Is Stitching State Data Systems the Solution to the College Blackout?

We can’t answer basic questions about how higher education is performing at a national level. Questions like: How many non-traditional students attend college and do they successfully complete credentials? What happens to students who do not graduate?  Are students obtaining employment in their field after college, and if so, what do they earn?

These holes in the data are particularly bad for military service members who lack key information on how students like them are doing at a particular college. This is true for several reasons:

• They are almost always part time students when they start college as active service members;
• They are almost never first time when they continue college as veterans;
• And they aren’t as likely to use other federal student aid programs when they have access to tuition assistance and GI benefits.

All of these factors limit how many service members and veterans show up in federal data on student outcomes.

Given the large investment students, families, and the federal government make in college, they want answers about how colleges are performing. One answer could be using data currently held by the federal government to create a national student unit record system. However, Congress banned such a system in 2008.

But there might be another way. In the new brief, “Is Stitching State Data Systems the Solution to the College Blackout?” I explore the idea of “stitching together” a state-based federal data systems as a solution to shedding light on national college outcomes and filling holes in existing state data systems.

These systems do currently have blind spots. For instance, students and families in Washington State have access to a dashboard on outcomes at four-year, public colleges. But the site is missing students. Where are the almost 30 percent of students who can’t be found six years after enrolling in the system? They could have transferred to private schools operating in the state. They might be missing because they left the state to go to college elsewhere. Or they may have transferred to the community college system or dropped out altogether. This uncertainty means it is very hard for anyone, let alone families, to use this information.

Some of these holes would be patched by connecting the data across state lines. In a state-based federal data system, state student data systems would submit the data necessary to identify individuals to a third party. The third party contractor would then match student enrollment data from one state with outcome information from other states, and use that data to anonymously answer outcome questions.

Benefits of this approach to data collection include being able to answer the questions mentioned above for service members and the general population, utilizing already established state longitudinal data systems, and not requiring the removal of the ban on a federal student unit record system.

A few of the challenges implementing this type of system include the fact that the majority of state data systems do not include the over two million students who attend private not-for-profit or for-profit colleges, the need for a trusted contractor to hold, clean, and match the data, the limited earnings information available to states, and data sharing and legal concerns both inside and across states.

There are some advantages to using a state-based federal student unit record system to answer national questions about student outcomes. But it also faces many logistical challenges. Instead, creating a single, federal student unit record system could be a simpler and faster way to end the college blackout.”