Student-Unit Record Systems and Postsecondary Accountability: Exploiting Emerging Data Resources

Abstract

The past decade has seen unprecedented growth in the quantity and scope of electronic student record data available to states and systems in higher education. All but eight of the fifty states have such records and collective experience is growing about how to harness them to yield information useful for building policy and exercising appropriate accountability.1 This chapter reviews these developments by a) describing the characteristics and contents of extant systems, b) describing how they have been used to create indicators of institutional effectiveness, c) proposing a number of performance measures that can be calculated for accountability and consumer information purposes, d) exploring the promise of linking databases across educational sectors for multiple states and e) discussing some challenges associated with using such data effectively.