Title: A Roadmap to Better Data: Developing a Census Bureau Partnership to Measure National Postsecondary Earnings Outcomes.
Source: Institute for Higher Education Policy
Author: Stephanie Bond Huie and David R. Troutman
A recent report by the Institute of Higher Education Policy offers a solution to the issue of providing accurate and timely information on national student earnings.
Thanks to a successful partnership between the University of Texas (UT) System and the U.S. Census Bureau, the UT System incorporated Census data into seekUT, a tool that offers information on student earnings by institution, degree level, and field of study within the UT system. This example serves as a roadmap for campus leaders looking to replicate the partnership and promote student success.
The report offers an overview of employment outcomes available to the U.S. Census Bureau. It also suggests nine steps that institutions can follow to partner with the U.S. Census Bureau, covering topics such as building project buy-in among organizational leadership, securing approval from legal counsel, data preparation, data processing, and data dissemination.
Finally, the report discusses some of the limitations of using U.S. Census data, lists other federal data sources on salaries, and offers some conclusions that highlight the power of data matching and the importance of developing a federal student data network that covers all 50 states.
To learn more about the roadmap and read the report, click here.
—Maria Claudia Soler
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