A longstanding effort to include more information about outcomes for transfer and part-time students materialized Thursday with the release of more detailed data through the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, commonly known as IPEDS.
Whereas previously IPEDS only calculated outcomes for “first-time, full-time students,” the previously omitted data is now reflected in a new “First Look” report that examines graduation rates, outcome measures, financial aid and admissions data for various academic years. Outcomes for students who enter college part-time or who have attended college elsewhere are now included.
The report — released through the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES— can be accessed here.
As student demographics and college-going patterns continue to shift, advocates hailed the move to provide more detailed data and say it gives a fuller picture of what’s happening for students in terms of their completion rates.
“We were just missing large numbers of students because of the focus on ‘first-time, full-time,’” said Dr. Mark S. Schneider, vice president and institute fellow at the American Institutes for Research. He noted that the call for information on transfer and part-time students had been enshrined into law through the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act but took all these years to implement.
“It was becoming an embarrassment because [IPEDS] was measuring fewer and fewer components of who American higher education institutions are educating,” said Schneider, who served as commissioner of NCES during the second term of President George W. Bush.
However, Schneider agreed that the extent to which the new data is valuable and accessible to students and families as they select colleges remains to be seen.
