KPI Common Questions and Footnotes - Institutional Research, Effectiveness & Planning

When is the KPI dashboard updated?

The KPI dashboard is typically updated twice per year:

Mid-fall, when UNCA releases current-year data and IPEDS releases prior-year enrollment, completion, and staffing data.
Early spring, when IPEDS releases prior-year fiscal data.

How are data, goals, and projections sourced?

UNCA’s strategic plan performance metrics and goals were developed by System Office and are reported on an annual basis. The current strategic plan metrics and goals will remain active from 2022 to 2027, after which System Office will develop a new strategic plan.

Six different performance metrics are reported for UNCA’s stategic plan:

4-year First-time Graduation Rate from Anywhere
4-year First-time Pell Graduation Rate from Anywhere
Undergraduate Degree Efficiency
Average Cumulative Debt at Completion of Bachelor’s Degree, First-time Students
Average Cumulative Debt at Completion of Bachelor’s Degree, Transfer Students
Education and Relation Spending per Degree

For each of these six metrics, four dimensions are tracked:

Baseline scenario: i.e. business as usual, which is based on UNCA’s performance metrics as of the year 2020.
Threshold goal: the minimum performance target set by System Office.
Stretch goal: an improved performance target.
UNCA actuals: the actual performance of the institution on a given metric for a given year.

Beyond the strategic plan performance indicators set by System Office, UNCA independently monitors and reports several key and supplementary performance indicators. For many of these indicators, when relevant data is available in IPEDS, UNCA measures its performance against a group of public peers and UNC peers.

Public peers include:

St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota-Morris
Ramapo College of New Jersey
SUNY College at Geneseo
SUNY at Purchase College
Christopher Newport University
University of Mary Washington
University of Virginia’s College at Wise
New College of Florida

UNC peers include:

Elizabeth City State University
Fayetteville State University
North Carolina Central University
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
University of North Carolina School of the Arts
Western Carolina University
Winston-Salem State University

All data that includes public peer comparisons is sourced from IPEDS, with more recent data that has not yet been published by IPEDS instead sourced directly from UNCA records.

Footnotes for individual charts follow.

Footnotes for Strategic Plan KPIs:

4-year First-time Full-time Graduation Rate from Anywhere:
- Year shown reflects the strategic plan reporting year, not the cohort year. For example, the 4-year graduation rate shown for 2020 provides the percentage of students who matriculated at UNCA in fall 2016 and graduated from any U.S. institution by the end of summer 2020.
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
4-year First-time Pell Graduation Rate from Anywhere:
- Only includes students who started as full-time students and received a Pell Grant in their first year.
- Year shown reflects the strategic plan reporting year, not the cohort year. For example, the 4-year graduation rate shown for 2020 provides the percentage of students who matriculated at UNCA in fall 2016 and graduated from any U.S. institution by the end of summer 2020.
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
Undergraduate Degree Efficiency:
- Calculated as the count of all undergraduate degrees awarded per 100 FTE undergraduates for the respective academic year.
Average Cumulative Debt at Completion of Bachelor’s Degree, First-time Students:
- Baseline and goal figures are inflation-adjusted for each reported year.
Average Cumulative Debt at Completion of Bachelor’s Degree, Transfer Students:
- Baseline and goal figures are inflation-adjusted for each reported year.
Education and Related Spending per Degree:
- Overall expenses that support student success instead of research or public service relative to degrees awarded that year.
- Baseline is a three-year average of 2018, 2019, and 2020, with 2018 and 2019 adjusted to 2020 dollars.
- Goals are inflation-adjusted for each reported year.

Footnotes for Additional KPIs:

Fall Student Headcount by Year:
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
Auxiliary Revenue per FTE by Fiscal Year:
- Auxiliary revenue (dining, housing, athletics, camps and conferences, etc.) per student FTE.
Fall-to-fall First-time Student 1-year Retention by Cohort Year:
- Only includes first-time full-time fall-entering students.
- Academic year shown is for the year that the cohort entered UNCA and reflects the 1-year retention performance of that cohort. For example, the fall-to-fall 1-year retention rate shown for 2020 provides the percentage of students who were retained from fall 2020 to fall 2021.
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
Fall-to-fall Full-time Employee Turnover from Prior Year:
- Turnover rate is the percentage of all full-time employees employed as of October 31st in the base year and who were no longer employed as of October 31st of the reporting year.
- Employees who change to part-time or change jobs but are still employed at the university in the following year are considered retained and not counted in turnover statistics.
- Employee turnover rates are not available for peers in IPEDS.

Footnotes for Enrollment KPIs:

First-time Full-time Students by Year (Fall Only):
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
Graduate Students by Year (Fall Only):
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
- UNCA did not have any active graduate programs in academic years 2020-21 and 2021-22.
First-time Student Applications by Year (Fall Only):
- This measure refers to the number of students who submitted complete applications for admittance to the institution for the fall semester.
First-time Applicant Yield Rate by Year (Fall Only):
- This measure refers to the number of newly admitted students who enrolled divided by the entire pool of students who were admitted.

Footnotes for Fiscal Capacity KPIs:

Core Expenditures per FTE:
- Core expenditures for the essential educational activities of the institution per student FTE.
Operating Revenue plus State Appropriations per FTE:
- Operating revenue (tuition, fees, and auxiliaries) plus state appropriations per student FTE.
Real Value of Endowment per FTE:
- End-of-year institutional endowment per student FTE adjusted for inflation.
Non-state Revenue per FTE: Private Gifts, Grants, Contracts:
- Private grant, contract, and gift revenue per student FTE.
Non-state Revenue per FTE: Government Grants and Contracts:
- Government grant and contract revenue per student FTE.

Footnotes for Student Success KPIs:

4-year Graduation Rate, First-time Full-time Fall-entering Students by Cohort Year:
- Academic year shown is for the year that the cohort entered UNCA and reflects the 4-year graduation rate of that cohort. For example, the 4-year graduation rate shown for fall 2017 provides the percentage of students who were graduated by the end of summer 2021.
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
6-year Graduation Rate, First-time Full-time Fall-entering Students by Cohort Year:
- Only includes students who started as full-time students.
- Academic year shown is for the year that the cohort entered UNCA and reflects the 6-year graduation rate of that cohort. For example, the 6-year graduation rate shown for fall 2015 provides the percentage of students who were graduated by the end of summer 2021.
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
3-year Graduation Rate, Transfer Full-time Fall-entering Students by Fall Cohort Year:
- Academic year shown is for the year that the cohort entered UNCA and reflects the 3-year graduation rate of that cohort. For example, the 3-year graduation rate shown for fall 2018 provides the percentage of students who were graduated by the end of summer 2021.
- Excludes students who aren’t reported to IPEDS (auditors, deceased students, active military, etc.)
Graduate School Enrollment within 3 Years of UNCA Degree Completion by Graduation Class:
- Includes UNCA bachelor degree recipients who enrolled in a graduate-level program at any U.S. university within 3 years of their degree completion year, including post-bac certificates, master’s, doctoral, or professional programs.
- Due to incomplete data reporting practices to the National Student Clearinghouse by participating institutions, this metric may slightly undercount total student enrollment in graduate programs.
High Impact Experiences, First-time Students Only by Graduation Class:
- Only includes undergraduate degree recipients who started as first-time students.
- Student learning activities that count toward high impact experiences include: undergraduate research, study abroad, course-based internships, course-based service learning, honors program, and student employment.
- Note: this dashboard includes a drilldown button which allows participation in high impact experiences to be disaggregated into individual experience types.
Credit Hour Benchmark Pass Rate, First-time Full-time Fall-entering Students by Cohort Year:
- Pass rate measures the percentage of each cohort that have successfully passed:
  - A total of 30 institutional credit hours by summer at the end of their first year;
  - A total of 60 institutional credit hours by summer at the end of their second year;
  - A total of 90 institutional credit hours by summer at the end of their third year.
- Total credit hours include the summer term immediately preceding the fall matriculation term.
- Note: this dashboard can be toggled between an ‘All Students’ version, in which attrited students are included in all calculations, and an ‘Enrolled Students’ version, in which attrited students are excluded from all calculations.