PBA Home > Institutional Research & Analysis > Performance Measures > QIS > 2000 > Item #10

CCHE Quality Indicator System (QIS)
CU-Boulder Fall 2000 Submission
For funding 2001-02

CU-Boulder specified measure #2 (QIS item #10)

Title: Resident bachelor’s degrees per dollar of state investment in undergraduate programs

Measure: The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to resident students per $100,000 in unrestricted state appropriations for undergraduate programs, both for a single fiscal year.

Rationale: This is a measure of efficiency or productivity in undergraduate education, and of the return on investment for state tax dollars allocated to undergraduate programs at state institutions of higher education each year. While the quantity reflects many parameters of an institution’s operations, it indeed is a "quality indicator" of returns on state investments in undergraduate education.

Time period: FY97-98, the most recent with national data available.

Results on the basic measure

• CU-Boulder: 4.3 resident bachelor’s degrees per $100,000 in state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs in FY97-98.
• AAU publics
  • Average 2.3, median 2.1, N = 31 (Data for Rutgers are not available)
• The result for CU-Boulder is nearly twice the AAU average
• CU-Boulder is #2 of 31 schools, behind only Oregon
• The #3 school, Texas, trails CU-Boulder considerably, at 3.5

 Distribution over AAU publics, N = 31 

 Value (x.x)              # of institutions at the value shown
      5 6                        1   Oregon
      5                            
      4                            
      4 3                        1   CU-Boulder 
      3 5                        1   Texas 
      3 13                       2   Penn State, UCSB
      2 579                      3   IN, WA, VA
      2 012333444                9   
      1 55666778899             11 
      1 224                      3   North Carolina, MN, Iowa

Results in terms of amount of state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs, per resident bachelor’s degree (all figures rounded to nearest $100). This is the inverse of the degrees-per-dollar measure.

• CU-Boulder: $23,000 in state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs per resident bachelor’s degree
• AAU publics
  • Average $49,400, median $48,000, N = 31
• The result for CU-Boulder is less than half the AAU average or median
• CU-Boulder is #30 of 31 schools; only Oregon shows lower cost
• The #29 school, Texas, is considerably more expensive than CU-Boulder, at $28,900

  Distribution over AAU publics, N = 31 

  Value (x.x)            # of institutions at the value shown
      8 5                        1   North Carolina
      8 1                        1   Minnesota 
      7                              
      7 1                        1   Iowa
      6 77                       2   SUNY Buffalo, Wisconsin 
      6 134                      3   NE, AZ, FL
      5 5699                     4  
      5 123                      3  
      4 68                       2  
      4 0112333                  7  
      3 8                        1   Washington 
      3 034                      3   Penn State, UCSB, Virginia 
      2 9                        1   Texas
      2 3                        1   CU-Boulder 
      1 8                        1   Oregon

• Total bachelor’s degrees: IPEDS completions, Grand total men (Award Level Total, Bachelor's degree), plus grand total women. FY 97-98.
• Student FTE: IPEDS enrollment fall 1998, with FTE = (full-time + part-time/3), the usual FTE derivation. Reported for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. For these analyses, graduate and professional enrollments were combined.
• Residents (in-state) as percentage of student FTE. Not collected by IPEDS.
  • For undergraduates, this was estimated as
    • percentage of fall ’96 freshman from instate (from IPEDS migration supplement to IPEDS enrollment survey; fall ’98 not yet available)
    • TIMES .7613
    • PLUS .2301.
    • The two parameters above were determined from the relationship between the percentage resident among fall ’96 freshmen and among all undergraduates fall ’98, collected by the AAU data exchange, AAUDE (University of Washington query). For the 28 (of 32) public AAU institutions providing data, the prediction equation accounts for 91% of the variance in actual all-undergraduate percent resident. See plot. Using a prediction equation rather than the values supplied by AAUDE allows estimation of the all-undergraduate percent resident for all Research I institutions, or any set of institutions reporting to IPEDS.
    • Examples of input and predicted values
      • Freshmen 97% residents, all UG 97%: UC San Diego
      • Freshmen 90% residents, all UG 91%: Illinois
      • Freshmen 80% residents, all UG 84%: Pittsburgh
      • Freshmen 61% residents, all UG 70%: Michigan
  • For graduate-level students, no comparable data are available. Among the AAU public institutions, however, there is essentially a national market in graduate students, so that there is likely far less variance among states in the proportion of graduate-level students who are from instate than in the undergraduate percentage instate. Furthermore, most graduate-level students who are U.S. citizens attain residency after a year of study, again dampening differences between states. Therefore, we used 74%, the CU-Boulder percentage for 99-00, to estimate the percentage of graduate-level students who are from instate in all institutions. If other data become available, we will revise this procedure.
• Unrestricted state appropriation: IPEDS finance survey: Part A, line 04, column 1. FY 97-98. This represents state tax dollars. Tuition is a separate line in the survey.
  • We assumed that the entire state appropriation was for resident students or FTE.
  • The "appropriation for undergraduate programs" is thus estimated as the total appropriation, times the percentage of resident student FTE who are undergraduates.
• Degrees per $100,000 in state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs, the final measure, is then calculated as
  • Total bachelor’s degrees TIMES the estimated percentage of undergraduates from instate, TIMES 100,000
  • DIVIDED BY
  • Unrestricted state appropriation for undergraduate programs
  • Note: This measure can also be expressed as the amount of state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs, per resident undergraduate degree. For example, if Institution X produces four resident bachelor’s degrees per $100,000 in state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs, the amount of state unrestricted appropriations for undergraduate programs per degree is $25,000. We have stated our measure as "degrees per dollar" rather than "dollars per degree" so that higher values are more desirable, in keeping with other QIS measures.

From l:/ir/cche/qis/00/ucb02v2.doc, August 26 2000, Lou McClelland

Last revision 07/02/02