AAU Graduate Education Taskforce:

Progress, Plans, Issues

Presented to:AAUDE Annual Meeting May 2005

AAU/AAUDE groups and projects focused on data, spring 2005

You can’t tell the players (and groups) without a scorecard!

AAUAssociation of American Universities

AAUDE

Graduate Education Data Taskforce

Dick Attiyeth, UCSD, chairGrad deans, assoc deans,

researchersJulie, Lydia, Jed, Lou,

Barney, Kendrick

Met 3-24 DCSub-cmt rpts due 8-1

Meeting ~ 9-1Report to AGS meeting

Eventual recs to presidents

Starting point: White paper

IDC: Institutional Data Committee

PresidentsDennis, Rana, Bill H

Met April 19~Oct 9-11 UIUC

CEO’s/presidents2 meetings annually

Oct 9-11, UIUC

ProvostsMid Sept

AGSAssoc Graduate

Schools(Grad deans)

~ Oct. 1

SurveysRachelle chair

Judi Sui, BerkeleyLydia, Kendrick

Placement, alumni, outcomes

Maresi Nerad, UW, chairJim Matthews NYU

Jed, Barney

Program/institutional data

Lawrence Martin, Stony Brook, chair

deans/assoc Mich St, Rutgers, Duke, WashU

Julie, Lou

Others(?)

SED?

Faculty dataDemographics, salaries,

honors, research, publishing, post-docs,

surveys

UG EdEspecially public

accountability measures

Groups

Topics or subgroups

NRC

The Institutional Data Committee (IDC)Meetings April, October

PresidentsJohn Wiley (chair), WisconsinJohn Casteen, VirginiaScott Cowen, TulaneLarry Faulkner, TexasRichard Levin, YaleRichard Herman, Illinois

ProvostsJohn Anderson, Case WesternPaul Courant, MichiganDebbie Freund, SyracuseMarty Wyngaarden Kraus,

BrandeisDave Shulenburger, Kansas.

Institutional Researchers/AAUDE

Rana Glasgal, Stanford

Bill Hayward, Northwestern

Dennis Hengstler, UC-Berkeley

Graduate Education Data Task Force Meetings March, late August

Graduate Deans

Dick Attiyeh (chair), UCSD

Karen Klomparens, Mich State

Lawrence Martin, Stony Brook

Lewis Siegel, Duke

Bob Thach, Washington U Graduate School Reps

T. Jim Matthews, NYU

Judi Sui, UC Berkeley

Harvey Waterman, Rutgers

Researchers on Graduate Ed

Maresi Nerad, UWashington

Rachelle Brooks, Maryland (also AAUDE)

Institutional Researchers/AAUDE

Julie Carpenter-Hubin, Ohio St

Bernard Lentz, Penn

Jed Marsh, Princeton

Lou McClelland, Colorado

Lydia Snover, MIT

Kendrick Tatum, Duke

Grad Ed Taskforce SubcommitteesReports due August 1

Program, institutional data

Lawrence Martin, chair, Stony Brook

Karen Klomparens, Mich St

Lewis Siegel, Duke

Harvey Waterman, Rutgers

Bob Thach, Washington U

Julie Carpenter-Hubin, Ohio State, AAUDE

Lou McClelland, Colorado, AAUDE

Student experience, student reported surveysRachelle Brooks, chair,

Maryland (AAUDE)Judi Sui, BerkeleyLydia Snover, MIT, AAUDEKendrick Tatum,

Duke, AAUDE Outcomes, placement, alumni

Maresi Nerad, chair, UWJim Matthews, NYU Barney Lentz, Penn, AAUDEJed Marsh, Princeton, AAUDE

Goal: ID core data elements to be shared by AAU member institutions

Used by members to guide institutional and program policy decisions and practices

Not for prospective students or the public Not for rankings Data may be used to inform national

discussions of graduate education and outcomes

Emphasis: Doctoral education

Master’s programs or awards associated with doctoral programs included for completeness.

Professional degrees, MBAs, and stand-alone master’s programs not an explicit focus

Program level data

Unit of analysis/comparison: Programs or departments, often by degree level

Issue: Need the division into programs be Mutually exclusive? Exhaustive?

Issue: Should campus totals come from Summing over all programs Separate report

Priority topics = subcommittees

Student experience, from student surveys Student placement, outcomes, alumni

Not just immediately after the degree, but later

Institutional or program data Admissions Retention, graduation rates and time-to-degree Financial support Enrollment/ demographics

Emphasis: Data to answer questions, use in management Examples:

Placement Where graduates go Correlation between admission credentials and first

professional placement

Program Time to complete a doctoral degree Fraction of students graduating with a PhD Changes in the demographic profile of students applying

for doctoral programs

Financial Support Cost to support a PhD student

Student surveys How students assess their doctoral experience

Operating principles endorsed by the Grad Data Taskforce Sufficient safeguards must be in place to ensure the privacy of

individuals Self-reported student data should be use only when institutional

data are not available Whenever possible data should be collected by degree level at

the academic program level. The reporting of summarized data (e.g., percentages) should

avoided as much as possible Even unit record data under consideration

Data should be submitted electronically in a disaggregated format that facilitates inclusion in the data warehouse, in data files not in Excels.

Each data element should be clearly defined and documented in a data dictionary that compares and contrasts similar data elements commonly available to the public.

Known needs and issues

Definitions, especially for graduation rates and time to degree

Discipline crosswalks and rollups among the NRC, IPEDS, NSF-SED, CGS, and other data collection systems. Grad deans realize there’s no right answer, want just to

do something and not get bogged down on this. Programs vs. departments vs. disciplines Labeling vs. grouping; level of detail

Rules about data release, including rules that appropriately limit the reporting of small cell sizes

Ways of ensuring that data collected will allow meaningful aggregation

Known needs and issues (continued)

Relationship to NRC, and NRC plans and timing both for scheduled review and further updates

Fit to, extension of, exploitation of ongoing large-scale required or high-coverage data collections SED – Confidentiality agreements, local capture with

supplemental questions, utility for things also in records.

Already in warehouse for MIT, Florida, Colorado. IPEDS completions and enrollment CGS/GRE survey of grad enrollment CGS PhD completion project AAUDE exchanges such as grad stipends NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdocs

Timing, deliverables

Subcommittee reports due August 1 Prioritized list of at least five key questions of interest to

policy makers Set of data elements required to address the questions

Circulate to entire Taskforce Meet late August or early September to

discuss the sub-committee reports and prepare a draft report

Report to provosts, AGS, and IDC before presidents’ meeting in October

AAUDE Reps: Accomplishments

The “white paper” ftp://aaude.mit.edu/IDC/Grad/graded_paper20050320.doc Official name Graduate Student and Graduate Education Data

Needs

The glossary ftp://aaude.mit.edu/IDC/Grad/graded_glossary.doc

Concordance of items on various student surveys Grad stipend exchange item Grad CDS This presentation!

White paper: Useful for you

Julie, 2003, augmented by Julie, Jed, Lydia, Lou, 2005, used at 3/05 task force meeting

Topics: numbers and demographics; credentials; financial support; student experience including graduation rates and time to degree; career track; policies.

Sources discussed re coverage, availability, issues, recommendations

White paper: Sources covered

CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment

Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED, to the DRF Doctoral Research File)

Self-reports by students of records-type info

IPEDS Fall Enrollments NSF Survey of Graduate Students and

Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering

Thomson Peterson’s Annual Survey of Graduate and Professional Institutions

IPEDS Completions US News & World Report America’s Best

Graduate Schools GRE Summary Statistics Reports Rutgers Graduate Education Survey

(collection from selected PhD programs at 6-8 AAU’s, with both student survey and records information)

Graduate CDS AAUDE Graduate Student Stipends

Survey Rutgers and Duke/MIT student surveys CGS PhD Completion project NAGPS National Doctoral Program

student survey Placement surveys by academic

associations and other researchers, including the “Ph.D.’s-Ten Years Later Study”

NSF Survey of Doctoral Recipients re science and engineering doctoral graduates.

Institutional or program collections of placement data

Responsive PhD, Re-envisioning the PhD, and Carnegie Initiatives on the Doctorate

AAUDE Reps: Endeavors

Paper on cohort definition, time to degree, grad rates, etc. Build on work by Colorado, Maryland, and Wisconsin,

especially for the CGS completion project Analysis of SED re time to degree for the schools with

data in the warehouse. Making Penn’s mechanisms available to others, for

collecting postdoc and first professional placement Possibilities for release of SED data from all AAU’s to

the warehouse, and/or local or coordinated web administration with data to the warehouse

Work on crosswalks, rollups, level of detail, etc. for PhD programs in particular.

AAU Graduate Education Taskforce:

Progress, Plans, Issues

Presented to:AAUDE Annual Meeting May 2005