Institutional Research

Institutional Research and Decision Support has administered the Course Evaluation process and reporting since the fall 2015 term. The following guidelines and procedures are intended to ensure that instructional staff and students experience an orderly and efficient process. The course evaluation continues to be delivered through Evaluation Kit, which interfaces with Canvas. Student responses are completely anonymous to instructional staff, students, coordinators, and administrators.

• Course Evaluations Guidelines and Procedures
• Targeted Surveys Guidelines
• Standard Questionnaires
• Re-using Custom Questions from Previous Semesters
• Creating New Custom Questions
• Steps for Students
• Accessing Course Evaluation Reports Through EvaluationKIT
• Course Evaluations - Data Interpretation Guide
• FAQ for Students
• FAQ for Faculty

The Almanac and Trends provides key institutional data and information on historical trends and growth patterns at both the university and the college levels. The links to the six interactive sections are described below.

• All Student Enrollment: describes comprehensive university student enrollment by several demographic factors, such as age, race/ethnicity, and gender
• New Student Enrollment: provides information on application, admission, and enrollment for entering undergraduate and graduate students
• International Student Enrollment: provides information on the number and percentage of international students, a large and important part of The New School, by region; lists the top 20 countries of origin; and includes a word map
• Bachelor's Student Enrollment and Outcomes: provides eight years of trend data for one-year retention rates and four- and six-year graduation rates for undergraduate students seeking bachelor's degrees
• Faculty and Staff: lists faculty and staff by federal job category and demographic category, such as gender and race/ethnicity
• University Resources: lists key university financial measures and library resources

For full-time faculty and staff on the campus network (or VPN), this is the link to the second location for the Almanac and Trends, which offers additional download options and some additional filters.

Census

As required by federal and state law, The New School has an official student enrollment census date, the evening of the fifth Friday of the fall semester. Please refer to this Census Enrollment Story, which describes comprehensive university student enrollment, graduation rates, and financial aid disbursements at the time of the census. The interactive report provides an overview of our student population in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, and other socioeconomic dimensions. Trends across the last ten years are included. Please note that because of the nature of the information included, this report is available only to individuals in the campus community who have access to the institution-wide role when viewing reports on a campus computer or through the VPN.

Anticipated and Weekly Enrollment

Institutional Research and Decision Support is also responsible for supporting the enrollment planning process and reporting for degree-seeking students. Collaborating with colleagues in Enrollment Management, Student Success, the Registrar, and the academic units, Institutional Research and Decision Support handle entering and continuing student enrollments as part of the annual budget process. These enrollments are used in calculations in cooperation with the finance office to create annual budgets for gross tuition, institutional aid, and net tuition revenue. Google-based reports are available to individuals in leadership roles at The New School to support decisions related to planned (degree students only) and actual-to-date enrollment (all enrolled students). You must be logged in through your New School Gmail account to access these reports. To join the email distribution list on behalf of yourself or others, please email [email protected].

Reports for the 2022-2023 Academic Year are:

• Summer 2022 Weekly Enrollment Report (ongoing through 8/9)
• Summer 2022 Weekly Course Registrations Report (ongoing through 8/9)
• Fall 2022 Weekly Enrollment Report (ongoing through 9/20)
• Fall 2022 Weekly Course Registration Report (ongoing through 9/20)
• Fall 2022 Degree Enrollment Comparison to Budget (ongoing through 9/20)
• Winter 2023 Weekly Enrollment Report (from 11/1 through 1/24/23)
• Spring 2023 Weekly Enrollment Report (from 11/1 through 2/14/23)

The Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, requires that institutions that participate in federal student aid programs report data on enrollments, program completions, graduation rates, student outcomes, faculty and staff, finances, institutional prices, student financial aid, and academic libraries through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). 

IPEDS Shared Information data is made available to students and parents through the College Navigator college search website and to researchers and others through the IPEDS Data Center for every college, university, and technical and vocational institution in the United States that participates in federal student financial aid programs.  Please use the IPEDS Shared Information ReadMe file first to understand the contents of this folder.

IPEDS Data Feedback Reports

Please use the IPEDS Data Feedback Report Read Me file first to understand the contents of this folder. This information has been designed by the U.S. Department of Education to provide institutional executives with a useful resource and to improve the quality and comparability of IPEDS data.

Data for The New School and for all other U.S. institutions can be accessed in several locations:

• College Navigator, National Center for Education Statistics
• College Scorecard, U.S. Department of Education
• IPEDS, National Center for Education Statistics - U.S. Department of Education - Use the Data

Middle States Commission on Higher Education Annual Reporting

To remain compliant with federal accreditation, The New School must also submit an Annual Institutional Update (AIU) to the Middles States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) each year. The New School enters or verifies institutional data for key indicators such as enrollment, financial information, and measures of student achievement and uploads required documentation. The data submitted from the AIU are aggregated by MSCHE into trends for use in other monitoring and review processes.

• 2017-18 New School MSCHE AIU
• 2018-19 New School MSCHE AIU
• 2019-20 New School MSCHE AIU
• 2020-21 New School MSCHE AIU
• 2021-22 New School MSCHE AIU

Additional information and data dictionaries are available on the MSCHE website  

The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education

The Carnegie Classification is a framework for recognizing and describing U.S. institutions. The New School’s basic classification is Doctoral Universities: High Research Activity, or R2. Most of the data used for the seven classifications (including the basic) is from IPEDS. Two additional data sources are the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey and Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS). The Carnegie Classification is revised periodically, most recently in 2021 (on the basis of 2019 and 2020 data). New School-specific information can be found here: Carnegie Classification Files.

The massive amount of data collected across The New School allows for rich insights and analyses. Distilled and succinct data can enhance decision making and spark ideas. On this premise, Institutional Research and Decision Support (IRDS) offers the monthly publication IR Digest: Data, Insights, and Stories. We collaboratively develop topics that speak to The New School’s priorities, challenges, and strategies and tell analysis-driven stories to guide conversations and decisions.

Visit the repository of all IR Digest Issues.

• Issue 25. FAFSA Simplification Act: Why We Should Care
• Issue 26: Recap: The Retention and Student Experience Summit
• Issue 27: 2022 SNAAP: Parsons Alum's Experiences and Outcomes
• Issue 28: Fall 2023 New Students: Enrollment, Demographics, and Intersectionality
• Issue 29: Grading at The New School: Historical Context and Present-Day Concerns

Through the collaborative effort of a sub-group of the Teaching and Learning Committee and Institutional Research, Data, Analysis, and Planning, two surveys were administered from April 20 to May 22, 2020. The purpose of the surveys is to assess faculty and students' experience as they faced the challenges of the rapid transition of the spring 2020 classes from on-campus to remote instruction and learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Tableau reports are available only to the New School community and require logging in the FortiClient VPN.

• Questionnaire: Faculty’s Experience
• Questionnaire: Students’ Experience
• PowerPoint
• Narrative Report
• Tableau: Faculty’s Experience
• Tableau: Students’ Experience

In fall 2022, The New School was one of 120 institutions that participated in SNAAP (Strategic National Arts Alumni Project), administered nationally on a five-year cycle. The New School collected data from 2,120 alums from 1985 to 2022 (Parsons, CoPA, Creative Writing in SPE, specific arts-focused majors in Lang). SNAAP could guide administrative leaders and faculty in identifying increasingly important industry-specific skills, strengthen alumni engagement and support, inform the design of student retention initiatives, or uncover non-traditional measures of success.

IRDS seeks The New School community’s perspectives on how to optimize the use of SNAAP data. There will be a series of high-level analyses, and we encourage readers to peruse this first SNAAP analysis. This initial analysis covers only a fraction of the many questions SNAAP can answer. Refer to the tabs below for partialtabulations; additional reports will be communicated.

Parsons Results

CoPA Results

Please get in touch with Tet S. Lopez-Rabson at [email protected] for SNAAP data or analysis requests.

Institutional Research collaborates with academic and non-academic departments at The New School in developing research on diverse topics.

Research Topic: Assessing Degree Faculty Experience with Non-Native English-Speaker Students (a collaboration with English Language Studies)

• Research Brief
• Survey Questionnaire
• PowerPoint (as presented at TESOL 2018 International Convention)

The goal of the Indicators Briefs is to provide concise, succinct, and distilled information. Topics may include the results of regular or ad hoc survey research or commonly asked institutional research questions.

• Remote Education Experiences of Students and Faculty, Fall 2020
• National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Pulse, Fall 2020
• Undergraduate Students' Six-Year Outcomes: The New School and the National Benchmark
• Costs of Textbooks, Supplies and Materials: Estimates from Faculty and Students
• The Class of 2022: Significant Differences Between Domestic and International Students

Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) collects data about entering college students’ high school academic and co-curricular experiences and their expectations for participating in educationally beneficial activities during the first college year. The New School has been participating in this initiative since 2014. Starting in 2019, BCSSE is nationally administered to transfer students.

2019

• The Incoming Class of 2023: Results of 2019 BCSSE 
• Transfer Students: Results of 2019 BCSSE

2018

• The Incoming Class of 2022: Results of 2018 BCSSE
• Infographics: Who Are the Class of 2022?
• BCSSE 2018 Questionnaire

The New School has been participating in NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) every three years since 2001. NSSE provides institutions with diagnostic and actionable information. It gives insights into undergraduate students’ experiences inside and outside the classroom and the institutional success and challenges in supporting students’ needs. Institutions use NSSE in several critical initiatives, including accreditation, advising models/practices, benchmarking, faculty/staff development, strategic planning, and retention strategies.

2022

The first Retention Summit held at The New School (June and August 2022) was the biggest audience for NSSE. The summit paved the way for improved university-wide collaboration that led to the development of more targeted analyses and presentations. 

The complete tabulation of results is available in this comprehensive and interactive 2019 & 2022 NSSE Tableau Workbook. The workbook is the first of its kind at The New School and is accessible to all New School employees on campus or using the VPN off campus.

Selected highlights are also presented in the following reports.

• Student Engagement: Is Campus Support Adequate or Lacking
• Career Workforce Readiness

2019

• Infographics
• Engagement Indicators Brief
• Sustainability Education Brief
• High-Impact Practices Brief
• Undergraduate First-Year Experience
• Undergraduate Senior Transitions
• A Comparison: International and Domestic Students
• BCSSE 2018-NSSE 2019 Longitudinal
• Survey Questionnaire

2016

• 2016 National Survey of Student Engagement - The New School vs. Peer Groups

Assessment of student learning is the systematic and cyclical process through which faculty members, department chairs, and program directors articulate learning outcomes for their program, align learning opportunities with outcomes, measure students' progress toward those outcomes, and use this information to improve their programs.

To assess student achievement of program learning outcomes, program faculty might look directly at student work (e.g., papers, projects, and portfolios), or they might survey students or alumni on their achievement of program learning outcomes. However, faculty must look directly at student work at least once every three years for accreditation purposes. We recommend that faculty create a multi-year assessment plan to ensure that that program assessment is informed by data from a variety of sources (e.g., direct assessment of student work, student surveys, faculty surveys). Colleges and schools within The New School may have more specific assessment cycles or guidelines.

The director of Assessment is available to assist faculty at every stage of the student learning assessment process and provide technical, logistical, and reporting support for assessment. Please email bla[email protected] if you are interested in a consultation.

For more information, visit our Assessment of Student Learning website.

Please complete our Data Request Form to let the IR staff know about your data, analyses, or project request. In some cases, we may point you to resources that already exist. We may not be able to respond to all requests in the time frame required, because of limited staff resources, but we will make our best effort to assist you. If you have an urgent request (requiring an answer within 24 to 48 hours), please contact us by phone or email.

The Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support is charged with the administration and/or support of institution-wide surveys that provide The New School with data and insights on the educational experiences of students, faculty, and staff and post-graduate outcomes of alumni. IR conducts activities in a highly collaborative manner to develop effective survey instruments and ensure systematic data collection and reporting.

Please contact [email protected] if you need assistance in survey development and administration.

IR-administered survey research initiatives