How to Identify an Institution for the Purposes of Measuring Socioeconomic Mobility

research
Written By Michael Itzkowitz

May 15, 2024

This paper was commissioned by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Abstract

Higher education data are collected and reported by the federal government at different levels of aggregation. Some information is self-reported at the individual campus level. For example, Rutgers University has three individual campuses, and each branch has its own separately reported data for inputs such as net cost, undergraduate enrollment, and the proportion of low- and moderate-income students who enroll at each campus location. An institution such as Rutgers, however, also has only one value for the economic outcomes of its former students, combining all three branch campuses under a single earnings metric.

This paper presents an overview of federal higher education data, explores options for consolidating data collected at different units of observation, and concludes with recommendations for how the Social and Economic Mobility Classification could handle variables collected at different units of observation.

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