UPDATE 1: KPIs

 


WHY GUIDED PATHWAYS


Connecticut is focused on guided pathways because it is the best way to:
  • Help more students complete courses and, ultimately, complete credentials that lead to jobs with value in the labor market.
  • Advance equity in our colleges and in our state so all students have the education, skills, and resources necessary for economic advancement.
The Board of Regents for Higher Education, which has overseen our community colleges since the 2011 CSCU merger, has directed us to undertake Guided Pathways work. All work related to student success is happening in parallel, including Guided Pathways, Transfer and Articulation (TAP), and Academic and Student Affairs Consolidation.

Implementing Guided Pathways is an intensive undertaking because Guided Pathways touches every aspect of the student experience. At the end of this email, you’ll find a list of people from your campus who are actively doing this work.

 


NEWS & UPDATES

Student Success Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be released in the next few days.

Why KPIs?
Student Success KPIs measure short-term outcomes that research shows lead to long-term success. If we move the needle on the KPIs, we will ultimately move the needle on completion. For example:
  • Students who complete 24 credits a year are much more likely to earn credentials than students who complete fewer than 24 credits a year.
  • Students who complete college-level math and English in their first year are more likely to persist and earn credentials.
Many of us spend a lot of time discussing enrollment figures, but it’s just as important to talk about how our students did after they enrolled. We need more conversations about whether more of our students passed math or English last year. And we need to ask questions about whether more students are completing 24 credits in their first year and whether more students are succeeding and returning.

What KPIs do we track?
We measure 21 KPIs including the percentage of students that passed college level math and English, the average number of credits our students earned, and how many stayed enrolled the next semester.

Reviewing the KPIs
1. Review them carefully. You’ll see that across the system, only about 1 out of every 5 new students passes both college level math and English in the first year with a C or better. And that only a little more than 1 in 7 new students earns 24 or more credits in their first year. Both of these are indicators that a student is more likely to eventually complete a degree. Look at the data from your college and region as well. Consider what the data means for our students and what discussions this might prompt at your college.

2. Look at the disaggregated data. You’ll see data for our twelve colleges combined, data by region, and data by individual college. You’ll also see data broken down by demographic information like race/ethnicity. Disaggregating the data this way is important because of our collective focus on equity. 
  • Across the system, you’ll see that only 8% of our Black students and 10% of our Latinx students earned 24 or more credits in their first year (compared with 21% of White students). 
  • Similarly, only 14% of Black and 16% of Latinx students earned at least a C in college-level math and English in their first year (compared with 28% of White students). 
  • And it’s interesting to see that 18% of White students attempted 15 credits last Fall, while only 11% of Black and 11% of Latinx students did. 
  • This gives us some things to consider. What does this mean for our minoritized students? For our state? And what does this tell us about changes we need to make as a system? It is clear that if we want all of our students to have the skills and resources necessary for economic advancement, we have a lot of work to do.

Background and key terms  


LEARN MORE


Getting involved
Given the volume of work in front of us, we are regularly building teams to engage in this effort. In building these teams, we aim to include faculty, staff, and administrators with diverse perspectives and skills. If you are interested in being part of one of these teams, contact successcenter@ct.edu.

In our next issue:
Some of the efforts your colleagues are undertaking to help more students navigate and succeed in our system includes academic and student affairs consolidation work. In CSCU Student Success Update #2, which we’ll email in November, we’ll look at academic program commonization, the general education core, and how these relate to Guided Pathways.