Data is the lifeblood of decision making in higher education, but colleges and universities have long faced barriers when it comes to accessing and utilizing it for their benefit.
Current higher education data collection systems are difficult to use and struggle to keep up with trends. Subsequently, colleges and universities waste valuable time navigating disorganized systems only to gather information that could possibly be out-of-date.
Recognizing the need for easy-to-use, transparent institutional information, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) co-created the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) along with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).
The VSA is a robust, interactive platform that aggregates nine years of data from more than 4,200 institutions. Precision Campus collected, cleaned and merged this incredible amount of data from the APLU and migrated it all into one user-friendly, organized system.
Currently, the VSA compiles data from four different sources:
- IPEDS
- NSF’s Higher Education Research & Development Survey
- Student Achievement Measure (SAM)
- U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard
The main goal of the APLU’s partnership with Precision Campus is to create an intuitive system that institutions can easily incorporate into their decision-making processes. Specifically, VSA members will have access to reports like:
- Acceptance Rates
- Graduation Rates
- Student-Faculty Ratios
- Research and Development Expenditures
- And more
With the data from these reports, colleges and universities can quickly and easily create custom groups to make side-by-side comparisons of more than 350 variables.
Precision Campus will be working alongside the APLU to integrate more third-party sources of data into the VSA to create the richest source of national institutional data.
APLU membership is not a requirement to join the VSA; any institution — whether it’s a community college, four-year university or for-profit organization — can sign up here.
Interested in learning more about Precision Campus’ data analytics capabilities? We’ll be at the following upcoming conferences. Stop by and say hello, or just send us a message here.
RP Group’s Strengthening Student Success Conference
October 9 – 11, 2019
Burlingame, California
California Association of Institutional Research (CAIR) Conference
November 6 – 8, 2019
Seaside, California
