…

Institutions of higher education are presented as vital pathways to economic mobility, particularly for working class, first generation, and students of color. Yet the inequitable outcomes produced by post-secondary institutions suggest structures and systems of exclusion and enclosure. In this critical mixed methods case study, we explore the…

Purpose: This study leverages social network analysis (SNA) to visualise the way students interacted with online resources and uses the data obtained from SNA as features for supervised machine learning algorithms to predict whether a student will successfully complete a course. Design/methodology/approach: The exploration and visualisation of the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that influence the use of institutional assessment in support of student outcomes at four-year public institutions of higher education. This study focused on small institutions, defined as having enrollment below that of the median value, across the nation. An electronic survey was sent to chief…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1: "Assessment Standards are Broken," David Eubanks highlights the challenges with the assessment standards articulated by institutional accreditors. In this article, Part 2: Megan R. Good, discusses the opportunity costs faced and…

This case study identifies college outcomes data transparency and accountability beliefs held by policy-makers, higher education associations, advocacy groups, think tanks, and other actors in the federal higher education policy domain, as well as how these beliefs have changed since the last reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2008.…

The Postsecondary Value Commission, in its exploration of return on investment and value of a higher education, desired to better understand the current state of earnings data for states and institutions so that they could effectively measure and understand post-college employment and earnings. To that end, this brief includes a review of research…

In April 2021, the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) convened a working group of institution, state, and national leaders to help advise its efforts to develop a set of principles to improve consistency and reliability in the field for measuring cost savings and the return on investment (ROI) of open education resources (OER). The result…

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. Fortunately, support is broad across the country and across the political spectrum for a federal student-level data network (SLDN), which would…

Survey methodology is the dominant approach among universities in the United States for reporting employment outcomes for recent graduates. However, past studies have shown that survey methodology may yield upwardly biased results, which can result in overreporting of employment rates and salary outcomes. This case study describes the development…

Degree completion rates have recently dominated national debates regarding the value of higher education (Gagliardi et al., 2018). Inherent in this debate is the issue of how to utilize institutional data to evaluate student performance (Hubbard et al., 2020). This process, known as data-driven decision-making (DDDM), has been studied at four-year…

The higher education sector is under increasing pressure to deliver more and to evidence the fruits of its contribution to society. There is a particular focus on the enhanced engagement of students in order to maximise success, and for this engagement to be achieved equitably across the student body, regardless of demographic backgrounds. This…