The purpose of this lesson is to demonstrate how StudentTracker can be used to help with IPEDS Measures Reporting.
This lesson is intended for active users of the National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker for Colleges & Universities Service.
Resources
- StudentTracker for Colleges Cohort Query Guide (PDF)
- StudentTracker for Colleges & Universities Knowledge Base
Transcript
Let's use StudentTracker to support reporting for the IPEDS outcome measures survey. Specifically, the column that asks for students who enrolled at another institution after leaving yours. The reporting period typically opens in mid December with a deadline in early February. To get the IPEDS report, go to surveys.nces.ed.gov/ipeds.
Review the cohort year and what you need to report. For outcomes in the award and enrollment status at 8 years table, there's the column for number who enrolled at another institution after leaving your institution.
The process to get this information follows three simple steps. Identify the students, create and submit a student tracker request file, and review the aggregate report for your iPads counts.
The first step is to identify the correct group of students. These are students who started at your institution for the specified entering cohort year but did not earn a credential there. For each student, you need their full name, date of birth, and their last date of attendance at your institution. You also need to identify the enrollment characteristics that iPads requires you to report by category, whether the student was firsttime or non-firsttime, full-time or part-time, and a PELL grant recipient or non-recipient.
Next, create your StudentTracker request files using guidance from the StudentTracker knowledge base. In the header row of your file, set the search type to SE, which stands for subsequent enrollment, and use the students last date of attendance as the search date. Student tracker will search the clearing house database for enrollment records with a term end date after that search date and degree or credential records with an award date after that search date. create four separate request files based on how the IPEDS survey is structured. For example, one file could have students who were firsttime full-time PELL grant recipients. Another could be the first time full-time non-PELL grant recipients and so on. Name the file with the content you're searching for to easily identify the report. For example, fall 17_18 firstp.txt. Each request file must contain at least 11 students. After you submit your request file, it goes through our matching process and then reports are returned through FTP. StudentTracker returns three reports, a control report, a detail report, and the aggregate report.
The aggregate report provides a deduplicated total of students who enrolled at another institution after leaving yours, including students with FERPA blocks. So, you're getting a more comprehensive number than if you just use the detail report.
If your own institution appears as the first school of enrollment, adjust the search date to a later date because you don't want students who are at your institution for the IPEDS report.
Around the middle of the columns, you'll find number of students IDed at initial school. Use the total number in this column for your IPEDS reporting. In this example, 14 students went to different schools than the student first attended. So you will know then that here 14 students went to a school after they left your institution.
If you're an experienced StudentTracker user, consider consolidating all students into one file and using the requesttor return field. This allows you to create codes for firsttime students F and non-firsttime students NF. In the detail report, sort or find students meeting these characteristics to get totals. However, this won't be comprehensive since the report won't return records for students with blocks, resulting in an incomplete aggregate count. If your institution has few blocks, this method can save time. That's how to use the aggregate report to get your total number for each category.
For more information, review our StudentTracker for colleges and universities. Help site or contact studenttracker@studentclearinghouse.org.