By Stage
Retention and Transfer Dashboard
CONTENTS
You can use the Retention and Transfer dashboard to assess how well your institution retains students and understand the transfer activity of students who may have left your institution, including if students earned a credential before or after transferring.
The Retention and Transfer dashboard is made up of three distinct sections:
Retention and Persistence
This dashboard displays the first to second year retention and persistence rates for six consecutive student cohorts who attended your institution as first-time or transfer-in students.
How It Works
The PDP determines if a student is full-time or part-time based on the total number of credits the student attempted during their first term at your institution. We collect information each academic term to determine the number of credits required.
- Retention = How many students are still enrolled or have earned a degree from your institution before the end of their second academic year
- Persistence = How many students are still enrolled in their second academic year or have completed a credential at another institution
The dashboard first checks whether a student has attempted credits at your institution in their second year using the data submitted in your institution’s course data file. If you did not submit the student in your institution’s course data file during their second year, the dashboard then checks The Clearinghouse’s other enrollment and degree reporting services. If the student was submitted through another Clearinghouse service as having been enrolled at your institution during their second year, the dashboard will classify the student as retained. If another institution has submitted an enrollment record for the student, the dashboard will classify the student as persisted.
Since retention and persistence are measured over a student’s entire second year, a student could be retained in the first term of their second year and then persisted at another institution during their second term. In this case, the dashboard would classify the student as retained.
Dashboard Sections
Year-Over-Year Trends for Retention/Persistence
This section displays your institution’s overall retention or persistence rate across cohorts disaggregated by dimension. You can select a dimension from the visualization title. The data is displayed in lines that show first-year retention and persistence from one cohort to the next.
Year-Over-Year Percentages/Counts for Outcomes
You can view percentages and counts for each cohort year using the stacked bar chart and switching between the Percentages/Counts dropdown in the visualization title. You can also view the chart by All Outcomes, Not Enrolled, Persisted, or Retained.
Term-To-Term Retention and Persistence
This dashboard provides a view of retention and persistence rates for students who attended your institution as first-time or transfer-in students over time, giving you a term-to-term view of six consecutive student cohorts within their first two academic years.
Dashboard Sections
Term-to-Term Trends
This visualization allows you to view your institution’s overall retention or persistence rate across cohorts and dimensions. Select a cohort from the drop-down to focus on the cohort you are interested in tracking over their college career. Select a metric that you wish to track (Retention or Persistence) or both (Retention/Persistence). The line graph represents the cohort, term, and metric you selected over time from the cohort’s first term enrolled through the end of their second academic year.
The axis will automatically update to display the appropriate term names for 8 consecutive terms (including winter and summer terms).
This visualization is limited to only display cohorts that have completed two academic years (8 terms).
Transfer
How It Works
The dashboard includes information on transfer students who earned a certificate, associate degree, or bachelor’s degree or did not earn a credential before or after transfer. It also displays your institution’s overall transfer rate.
The dashboard displays data for up to six cohorts for up to eight years after a student’s first enrollment (when available). When you select a timeframe and a cohort, the dashboard will only display data for cohorts in which the full timeframe has elapsed.
Dashboard Sections
Student Transfer Criteria
The first section of this dashboard allows you to define criteria related to the transfer student population.
- Students who Transferred In Years 1 through 8
- Earned Credit Milestone
- Credential Earned Pre-Transfer
Call Out Boxes
The callout boxes display the change in total transfer rates, transfer rates to four-year institutions, transfer rates to two-year institutions, and the average credits earned before transfer, between two specified cohort years.
Year-Over-Year Transfer-Out Rates to Destination Institution Type By Dimension
This section shows your institution’s overall transfer rate across cohorts with disaggregation by dimension. Unlike other sections, this section includes the entire student population and calculates the transfer rate based on the entire cohort. The lines in this section do not show a longitudinal view of transfers. They show transfer trends from one cohort to the next based on the timeframe and transfer criteria that you select.
Transfer Behavior and Credentials Conferred Post-Transfer
The next two visualizations work in tandem to display transfer behavior for disaggregated groups of students from a given cohort, including their destination institution type, and degree attainment.
The Sankey diagram shows the disaggregation movement of students from the cohort two their destination institution type (2 year or 4 year) and their ultimate degree attainment from that destination institution.
Note: for the purposes of this dashboard, less than two-year institutions are collapsed into the two-year category.
The horizontal bar charts below the Sankey diagram display the same disassgregation, but allow you to see how those populations of students break down to degree attainment.