Before approaching the Office of Enrollment Management, it is a good idea to familiarize oneself with the measures this office typically uses and how they relate to campus climate for persons with disabilities. We have already discussed how performance indicators such as cumulative persistence and first year retention rates can be used as global indicators of climate and also help bring potential influences on climate into focus. What other measures can be used?
- Academic performance indicators. Performance indicators consist of an analysis of basic transcript information. In addition to persistence and retention, variables such as GPA, credits attempted, credits earned, the number of withdrawals, the number of drops, the proportion of “A” and “F” grades earned, etc., are other measures that can yield important information. These measures are best analyzed as trend data comparing the performance of students with disabilities over time to identify changes; analysis is most often done by enrollment period (all students with disabilities enrolled in a particular semester or year), but it also can be done by cohort. These indices can be compared to students without disabilities for a general indicator of climate and may also be examined by academic department if there are sufficient numbers of students with disabilities enrolled in particular departments.
- Demographics. In this context, demographics are variables that ascribe students to descriptive categories such as race, gender, disability, transfers, out-of-state, etc. who are enrolled at the institution, who have particular majors, or who participate in particular programs (e.g., living learning programs in residence halls, career services, study abroad, internships, etc.).
Also in the context of demographics, there are also two basic comparisons that can be made:
- Participation rates of students with and without disabilities. The easiest comparison is participation rates, the percents of students with and without disabilities that participate in the activity of interest at the local institution. Participation rates can be refined by gender or type of disability if the population of students with disabilities is large enough.
- Participation rates of students with national figures. The second type of comparison would be to compare the participation rates of students with disabilities based on national averages and demographics. Beyond state and national census data, good sources include reports by the National Center for Educations Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/) such as Postsecondary Students with Disabilities: Enrollment, Services, and Persistence; reports by the National Council on Disability such as People with Disabilities and Postsecondary Education (http://www.ncd.gov); and Higher Education Opportunities for Students with Disabilities: A Primer for Policymakers by the Institute For Higher Education Policy (http://www.ihep.org/)
In sum, dashboard indicators can provide a quick method of identifying the impact of change at an institution and can also provide some common ground in collaborating with other efforts to provide access and equity in higher education.
