Stetson University, Office of Institutional Research & Effectiveness
All post-secondary institutions receiving federal funds are required to meet federal retention and graduation reporting requirements as mandated by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) and outlined in the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC)’s “Information Required to Be Disclosed Under the Higher Education Act of 1965: Suggestions for Dissemination”. Meeting these requirements can be an arduous and tedious task for many institutions — that is, prior to Power BI.
Using Power BI, post-secondary institutions can move beyond traditional PDF reporting, such as that shown in the sample below:
Power BI allows institutions to provide a more visually appealing and intuitive representation of the required data disclosures. Power BI also allows institutions to include additional metrics, such as multiple cohort years, persistence rate, and college, all in a single interactive view instead of a series of complex data tables. As such, the solution goes beyond the minimum reporting requirements and becomes a tool to demonstrate institutional outcome trends.
Here is a sample interactive Power BI report for post-secondary reporting:
The solution focuses on specific institutional retention and graduation disclosure requirements as specified by the HEOA, which include:
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Retention Rate: Institutions must make available to current and prospective students the retention rate of certificate- or degree-seeking, first-time, undergraduate students as reported to IPEDS.
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Completion/Graduation and Transfer-out Rates: Each institution must annually make available to prospective and enrolled students the completion or graduation rate of certificate- or degree-seeking, first-time, full-time, undergraduate students. The data are to be available by July 1 each year for the most recent cohort that has had 150 percent of normal time for completion by August 31 of the prior year.
Completion or graduation rates must be disaggregated by:
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gender;
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major racial and ethnic subgroup (as defined in IPEDS);
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recipients of a Federal Pell Grant; recipients of a subsidized Stafford Loan who did not receive a Pell Grant*; and
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students who did not receive either a Pell Grant or a subsidized Stafford Loan*.
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* These disaggregated rates are to be disclosed only if the number of students in each group is sufficient to yield statistically reliable information and not reveal personally identifiable information about an individual student.
If you have any questions about this solution, please feel free to email Resche D. Hines, Ph.D.), Angela Henderson) or Patrick LeBlanc. Also, keep an eye on this space — we'll be posting a sample template that will allow you to quickly implement this solution at your own institution.