REGEIS Integrated IPEDS/CDS Application

There is a well-documented reporting problem in higher education… Over the past decade, there have been numerous publicly available studies conducted regarding technology and reporting in higher education. These studies have been conducted or sponsored by the Department of Education (DOE), the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), chief information officers (CIOs), academic leaders, foundations, and others.

The findings in each study have been remarkably similar, if not identical.

GAO Headquarters - Washington, DC

“In addition to being time-consuming, keyholders generally perceive IPEDS reporting to be a relatively demanding task." “Campus data systems could reduce the IPEDS reporting burden, but some keyholders… are concerned about the reliability of the systems’ automated IPEDS reporting features.”

“We have noted a remarkable shortage of clear, accessible information about crucial aspects of American colleges and universities, from financial aid to graduation rates." "Because data systems are so limited and inadequate, it is hard for policymakers to obtain reliable information of students’ progress through the educational pipeline.”

“We have found a considerable amount of evidence attesting that many college and university leaders are dissatisfied with the cost and performance of software, and that this is a matter of significant concern to them.”

A Solution...

“There is a documented solution to the reporting problem in higher education… REGEIS has developed an integrated IPEDS/CDS application for two-year and four-year institutions, which is described and fully illustrated herein."

• Centralizes institutional reporting across all departments and offices
  • Office of Institutional Research empowered to provide all official reporting
  • Inter-departmental inconsistencies eliminated by not distributing data questionnaires to individual offices, e.g., admissions, registrar, financial aid
• Enables institutions to reallocate staff resources from data collection to assessment
  • Many institutions expend 1-3 FTEs in data gathering; ad hoc calculations and querying, and report generation
  • REGEIS IPEDS/CDS application fully automates all aspects of data collection and reporting; requires less than .25 FTE to maintain
  • GAO Report notes that “minimizing the burden on these schools would free up staff to focus on their numerous other duties that a essential to operating a postsecondary institution”
• Ensure extremely valid, reliable, and timely data submission
  • All calculations are performed and verified in Microsoft’s SQL Server database; completely eliminates user calculation errors
  • SQL Server processing creates IPEDS import files to automate input of data into IPEDS Web site; completely eliminates user input errors
  • NCES-sponsored 2009 study quotes an IR professional And other people [on campus] had query information so they would report numbers and all the numbers were different, because it depended on how they wrote the query and how they specified it
• Provides powerful, but user-friendly front-end for Institutional Research and other offices to view/filter data by any number of student attributes
  • By career, school, department, major, degree-seeking
  • Enrollment status, e.g., first-time, full-time, part-time, transfer, returning
  • Race, gender, age, residency, income-level, first-generation, etc.
• Provides an extraordinary return on investment (ROI). For many institutions, the reporting time burden will be reduced by as much as 90 percent, or more
  • DOE estimates a time burden to complete surveys from 15 to 41 hours
  • GAO reports that the 22 institutions it surveyed estimated from 12 to 590 hours
  • REGEIS IPEDS/CDS generates import files to allow input of the six student-related surveys in 2 hours