The 2019 edition of UW Fast Facts is now available. You can find it on the OPB website under the UW Data tab, and in the Quicklinks bar on the right. You can also access it directly at UW Fast Facts.
A special thank you to OPB’s Institutional Analysis team, the Marketing & Communications team, and to our partners around the UW for their work to gather, verify, and crosscheck data; format the document; and pull it all together!
In May 2018, in collaboration with UW-IT’s Enterprise Information, Integration and Analytics (EIIA) unit, the Office of Planning and Budgeting (OPB) relaunched Public Profiles, which are now five interactive dashboards including:
All dashboards, except Degrees Production Trends (which is refreshed every August), are refreshed with new data every academic quarter after census day. The data is sourced from the University of Washington’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). The numbers presented in all dashboards have been approved by OPB and reconcile against internal institutional dashboards – UW Profiles (requires access to EDW).
These dashboards act as the University of Washington’s “Institutional Fact Book.” Anyone with the access to the internet can view these dashboards using their preferred browser. Explore the dashboards: https://www.washington.edu/opb/uw-data/uw-profiles-information/
Check back for additional dashboards and visualizations as they become available. Updates regarding these dashboards are also provided by UW-IT on their News page.
Please contact uwprofiles@uw.edu with any questions or for help using these dashboards.
The 2018 edition of UW Fast Facts is now available. You can find it on the OPB website under the UW Data tab, and in the Quick Links bar on the right.
A special thank you to OPB’s Institutional Data & Analysis team, the Marketing & Communications team and to our partners around the UW for their work to gather, verify and crosscheck data; format the document; and pull it all together.
OPB’s Institutional Analysis team and UW-IT’s Enterprise Information, Integration & Analytics unit announce seven new peer finance dashboards, available now in UW Profiles. These new dashboards join four existing peer dashboards. Peer dashboards use data publicly available through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to allow users to compare the UW to peer institutions around the country on a range of student- and finance-focused measures.
With the new finance dashboards, users can compare revenues, expenses, and endowment values at the UW and peer institutions. They can also explore the relative importance of different revenue sources and expense categories across institutions. The expenses story dashboard provides a step-by-step look at the expenses that directly or indirectly support universities’ research and instruction missions.
More information about each of the new peer finance dashboards is available through the online documentation. Please feel free to send any questions or comments to uwprofiles@uw.edu.
The Department of Education recently released their annual report detailing the 3-year cohort default rate (CDR)—a metric that measures what percentage of postsecondary students default on their loan payments within the first three years of entering repayment—and the data are encouraging: the 3-year CDR for FY 2012 is 11.8 percent, almost two percent lower than the previous year and three percent lower than FY 2010.
While reasons for the drop are uncertain, administration officials have credited the increased enrollment in income-based repayment plans as partially responsible. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has cheered the lower default rate but cautions that there is more work to do. “There’s no real reason why we can’t significantly reduce default rates even further,” he told reporters in a statement reported by Inside Higher Ed. “We’re going to keep working to hold schools accountable.”
The report also breaks down the CDR by school, state, and institution type. Below is a breakdown of the most salient statistics.
National statistics:
State statistics:
As previously stated, the declining CDR average nationwide is a hopeful sign for the future of student loan repayment. Nevertheless, loans remain a massive strain on millions of college students and graduates and more must be done to alleviate the student debt burden. The CDR itself has come under fire as a flawed metric; it only measures those students who default on payments and does not take into account the almost one in three borrowers who make payments but cannot make any progress on paying down their debt or the share of students at a given institution who borrow. Some in the education policy world have called for using loan repayment rates, rather than default rates, as the primary metric for gauging an institution’s ability to prepare its students for repayment.
UW Profiles – a set of dynamic, web-based data dashboards – recently received The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) Best Practices Award. This award is widely considered to be the business intelligence industry’s most prestigious honor.
OPB’s Institutional Data & Analysis team developed UW Profiles, in collaboration with UW IT’s Enterprise Information, Integration & Analytics team, and formally launched the site in fall 2013. UW Profiles allows users to explore core UW data through 21 visual dashboards that display summary, comparison and trend data.
Campus Technology Innovators also honored UW Profiles, calling it “an intuitive, user-friendly portal that provides a single point of access to data and visualizations for faculty and staff.”
Congratulations to Institutional Analysis and to all those who worked hard to make UW Profiles a reality!
It will soon be easier for students and parents with adverse credit histories to qualify for federal PLUS loans. Under new the Education Department’s (ED’s) new rules – which were released on Wednesday and are expected to take effect in March – ED will review only two years (rather than five) of a prospective borrower’s credit history to determine loan eligibility, and will excuse up to $2,085 in certain types of delinquent debt when running initial credit checks.
ED agreed to revisit the rules following pressure from many colleges and families who were angered after ED tightened the PLUS loan standards in 2011. The 2011 changes resulted in thousands of sudden loan denials and, consequently, enrollment declines and revenue losses at some institutions. According to Inside Higher Ed, department officials expect that the new standards will allow an additional 370,000 applicants to pass the initial credit check for PLUS loans.
Representative Chaka Fattah – Pennsylvania Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Education Task Force – lauded the new standards; however others connected with historically black colleges have criticized ED for not moving quickly enough. Meanwhile, some policy analysts and consumer advocates argue that ability-to-pay criteria are necessary to prevent borrowers from being saddled with unmanageable debt, and that the new rules don’t do enough to safeguard against default.
If defaulting becomes an issue as a result of the new standards, the silver lining is policymakers will at least know about it and, hopefully, be able to do something. As part of ED’s changes to the PLUS program, the department will begin calculating and publishing annual cohort default rates for institutions receiving PLUS loans.[1] That information should help illuminate whether borrowers are getting in over their heads.
Ultimately though, as EdCentral points out:
“The Department must do a better job reaching out to parents and helping them understand the terms and conditions of their loans, including the ability to repay their loan as a percent of their income if they consolidate into a Federal Direct Consolidation Loan. Better counseling won’t solve all the issues with the PLUS loan program. But it’s a start until we can ensure PLUS loans are a safe product for families and we can improve access to better aid options like grants for low-income families.”
[1] ED currently only calculates cohort default rates for colleges that receive Stafford loans.
The College Board recently published “Education Pays 2013: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society,” which provides data on U.S. adults’ level of education and its impact on earnings, employment, health-related behaviors, reliance on public assistance programs, civic participation, and more. The goal of the report, the authors say, is to highlight the ways in which individuals and society benefit from increased levels of education. The authors note, “Financial benefits are easier to document than non-pecuniary benefits, but the latter may be as important to students themselves, as well as to the society in which they participate.”
Many old trends continue to hold true. Having a college education increases one’s chances of: being employed, earning a higher income, receiving health insurance and pension benefits, climbing the socioeconomic ladder, being an engaged citizen, and of leading a healthier lifestyle. These individual benefits translate to larger, societal benefits, including less government spending on public assistance programs, more tax revenue, and greater civic involvement.
A few noteworthy data points about earnings include:
The report also provides some interesting facts about participation and success in higher education, such as:
* “Bachelor’s degree” means a bachelor’s degree, but not a more advanced degree.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) released its annual update on federal student loan cohort default rates (CDRs), which measure the frequency with which student borrowers at all levels (undergraduate, graduate, etc.) default on their federal loans. Although both national and UW CDRs rose, the UW’s rates remain well below those of the nation.
As ED is in its second year of switching to the more accurate three-year CDR measure, this year’s report includes both the FY 2011 two-year and the FY 2010 three-year CDRs. These rates represent the percentage of student borrowers who failed to make loan payments for 270 days within two or three years, respectively, of leaving school.
The Department provides breakdowns of its data by institution type, state and school. Here are some key findings:
While this is good news, many students still struggle to afford ever-increasing tuition fees and/or to repay their student loans. The UW reaches out to our former students at risk of default on their Stafford Loans and helps identify federal repayment options that could benefit them. Former UW students who are in default or experiencing difficulties repaying their loans can contact the Office of Student Financial Aid for assistance (osfa@uw.edu, 206-543-6101). Students can also visit studentloans.gov to explore their repayment options.
On Monday, the U.S. Education Department (ED) began formal negotiationson the draft language of a proposed new “gainful employment” rule. The rule, originally published in 2011, was designed to enforce a requirement of the Higher Education Act that states career education programs—non-degree programs at all colleges and most degree programs at for-profit colleges—must “prepare students for gainful employment” in order to participate in federal student aid programs. The rule was meant to discourage these programs from misusing federal aid dollars and leaving students with debts burdens they are unable to repay. However, in 2012 a federal judge rejected major provisions of the rule, requiring that ED rethink its strategy.
Here’s a summary of the changes:
For details, see a comparison of the two versions prepared by the Education Department. Please continue to follow our blog as well as the Federal Relations blog for updates on this topic.