National Center for Postsecondary Improvement - The Collegiate Results Survey

About the Collegiate Results Survey

As part of a larger project examining how a student’s participation in postsecondary education affects his or her academic achievement and employment outcomes, NCPI researchers developed measures that students and institutions could use to make comparisons of similar institutions. Researchers wanted a better understanding of the market for postsecondary education, one in which quality judgments are based on outcomes.

Researchers, led by Robert Zemsky and Susan Shaman developed an instrument for measuring collegiate results, the Collegiate Results Survey (CRS). The survey asked a sample of recent college graduates to describe their lives six to nine years after college. Administered primarily as a paper instrument mailed directly to respondents’ homes beginning in the fall of 1999, the CRS collected data from the graduates of 80 baccalaureate-granting colleges and universities across the United States. The CRS questioned graduates about their postbaccalaureate education and lifelong learning, occupations and income, job skills, personal values and activities, and confidence in their skills and abilities.

The CRS yielded a rich database of 34,000 alumni who had graduated between 1991 and 1994, with most having graduated in 1992-93. Undergraduate education was still a comparatively recent experience for these respondents, though they were far enough beyond the baccalaureate degree to have made choices and identified goals that would likely shape the rest of their lives. Within this context, the CRS asked alumni to report on their occupations, skills used in the workplace, educational activities since graduation, personal values, and current activities. Alumni were also asked to self-evaluate their ability to perform a variety of tasks derived from real-life scenarios and indicate whether they would like to learn more about those tasks they felt less confident in performing. Results of the first administration of the CRS are available in "A Report to Stakeholders on the Condition and Effectiveness of Postsecondary Education, Part One: The Recent College Graduate."

The resulting data can help prospective college students and their parents base educational choices on the attributes a given institution promotes rather than on institutional prestige. Even two colleges that compete head-to-head for the same students turn out graduates who are quite different in terms of the occupations they pursue, the values they think are important, the skills they use in the workplace, and the kinds of tasks they feel confident in performing.

For more on how students can use the research in selecting a college, see Robert Zemsky's "A New Way To Look At Colleges: How To Discover The Reality Behind The Dream" (PDF File)

Use a version of the CRS on the Peterson's website, Bestcollegepicks.com.

In developing the CRS, researchers developed a system for categorizing institutions in order to make comparisons among similar types of institutions, or market segments.

A discussion of market segments as related to college cost appeared in a Change magazine article, "Shopping for the Right Fit: Patterns of College Choice in the Postsecondary Market."

An in-depth discussion of the market taxonomy, and how institutions can use the results, is included in "New Directions for Institutional Research, Higher Education as Competetive Enterprise: When Markets Matter," No. 111 Fall 2001 by Robert Zemsky, Susan Shaman, Daniel B. Shapiro (offered by Jossey-Bass).

An overview of the taxonomy was printed in Change magazine, "In Search of Strategic Perspective: A Tool for Mapping the Market in Postsecondary Education," and a follow-up article refined the taxonomy, "Resurveying the Terrain: Refining the Taxonomy for the Postsecondary Market."
.