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Given the growing importance and expense of higher education in the United States, it is more important than ever that statements about the effects of various developments be firmly grounded in quantitative data. It is not enough, for example, to warn that because the volume of private, unsubsidized student loans is growing rapidly, they will soon dominate the loan market. Rather, it is important to put the numbers in context and also to explain how this growth might affect specific groups of students.
Higher-education data are used differently depending upon who is using them: institutional researchers, financial-aid officers, enrollment-management personnel, college faculty and graduate students, policy researchers, higher-education associations, lobbyists, or state and federal policymakers. These analysts need information for a variety of purposes, including benchmarking, making peer comparisons, justifying expenditures, or influencing decision-makers. Their information sources may differ as well. They may have access to internal college data, collect their own through surveys or qualitative methods, synthesize existing literature, or rely on “official” sources such as the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).
Unfortunately, any of these data can be misleading, either by intent or because of their inherent limitations. Researchers and analysts may use publicly available data that were not collected for the type of analysis they have undertaken, or they may attempt to collect new data without the resources to do it well. Many experienced users try to compensate for the imperfections of the available data by “triangulating”—that is, by using numbers from a variety of sources, in the hope that together they will present a complete picture. But these users also look at the numbers with a skeptical eye.
This article focuses on the questions users should ask when interpreting the meaning of data and the importance of context for any analysis. As a case in point, I discuss private (or alternative) loans, which are concentrated among certain groups of students, to show how a careful look at the data can show where “conventional wisdom” goes wrong.
Alisa Cunningham is managing director of research and evaluation at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to access and success in higher education around the world.
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