Organizational, Industry, and U.S. Success: Employee Reskilling and Upskilling through Relevant and Timely Data

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the U.S. alone, we currently have over 9.5 million unfilled jobs while the working-age population has continued to shrink since 2007. That information, paired with the World Economic Forum’s current report that 50% of the adult population will need to reskill and upskill by 2025, means that per the U.S. Census Bureau, over 258 million more people will be affected by a need for re-skilling and upskilling to reduce our labor deficit and skills gaps, further impacting our industries and U.S. competitiveness. Importantly, with the infusion of technology in every industry during the pandemic, and as we’ve experienced with our cell phones, we know that technology drives the rate of change at faster and faster rates.

With such challenges and more ahead, it is critical that we provide flexible and career-relevant pathways for all working-age individuals to continually gain the skills they need to keep up with keeping up. It has never been more important for education and training organizations to be ready to meet the needs of post-traditional students, and similarly the evaluation paradigms for those solutions similarly need a new perspective as well.

Currently, many evaluation services utilize the research data reported out by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) surveys which are facilitated by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES). They are considered the primary source for information on U.S. colleges, universities, and technical and vocational institutions, and they contain metrics such as number of degrees awarded, enrollment figures, cost of attendance information, as well as retention and graduation rates, which are then included in almost every major accreditation and rankings. Additionally, per the Higher Education Act, institutions are required to include IPEDS information on their websites, and it has become an important factor for students assessing colleges, as the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard leverages a number of IPEDS data points as part of its reporting.

However, under the lens of institutions that serve post-traditional students, as well as industry and business leaders, use of that data given its time delays on reporting of usually two years and other data aggregation issues, is not providing truly accurate and hence relevant information in our increasingly dynamic times. More specifically, in today’s modern era impacted by technology-infusion and the need for continual skilling, re-skilling, and upskilling, the metrics required for data aggregation services such as IPEDS do not capture the retention rates of most adult learners who come to higher education as returning, part-time students to re-skill or upskill for career growth in meaningful ways because they rely heavily on data for traditional and first-time first-year students who enter college in the Fall Semester from high school graduation and attend school full-time.

Therefore, the use of that data can have very negative consequences for online schools and those that serve post-traditional students who may be older, returning for upskilling and/or enrolling part-time, as they also have full-time jobs, because those learners are not represented in the data. While IPEDS has increased its representation of part-time students and students who took college-level classes at other institutions in some of its metrics such as graduation rates, only fall-to-fall retention remains a metric included on the Scorecard. At a post-traditional student serving institution such as Colorado State University Global (CSU Global), which has multiple and year-around term starts for part-time learners that are not going to school full-time and within Fall, Spring and Summer Terms, the data for such learners is not fully included and reported which leaves a large population of learners not incorporated in IPEDS engagement, retention, and completion data.

For example, CSU Global’s full student population currently exceeds 83% in its first-to-third term retention, and the University has added over 8,000 new students during the last year given its career-connected education and training framework that includes:

• the skills, knowledge, and abilities, incorporated into our courses, that align with industry certifications and qualifications;
• instructors with both industry experience and the educational credentials to teach at the graduate and undergraduate levels so that they can provide workplace insights and coaching to learners on real-life professional navigation issues as well as educational and skill-based development assistance;
• embedded internships and work-ready assignments for real-life work experience so that learners can earn collegiate credit while also being able to use and share their work on what they are learning through assignments that can include projects such as presentations and information on competitors vs. having to complete more traditional homework assignments such as research papers;
• integrated industry tools so learners have experience in using the tools to be successful in their new positions even on their first day;
• and programs built as “stackable certificates” so that the learners can engage with programs as needed and desired while they work, and over time, have enough credit from them to be awarded a degree.

With these guiding principles, CSU Global also ensures that its graduates see a return on their investment (ROI) through annual surveys, which in 2024 reflected that:

• over 93% of CSU Global graduate and undergraduate degree and certificate completers are working, with over 77% employed within the field of their program completion, and that graduate program completers are experiencing median income increases from 30% to over 83% depending on the program completed, with undergraduate program completers experiencing a percentage increase in median income of 4% to 58% depending on the undergraduate program completed.

Understandably, the landscape of higher education was a bit different in 2003 when IPEDS and its requirements became the standard it still is today, with only 15.6% of students enrolled in distance education courses. However, by 2019, according to National Center for Education Statistics data, 36.6% of students were enrolled in distance education courses. Students taking such courses are often referred to as “non-traditional” or “post-traditional” learners, such as those who may have previous college credits and came to an online campus to complete their degree. However, as shared above, such students are not included in IPEDS data because they do not meet the criteria of being a first-time, full-time student entering school in the Fall Semester. As a result, they rely on data drawn from student populations who do not represent them to make very important decisions regarding their desired college or university. A prime example from CSU Global’s data reported in IPEDS 2022 and published on the NCES website, of the total undergraduate enrollment of 6,433, only 99 were first-time first-year students to report which only represents 1.5% of our overall undergraduate population in Fall 2022.

Importantly, retention continues to be a metric that is important to the accountability of institutions, but for services such as College Navigator, it’s also collected as a component of the Common Data Set, an agreed-upon list of data points, but only collected on those students that enter in the Fall Semester. That data becomes the basis of college rankings including those in College Board, a non-profit that provides college readiness information; U.S. News & World Report, a recognized media leader in college rankings; and Forbes, a widely respected publication for business leaders, to name a few.

As a result, institutions with many post-traditional students who earned previous college credits and who enter school in terms other than the Fall Semester are forced to report just a portion of their student population, which is not accurately capturing the success and progression of their full student body to degree or certificate completion. Consequently, IPEDS data should not be considered as representative of the entire university scope of retention or persistence. Rather, alternative measures could be used to track retention and successful progression through academic programs rather than fully relying on metrics that do not fully reflect today’s modern learners who are and will keep continually learning year-around and likely on a part-time basis while they remain working to help ensure that their organizations remain prosperous.

It may be that over time IPEDS and other reporting agency data requirements will evolve to better align with our current and future workforce needs and post-traditional learner inclusion. In fact, as an example of an evolution meeting modern behaviors and needs, the National Science Foundation now collects raw data which allows the government to better represent more current, agile, and inclusive data on retention and persistence so that potential students can ensure they are selecting the schools that best meet their needs.

The current workforce challenges, and the needs we have as we look toward future preparedness, reinforce that data collection of the outcomes and representation of today’s learners of all ages and at every point in their working lives, and the varying education and learning modalities currently and increasingly available, will be more and more important. Filling today’s open positions with qualified employees and ensuring that they can identify the institutions that can help them continue to skill, reskill, and upskill on an ongoing basis is a responsibility of educators, industry leaders, and government officials as they collaboratively work towards ongoing workforce, organizational, industry, and national success.