Public data sources about colleges and universities

A growing number of free public data sources allow parents and students to do their own research about colleges and universities.

U-CAN (University and College Accountability Network) (www.ucan-network.org) was developed by private colleges and universites and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) to provide a standard information template to make it easier to find answers to the most commonly asked questions about colleges.  In addition to providing key data, each institution provides custom links back to their own Web pages to tell the stories that go beyond the numbers.  Most of the data elements come from the Common Data Set (below) or from institutional responses to mandatory federal surveys. [Bates College information]

CollegeNavigator (nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/) was developed by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics to provide a core set of statistics compiled from several mandatory public surveys.  Students and parents may search for colleges that meet various criteria, and they may compare results for up to four colleges side by side.  [Bates College information]

College Results Online (collegeresults.org) takes public data from U.S. Department of Education databases and repackages it in a simple interface designed to make it easy to select and compare several colleges on a number of key statistics.   It was developed by the Education Trust to help students and parents examine college graduation rates and related variables.  [Bates College information]  It allows users to:

• Examine overall graduation rates and see how those rates have changed over time
• Learn about universities' records graduating diverse groups of students
• Compare the graduation rates of similar institutions - colleges and universities that share many characteristics and serve similar student populations

EconomicDiversity.org (economicdiversity.org) was developed by the Institute for College Access and Success to improve public understanding and research on diversity and affordability at American colleges and universities.  It's user-friendly search interface includes information from federal databases on loan and grant usage, family income, race and ethnicity, and over 200 other variables. Users can produce side-by-side comparisons of several colleges of interest.  [Bates College information]

NCAA Graduation Rates Report (www.ncaa.org/grad_rates/)  The National Collegiate Athletics Association collects annual statistics from its members on institution-wide graduation rates and first-year to sophomore return rates.  [Bates College information (.pdf document)]

The Common Data Set (CDS) was developed by several major college guidebooks in collaboration with colleges as a common template to collect data elements to be used in guidebook publications.   The CDS asks a large number of very detailed questions about all aspects of a college, using a standard set of definitions and methodologies.  Major guidebooks will accept a CDS response as an alternative to their own surveys, although several ask a number of number of additional questions that are specific to their own publications.  Note that since the CDS is a data collection  instrument  meant for the convenience of the publishers and the data providers, the information is not presented in a format that is "user-friendly" to consumers.  It tends to collect raw data rather than to present the calculated key ratios that are of most interest to the public.  Nevertheless, many institutions post their CDS on their Web sites so that the public will have the same information that instittuions provide to the guidebooks. [Bates Common Data Set]

Some cautions about using these data sources:

• Time period:  For data sources derived from U.S. Department of Education surveys, there may be a delay of a year or more before information becomes available to the general public.  For the most up-to-date information, go to the college Web sites or to the Common Data Set.  Even within a "report for the current year", some data elements may reflect a different academic or fiscal year, because of differences in timing for when data elements become available or final.  For example, financial aid data reported to the U.S. Department of Education reflects final amounts from the prior fiscal year, but the Common Data Set requests preliminary financial aid amounts for the fall of the most current academic year.  (Aid packages are frequently adjusted and revised throughout the year.)
  
  
• Perturbed  data: The U.S. Department of Education is required by federal privacy laws to make slight changes to some data provided by institutions so that it is not possible to identify individuals who fall in small data cells.  These minor changes, or "perturbations" usually affect statistics that are broken out by racial/ethnic status.  While changes should not afftect institution-wide totals, use caution when interpreting results for small data cells, particularly for colleges with low enrollments.  The NCAA graduation rate report is generated from the actual data provided by colleges.
  
  
• Definitions:  Read the definitions, and understand what they mean.  Most sites have "help" features that explain definitions that may be highly technical.  Note that even though there are standard definitions and methodologies behind most common variables, they can be vague, and colleges and data preparers often interpret the definitions in slightly different ways.