TWICV Special Episode with Debbie Kepple Mamros Mar 19, 2024 001

Welcome to another special edition of This Week in College Viability. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. As always, we've got a special edition and a special guest today. Debbie Keppel-Manross is joining us from Des Moines Area Community College, and Debbie has a job that, from my perspective, is one of the most important in colleges. But of course, I'm a data nerd. Debbie is the executive director for the Office of Planning, Assessment, and Data at Des Moines Area College. Debbie, good morning and welcome.

Thank you, Gary. Thanks for having me.

So institutional research, in and of itself, it sounds boring, but tell us what it is and what important roles it plays for colleges throughout the country.

Well, I could go on for quite a while about this, but essentially what institutional research does is it identifies and analyzes data for internal decision-making needs. And it also identifies data needed for compliance reporting to external agencies like the state governments, federal governments, and accreditors.

So Iowa, in my mind, and again, I do research on the financial health and viability of public and private colleges across the country. And Iowa is one of the 4 states that I categorize as high risk. Iowa, Wisconsin, New York, and Pennsylvania are my 4 high-risk states. You're a data person. What does your Des Moines area community college do to support that college's, the community college's, and its subsidiaries' efforts to stay financially healthy?

So one thing my office has done more recently to help support a healthy and growing community college here is we've started something called Data Days. And I like to call it Data Days at DMACC. I like the alliteration. And we have it on the third Thursday of every month. We have an hour. And what I do is I open our office space. I bought a conference table and a large screen TV that works as a monitor, and I invite people from across the college in to view and ask questions about and explore specific pieces of data. We focus on one or two topics every month, and then of course at the end, if there's time for Q&A, we allow them to ask questions about other things. But my goal here is to to allow faculty and staff at DMACC to become more data literate so that they're able to see some data. Like, they can look at an enrollment report and they know what their role is in that and how they might affect that. So that's one of the things we've done. Another thing we've done is we've started looking at specific things like the enrollment cliff and taking that information to leadership with presentations. We kind of put DMACC in the wider regional context as well as the context of the whole U.S. And we also look at things like student behaviors. And make leadership and others aware that sometimes what we think students should be doing or what we think is good for students, the data actually points us in a different direction. One example of this is what I call the 15 to finish. That's where students should be encouraged to take 15 credit hours in their first semester. All the data, whether it's internal to us or external, points to the fact that students who take 15 credit hours or more are more successful and get out of college faster and into a job earning money, etc., etc. They don't have the loan debt. So that's, that's something that we're looking at. And one last thing, we've also implemented a program viability process where we're looking at our programs to ensure that we're not, we're not carrying too many programs, too many, maybe excess faculty or staff, that maybe, maybe it's not even about, you know, reducing faculty and staff, but focusing on the programs that our students really want and need and allow the students to be successful when they get out.

So you started off, Debbie, talking about what institutional research does. And it's fair to say, correct me if I'm wrong, that institutional research for colleges and universities tend to focus on internal data. Is that fair?

Yes.

And then I want to go back to the comment I had right before you answered that last question, and that I've labeled Iowa as a high-risk state, especially for private colleges. Do you agree, disagree? How would you characterize Iowa as an overall college market?

Um, that's a really good question. I would say it depends on what part of Iowa you're talking about. What we're seeing in the statewide data, because we do look external to the institution, what we're seeing in the statewide data is that the metro areas and the suburban areas are projected to grow, but the rural areas are projected to contract. So, I mean, we can think about it in a way that, you know, the people from the rural countryside are moving towards the cities more, But that may not actually be what's happening. So I don't want to say that that's specifically what's happening. We know, though, that there are— there's growth in the Des Moines metro area. We know there's growth in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa City area. There's growth in the, you know, on the western border near Omaha. So some of the colleges that have markets in those areas, I don't think are going to feel as stressed as those who maybe don't or never built the market pipeline from the metro and suburban areas.

So when we talk about data, and we've all heard the line that you can make data say anything you want it to say. And when you look at it from the institute, what I'm trying to get at here is, is there a way to make it more honest? And when you look at the data that you try and capture at Des Moines Area Community College, What are some of the challenges you face in getting good data?

Well, a few things. So one of the challenges that we have is trust. People don't always trust the data because there is this idea that statistics can tell you anything. You can make numbers and statistics do whatever you want. And yes, sure, you can, but it's not the most honest way to approach it. So from our internal perspective, internal to my office, we do follow the Association of Institutional Research's code of ethics. And, you know, their code of ethics says, you know, be honest in your research. You know, yes, people are going to make mistakes. That's not what we're talking here. And when you make a mistake, you of course go back and correct it. But don't, you know, don't use small datasets to project onto larger happenings. Make sure you've got a large enough set of data. Make sure that you're asking the right questions.

Yeah, always.

Of the data. That's really important. And the other thing I would say is when you're doing data verification, which we're in the process of doing one for a dashboard right now, you can gain a lot of trust by involving people from the offices that are going to use the data to verify the data. If they've done the verification themselves and they see, okay, this matches what I'm seeing on this screen over here, I now trust this dashboard. You gain a lot of, uh, trust just by involving other people. Yeah.

Yeah. So I know one of the roles that you play in institutional research is with accreditors. I presume HLC is the accreditor. HLC is part of your job. And this is kind of a, is Gary right or wrong question? And I have always viewed those accrediting agencies more as I daughters and T crossers. Kind of a quality assurance of content, if you will. And they don't really provide, in my mind, they don't really provide any predictive financial health or viability insurance for students. Debbie, am I right or am I wrong?

Well, I would say you're both right and wrong. There you go. You're right in the fact that the accreditors sometimes aren't the places where students or their parents would go. To find out if a college is healthy or not. And while most colleges do, I mean, they're required to show on their website whether they're accredited and when their last accreditation date was and all that stuff. And also, if they are on probation, they're also required to put that out there too. But again, it's not the big marketing message that you get, that students are getting. So, you know, no college is going to say, hey, our accreditor put us on probation, come here. No, the accreditors do have— yeah, they do collect information that then they call both financial and non-financial indicators of a college's health. And the financial indicators are, you know, things like your, your reserves and your expenditures and all sorts of things like that. And they have a ratio that they come up with and, and they, they'll put colleges and universities on probation just for that ratio. I think, though, that the non-financial indicators are more important to determining or assessing a college's health. And these are things like any large swings in enrollment, large swings in degree attainment or degrees awarded, swings in the number of full-time faculty. That's like a huge red flag there.

Interesting, interesting.

Because a college or university, 80-plus percent of their costs are in their human resources. So when you see a college shift drastically from maybe full-time to part-time faculty, or you've got a lot of full-time faculty either leaving or being laid off, that's, that's a key indicator there. And it probably won't show up in the finances yet, but it's going to show up on those numbers of faculty.

So the next question is kind of along the similar lines of viability. And as you know, I, I've developed the College Viability App and the 2024 versions, both the public and private college versions are out. And those versions are for college leaders. And there's a version for faculty and staff. And there's a version for students and families and for others that compares the financial health and enrollment and outcomes for colleges across the country. And community colleges are included in the public college version. Just a quick look at that, and I want you to comment on this, Debbie. Of the 16 community colleges in Iowa from 2015 to 2022, the last reported data, 15 of those 16 had decreases in FTE enrollment. How do you interpret and analyze those trends just for the community college portion of the market in Iowa?

Yeah, so our 15 community colleges are They cover specific districts, and some of those districts are very rural. And like we talked about a few minutes ago, some of our more rural areas are stretched for population and so on. So that's maybe some of it. Other things that are playing into this though, I think, are the push, especially, I wanna say this is about 5 years ago, 4 or 5 years ago, where we saw the, uh, the Regent institutions— so this is the Iowa, Iowa State, and UNI— they, they had pressure put on them to enroll more in-state students. So students who may have gone somewhere else were— pressure was put on the institution, those big institutions, to enroll them there. And you do see, if you look at those institutions, you'll see a bump, you know, an increase in their enrollments. And that was more than likely to the detriment of other colleges and universities, private universities in the state. So that might be some of it. Something else.

That's interesting. That's an interesting analysis. Go ahead.

Something else that's, I think, maybe playing into it, and I have done no research on this, it's just something in the back of my mind that says this is probably playing a role. Iowa has really high rates of dual enrollment attainment from students who are graduating from high schools. So we have a lot of our high school students taking dual enrollment courses. In the high schools. And Iowa supports those students by providing those classes for free to the students, and free including the textbooks. And we're one of a few states, only a handful of states, that actually support dual enrollment at this level. So we do have a very high dual enrollment rate in the state of Iowa. But what that also probably means, again, no, done no research here, but it probably means that we've got students leaving high schools who've already completed at least one year of college. Once they get into college, they're not going to spend as much time there, whether it's at a two-year or a four-year, and you're gonna see the enrollment decreases at the, the post-secondary level because they've already taken some of that in high schools. Now, that's That being said, I don't want to say, hey, dual enrollment's a bad thing because it's not. Dual enrollment's a great thing for students. So I think they should, should all be doing it if they are so inclined or capable. So it's a bonus for students. We're just going to have to adjust.

So one of the points I like to make with the College Viability App is that's the comparisons that matter. So let me just give a generic example, and it can be a 2-year or 4-year, you can draw your own analysis point. So say one, College 1 has lost 200 students in the last 8 years, and College 2 has lost 400 students in the last 8 years. Is that a fair comparison to say College 1 is doing something better or College 2 is doing something worse?

I'd have to say I need to know what size these two colleges are.

If they're about the same size.

Are we talking FTE? Is this headcount? Or are we talking maybe there's some, some part-timers in there? You know, it's hard to really put a value on, you know, whether a student is a part-time student or a full-time student, because typically part-time students take longer to finish. So they're going to be enrolled for a longer period of time. Theoretically. Um, you know, in practical terms, that's typically not what happens. Part-time students don't complete at the same, same rate. Um, but yeah, if, if it was a complete apples-to-apples comparison, I would say yes. If it was not, and we've got, let's say, a college just lost 200 students, and, and they're in a growing geographic area and another college lost 400, but they're in a declining area. Well, we can probably tell you why that 400 students is gone. I'd be more worried about the 200 student decline in a growing area.

Interesting, interesting. And then a question about, you mentioned completions a minute ago, and while I don't rant and rave, I'm tempted to on occasion. Because I look at mostly the 4-year, and I know we're talking 2-year at Des Moines Area College, but the 4-year graduation rates are stunningly bad in way, way, way too many public and private colleges. How do you see the community college and the work that you do help bump those numbers up, not necessarily just on the 2-year end, but on the 4-year end as well?

I think community colleges have a really unique role that they can play. On both ends of a 4-year degree. And I've said this in other places when I've been invited to speak. So on the front end, a 2-year college can be that place where somebody goes because they want to live at home, they want to save money, but they still want to go to college. They want to start their college experience. So that's where they can come in. It can also be a help on the front end where you might have a student who isn't quite ready to do the work at a 4-year institution. Like maybe the 4-year institution has said, you're not qualified yet. You don't meet our incoming freshmen qualifications. Go get your associate's degree and then transfer in. There are very few 4-year institutions out there that aren't looking for transfers now. That was not the case 10 years ago. 10 years ago, there were some, some of the elite 4-year, even the small private elite 4-years that would not go looking for transfer students. They're not doing that anymore. They're looking for transfers. So that's, that's how the majority of the way a community college can support the 4 years, but there has to be some, some really deliberate partnerships because our students can't get to the 4 years and then have to retake all their gen eds because their gen ed packages are different.

Yeah, and, and just one last final wrap-up and follow-up— sorry, follow-up question to that is the graduation rate. In your own personal opinion, do we need to do much, much better on those really 2- and 4-year graduation rates?

I think so. I do think that beyond doing better, what we also need to do, or what the federal government probably ought to do with some of these calculations, is realize that the data that they're collecting is not telling the whole story. They're collecting data that was collected in 1988. It's the same data points. When in 1988, students left high school and they went to college and they either finished or they didn't. And those who didn't finish were typically called dropouts because they didn't go anywhere else. Yeah, typically. And most students came out of high school without any college credits at all. That is not what's happening today. And yet we're still saying, tell us your first-time freshman numbers. Tell us how many of those students graduated, you know, in 150% of the time, and we'll do the calculation for you. And it's like, well, okay, but we have students who are swirling in and out of colleges. You know, they're kind of— they're starting here and going somewhere else and coming back here and picking up a certificate. How do we account for those students? That is so much more common today than it was in, in the '80s and '90s.

And I lied to you, one more final question. So is this same topic, is that a, in your mind, is that a statistically significant number that fall outside that traditional start year 1 and finish in 4 year 4?

I think, I think it's a huge number, uh, especially when we're talking about the adult student market that community colleges focus on. We have— I don't remember the exact percentage, but it's a predictable number that's— that they've done for the state of Iowa where X number of adults have some college but no degree. And yet we see these students come back to us in their 30s and 40s. We don't get to count them. The federal government doesn't care about the graduation rate of those students because they're never in our first-time freshman cohort because they already have college credit under their belt.

Interesting. Interesting. Well, my guest today has been Debbie Keppel-Mamris from the Des Moines Area Community College in basketball-crazy Iowa. Debbie, I appreciate you making time this morning.

Yes, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.