Across the higher education landscape, an increasing number of institutions recognize the unparalleled potential of data – but struggle to unlock it. Data can help institutional leaders identify the barriers curtailing students' college access and success and target interventions to support students who need it the most. Institutions that successfully remove barriers, promote completion, and close equity gaps have one factor in common: smart use of data.
Postsecondary Data GPS: A Guidebook for Navigating Data to Promote Student Success is an online resource designed to help other institutions mirror these successes by using data to uncover trends and identify areas for improvement.
Postsecondary Data GPS leads institutions through analysis of four critical phases in the postsecondary pipeline – access, progression, completion, and cost – and includes guidelines to ensure data privacy, security, and quality.
In 2016, IHEP released Toward Convergence: A Technical Guide for the Postsecondary Metrics Framework. Built on lessons learned from more than a decade's worth of federal, state, and voluntary data collection initiatives, the framework provides a comprehensive set of metrics that institutions should be collecting, analyzing, and using to promote student success.
Postsecondary Data GPS converts the Metrics Framework into a free, interactive tool to help institutions navigate their data, including downloadable Excel templates that support easy data analysis and visualizations that enable institutional representatives to identify challenges, assess solutions, and drive institutional improvement.
IHEP thanks the City University of New York (CUNY) System and Achieving the Dream for their contributions to the Postsecondary Data GPS.