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SBCTC Data Dashboards

This guide is to help faculty and administrative staff identify and navigate the data resources curated by SBCTC to enact reflection and institutional-level change.

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Green River College

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Transfer Rates

Overview

81% of entering community college students indicate that they want to earn at least a bachelor's degree, but only 33% successfully transfer to a four-year institution within six years and fewer than half of those students will complete the transfer program (1). Facilitating transfer experiences is important as it creates an avenue of higher earning power for students long-term.

How To Use This Dashboard

The transfer dashboard uses clearinghouse data to monitor the number/percentage of students that successfully transfer to a four-year institution between 4-6 years after community college enrollment. These data can be disaggregated on types of demographic data as well as cohort type and educational intent. While a portion of this is beyond the control of the community college (such as rising 4-year tuition rates), monitoring these data at the college level can help to identify populations less likely to transfer and can inform intervention strategies that can be assessed for improvement, such as increased transparency of the process, better program-mapping for alignment, and potential collaborations with 4-year institutions to create bridge programs.

The transfer rates dashboard uses many of the same filters as the other dashboards. The new filters are the following:

  • Years Enrolled: Filter students by how many years they were taking classes at your institution
  • Completed: Filter for students who completed their intended credentials vs. those who did not
  • Transfer Year: Explore transfer rates for students within 4, 5, or 6 years of initial enrollment.

 

Question:

For students who enroll in ABE courses to start, what percentage of those who completed their intended transfer program successfully do so within four years of initial enrollment? How do the data compare between Big Bend College and the rest of the SBCTC system?

Interpretation:

  • Historically, ABE students are less likely to transfer to a four-year institution, both at an individual college (Big Bend) and system level
    • While we can't say exactly why from these data, we can conjecture that these students a) have to complete more coursework to get to the transfer stage, which can be a barrier, b) have a primary objective of high school diploma attainment, c) are likely to have met challenges in the past with their educational journey for various reasons that may still exist.
    • What is the intersectionality of these with age? Many ABE students tend to be older, so are these results more correlated to age or ABE?
  • Students that began in ABE-courses starting in 2017 were 50% more likely to successfully transfer than in previous years at Big Bend CC, and were transferring rates near to those for students who were not enrolled in ABE.
    • What change happened in 2017 that caused such a dramatic change? Will these results continue in subsequent years? Can the intervention be implemented in other colleges throughout the system so that the results can be replicated?
    • It could be worth looking into the number of students for this data point, as a small number, of which a couple were successful in transferring, would cause an outlier skewing of the data.
  • Transfer rates have generally stagnated over the past eight years.
    • How do these rates compare nationally? What are the next steps toward moving the needle?

Comments:

  • By selecting the education intent “Transfer”, you will generally get a higher number than “All”, because those who are enrolled in a degree program not intending to transfer probably won’t.
  • If you filter by those that completed their program and intend to transfer, you can better capture the proportion that struggled with the transfer process.

Reasons for Low Transfer

  • Complexity of the transfer process
  • Rising costs of four-year universities
  • Students struggle to take transfer required courses

Intervention Strategies:

  • Create transfer-ready associates degrees that guarantee acceptance into public four-year institutions
  • develop a standardized set of General Education requirements that would be accepted for lower-division degree credit at all state universities.
  • require each public university to develop transfer guidelines for each community college within 50 miles (or, if none, the closest college), specifying the courses at that college that will prepare a student for each of its baccalaureate degree programs
  • require public universities to accept all credit hours for students completing an associate degree, and to give such students junior status and require no further lowerdivision GE courses
  • Page 18 of this document supplies a number of different ideas that can be considered to not only promote transfer, but also enhance degree completion at both the two-year and four-year levels.

References

1. Jenkins, Davis, and John Fink. “Tracking Transfer: New Measures of Institutional and State Effectiveness in Helping Community College Students Attain Bachelor’s Degrees.” Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University. New York, NY: 2016.

Employment Percentage and Earnings

Overview

Connecting education and wage data can give institutions and policymakers a fuller picture of a program's performance. Analysis of student’s paths after graduation can inform strategies to better support student preparation for careers. Higher education institutions may use it to inform the creation of or increased capacity for programs that align with local in-state job opportunities. Advisors can use earnings information to facilitate students’ decision making about career and degree paths. Policymakers may use the data to inform legislation aimed at improving education outcomes to in turn improve the local economy .Collaborations, like that set-up between Washington, Idaho, Hawaii, and Oregon allow this data exchange to track labor migration across state borders.


How To Use This Dashboard

The employment dashboard uses data gathered by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) as it relates to student incomes post-college. These data can be disaggregated on types of demographic data and educational intent. They can inform whether programs intended to address certain occupational targets have successfully resulted in the targeted jobs. They can help institutions target educational training programs designed to help students gain the knowledge, skills, and certifications for jobs that are in high demand, fast growing, or offer high earnings.


Some Caveats To Keep In Mind:

  • Employment outcomes and earnings aren't everything, as they don't account for other non-employment related benefits to society
  • These data do not allow for flexibility related to differing institutional missions
  • Be aware of policy and regulatory constraints that may prevent change such as tenure and accreditation requirements

The employment and earnings dashboard uses many of the same filters as the other dashboards. The new filters are the following:

  • Years Enrolled: Filter students by how many years they were taking classes at your institution
  • Highest CTC Credential: Filter based on the type of program the student completed. This could be useful to explore and share information regarding credentials and earning power.
  • Post-College Earnings: Explore student earnings within 4, 5, or 6 years of initial enrollment.
  • Earnings Type: Use this to find out what percentage of graduates are working full- or part-time jobs. It is suggested to use this filter when examining earnings, as the range will be large and unmeaningful if interpreted collectively.


Career Cluster Data:

In addition, there is a tab that allows you to use the earnings filters above and disaggregate the data by median earnings of different career clusters, as seen on the X-axis. Unfortunately, this option does NOT show you how many students are within each career cluster.

Question:

✅What percentage of first time college students are employed full-time within six years of earning their associates degree ? How does this compare to students who did not complete their degree? How do post-college employment rates and earnings compare between students at Wenatchee Valley and other rural colleges?

✅What percentage of first time college students identifying as Hispanic or Latino are employed full-time within six years of earning their associates degree?

✅What are the full-time earnings for first-time college students within six years of earning an associates degree as disaggregated by career field?

Interpretation:

What we can say:

  • Students who earn their associates degrees tend to earn more than those who haven't.

What we cannot say:

  • Only 58% of students completing their degree at a rural SBCTC are employed. Notice how the filter is only looking at full-time employment. If we did this same analysis with part-time employment, we could calculate the aggregate of total students employed.

Comments:

  • Filtering for highest CTC credential: Oftentimes, students obtaining a certificate may be professionals already seeking to further their credentials. Including them in your query will likely skew the employment % and median earnings up. Similarly, apprenticeship programs usually involve pre-existing employment and are trade-oriented, also causing inflation of both of these values.

Explore the types of questions you can ask using the transfer dashboard!

 and successfully transfer of community college enrollment?

Earnings Questions

Explore the types of questions you can ask using the earnings dashboard!


  are employed  of completion of What are the median earnings of these students?


  in the   field  of completion of