ERIC Number: EJ1421926
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Apr
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2731-5525
Tracking Student Progress through Graduate Programs
Michael E. Young; Megan Miller; Christopher Urban; Claudia Petrescu
Discover Education, v3 Article 43 2024
Higher education is awash with data that, when refined, facilitates data-informed decisions. Such decision-making is much more prevalent in support of undergraduate education given the much larger number of undergraduates pursuing higher education in contrast to the much smaller proportion of graduate students. A simple extension of current undergraduate-focused tools to the population of graduate students risks ignoring large differences in the students, processes, and policies that are unique to graduate education. Graduate education is more decentralized, less grade-focused and more milestone-focused (e.g., passing preliminary exams, defending a thesis), graduate admissions is driven by department-level processes and criteria, expected products vary across programs (e.g., performances, journal articles, books), and curricular specialization is the norm. Consequently, local contextual variables predominate. This article describes the development of a milestones dashboard to support programs in their pursuit of graduate education excellence by creating data transparency at the student level, visualizing student progress through milestones, allowing benchmarking against other programs at the university, and empowering college and university administrators to identify trends and to ask questions when unusual data arise.
Descriptors: Graduate Study, Masters Programs, Decision Making, Benchmarking, Data Collection, Documentation
Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2123/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A