State creating ‘data warehouse’ for CCRI, RIC, URI evaluation

PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner is developing an online data warehouse for the state’s three public institutions of higher education that it hopes to launch next summer.

Commissioner Jim Purcell said Wednesday the state is at the beginning stages of creating a Web portal, defining terminology common across the three schools – the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island. His office started the work in January, he said.

The availability of this data will enable the public and public leaders to “see if we’re producing the right types of graduates for the needs of the state, for business and industry,” Purcell said. “We can look at how we’re connecting to the workforce.”

The Statewide Longitudinal Data System being created is not unlike data warehouses other states are developing. It is funded with $600,000 from a larger $4 million federal grant from the Institute for Educational Sciences, a division of the U.S. Department of Education, Purcell said.

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The types of data to be compiled and publicly reported include retention rates, graduation rates, financial aid, student success rates and numbers of graduates per major. The information also will be broken down with respect to demographics like race and gender, he said.

When you have graduates identified by major and field, you can connect that to the demands for certain professions in the workforce and adjust your educational programs, Purcell explained.

Purcell also said access to the data could be used by educators to help identify which classes may be “problematic” in terms of students being successful and “improve delivery” of course instruction. Access to the data would also enable educators and the public to “assess how well students are doing,” he said.

The purpose of the data warehouse is not only for accountability to the public about the state-run institutions but also for future use should performance-based funding be approved by the legislature. A performance-based funding bill pursued by Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, did not make it through the last session of the General Assembly.

CCRI President Ray Di Pasquale said in an emailed statement that CCRI supports the development as a way for the three institutions to share information and statistics.

“It’s important for transparency, and also to promote a better understanding of our population among our students, the Board of Education and the public,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Rhode Island College said the school “supports the commissioner’s efforts to create a data warehouse and has representation on the initiative’s steering committee.”
She added that “RIC and the other public institutions of higher education are advising on data types and standards and are helping to develop policies on data access.”

Paiva Weed recently acknowledged the work under way in a June 30 letter to Gov. Gina M. Raimondo and Barbara S. Cottam, chairwoman of the R.I. Board of Education.

“Our hope is that the three institutions create and maintain the appropriate data collection efforts to bring us closer to identifying goals and reaching them,” she wrote.

Educators at URI could not be immediately reached for comment.

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  1. Rather than this obsessive need to “evaluate” the performance of these institutions, maybe the State should exam their own behavior on funding for higher ed; a miserable record for over three decades which gives RI the distinction of being on a per capita basis practically near the bottom of all states and in that position for 30 years!! I am sure that is another fact that the vacuous MS Pavia Weed can be proud about.