E/E REPORTING

Filling Holes and a Whole Lot More with Evergreen/Enterprise Strategies

It is what it is

IPEDS—Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—is run by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Categories of stats include: Enrollments Institutional Costs Financial Aid Human Resources Program Completion/Graduation Rates

What you can do with your data

Access, analyze, and mine national data Construct customized data sets Download full data files Generate reports, including statistics

and trends

What you can do in IPEDS Create an institution group—basically

the list of schools you want to compare Create a list of variables you want to

compare Retrieve data for a single institution

using “Look up an Institution” Download survey data files so that you

can manipulate the data yourself

What you can do in IPEDS (2)

Compare individual institutions Create group statistics for a group of

institutions for one or more IPEDS variables and generate a summary report (including bar graphs)

Rank institutions on a single variable View a trend for one variable for one or

more institutions (create bar graphs) Generate pre-defined reports

Let’s take a little trip . . .

The $64,000 Question is “So What?”

E1 (evergreen)I can create a dozen quick graphs during a newsroom lull to save as evergreen material or use the information directly to create a standalone graph on deadline. Note that I will have to import the data into Excel to create the graph. But it’s a quick fix for an unexpected hole. Or I can create a standing feature like “By the Numbers” to ensure I have meaningful graphics to enhance design.

The $64,000 Question is “So What?”

E2 (enterprise)I can use the data as the basis for enterprise stories (the kind administrators hate) that can answer questions like whether students are getting a good return on their education at my university or whether athletes are being exploited or whether there’s gender or racial bias in the faculty ranks.

IPEDS Caveats

Rule 1: Remember that the data isn’t the story—it’s the beginning of the story.

Make sure you can speak the language and understand the numbers.

Learning to use the IPEDS site requires a learning curve, so don’t wait until 10 minutes to deadline to try to learn to use it. Give yourself time to play.

Sites to know

http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/IPEDSManual.pdf

http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/glossary/