Stitching the States

Despite the significant strides the U.S. Department of Education has made with the recent release of the College Scorecard, questions remain about national student outcomes in higher education.

We still can’t answer basic 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 are just a few of the questions a federal data system could answer if the 2008 Higher Education Act hadn’t barred the Department from developing such a system. The ban led to a college blackout, depriving the public and policymakers of information about which schools are doing the best job serving students.

In the new brief, “Is Stitching State Data Systems the Solution to the College Blackout?” Iris Palmer, Senior Policy Analyst with New America’s Education Policy Program, explores the idea of “stitching together” a state-based federal data systems as a solution to shedding light on national college outcomes.

With 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. 

“Using existing state data systems to answer key questions about higher education outcomes across the nation could be a powerful tool,” said Palmer “But technical, political, and data challenges will make it hard for such a system to serve as the sole national data infrastructure.” 

Some of the benefits of this approach to data collection include being able to use already established state longitudinal data systems, it would not require removing the ban on a federal student unit record system, and it could allow states to access information for their students regardless of whether these individuals remain in-state.

A few of the challenges highlighted in the implementing this type of system include the fact that the vast majority of state data systems do not include the over two million students that 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.

The full report can be found here.