Regent study team makes headway on education value questions

A seven-month exploration of measuring how specific academic programs align with state workforce needs, especially high-demand jobs, has created a data-dense public dashboard that contains all the programs at the state's three public universities. Iowa Board of Regents academic officers Rachel Boon and Jason Pontius worked with provost office and institutional research representatives from the three regent universities in response to a February directive from board president Sherry Bates. The dashboard is one of the work products (PDF) Boon and Pontius shared with the regents last month.

Following the presentation, the regents agreed to resume the discussion at their Feb. 25-26 meeting, and asked Boon and Pontius to continue their work, particularly on low-enrollment programs, which already are part of an annual review process directed by the board. Regents Robert Cramer and Chris Hensley said there's an expectation, especially from legislators, that the study group's work will bring data-informed change.

Back in February, Bates asked that the group's work also:

• Evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of different degrees
• Identify low-enrollment programs

Nationally over the last decade, Americans have expressed a declining confidence in higher education. Citing a June 2024 Gallup Poll, Pontius said changes that could help reverse that are to make it more affordable and focus on teaching practical subjects with better links to careers. 

Aligning degrees with jobs in demand

Boon and Pontius said three principles guided the group's work over the last seven months: Use public data that anyone can access, use methods and calculations that are transparent and repeatable (and adopted from reputable sources; not created internally), and make connections between regent university graduates and workforce placement that are as direct as the data allows. The group used data and guidance from multiple state and national sources: Iowa Workforce Development, Iowa Business Council, Iowa Business Education Alliance; Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University (national ROI model); and Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (U.S. Census Bureau data).

Pontius said matching degrees to occupations in order to calculate ROI is difficult in Iowa. The available data from Iowa Workforce Development doesn't connect majors to a specific occupation, only an industry. For example, an accountant and a pharmacist who work at the same Target store both would be counted as "retail industry" employees in currently available state data. For now, the next best thing, he said, is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' CIP (Classification of Instructional Programs)-SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) "crosswalk" -- with common-sense tweaks to some of the combinations by the study group. The focus, though, will be on supporting efforts to improve the state's workforce data collection.

The dashboard built for the November presentation contains dropdown menus that let the user select a regent university and a program with its CIP code. It's a data-dense tool, Boon said, and a long-term option might be to embed some of the information in other regent dashboards already in use, such as last spring's Recent Alumni Career Outcomes dashboard.

The study team's recommendations for major-to-occupation alignment:

1. Because of their importance to tracking outcomes, review the assignment of CIP codes to majors. Universities have begun this review.
2. Explore a state initiative to enhance wage records collected through Iowa Workforce Development. Enhanced wage record data could specify the jobs graduates take. (The regents can't make this change but they can support it. It would benefit business and industry, too.)
3. Figure out how to evaluate the social and community impact of majors that provide value to Iowans but provide lower wages (sectors such as health care, social services, teaching and public administration, which are vital to the health of all communities but wages don't reflect that value). 

'Break-even time' as an ROI calculation

Pontius said group members talked with multiple state university systems about how they calculate ROI with the respective state data available to them. The model borrowed for this study is from the University of Texas system. It examines whether a graduate can, over time, earn more than a high school graduate in the workplace, accounting for the cost of attendance, net price and post-graduation earnings. The time to "break even" is the years it takes for a degree holder to surpass the earnings of a high school graduate while paying off three different levels of student debt: Fully-financed degree (loans totaling $72,000 plus interest), median debt and no debt.

Across the three regent universities, Pontius said 75% of the majors offered, calculated at the highest debt level, break even within three years, and 81% of regent undergraduates are in a major that breaks even within three years. Noting that less than half of all regent university undergraduates finish school with debt, when recalculated at the median debt level, 98% of regent university undergraduates break even with a high school graduate's estimated earnings within three years.

Sample calculations showed break-even times of a single year for majors such as accounting, nursing or chemical engineering with any amount of student debt, three years for biomedical science, seven years for astronomy (five years with no debt), or eight years for an ancient civilization major (five years with no debt).

The study team's ROI recommendations:

1. Embed the break-even calculations into the existing publicly available dashboards so many audiences can use it. In this process, review which ROI/breakeven calculation is the best fit for the regent universities (no debt, median debt, full financing).
2. Identify supplemental data on student outcomes and workforce needs where data are missing, incomplete or misaligned.
3. Expand existing practices and strategies that help students connect degree tracks and experiential learning to their career objectives. 

Low-enrollment programs

Boon said this data is readily available since the regent universities keep their own enrollment data. Defining "low enrollment" simply by a number may be short sighted, she added. Universities might factor in variables such as:

• High workforce demand (ex: nursing)
• Low workforce demand but the state needs experts in these programs (ex. ag meteorology, orthodontics)
• Low enrollment by design due to accreditation or licensure caps (where they exist, important to assuring quality)
• Student interest and aptitude (ex: music, math)
• High enrollment in general education courses but may not attract a high number of majors (ex: physics, math)
• Common second or third major
• New program still in its start-up years

Respecting such variables, the universities defined low enrollment thresholds as 25 or fewer enrolled students for bachelor's degree programs and 10 or fewer enrolled students for graduate programs. At Iowa State, 12 undergraduate programs meet this threshold, four of which are only a second major, and 35 graduate programs qualify, two of which are new.

The study team's enrollment recommendations:

1. Integrate the low enrollment thresholds and additional factors for review in the board's academic program review process.
2. (Universities should) develop a framework or index for program vitality that factors in enrollment but also variables such as licensure/accreditation requirements, service to other areas of study (ex. teacher education, general education), and faculty resources.
3. Identify program reorganizations or closures that would generate efficiencies, improve program alignments or enhance opportunities for workforce preparation.