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Welcome to the podcast. We call it TWICV. It is our effort to provide a fast-paced, entertaining, and alternative voice to the propaganda and hype flowing out of colleges in America today.
This week in College Viability is a proud affilate of The EdUP Experience podcast network.
Gary (00:03)
Welcome to another special edition of this week in college viability. Hi, my name is Gary Stalker. As always, we've got a special edition and a special guest today. Debbie Keppel -Memros is joining us from Des Moines Area Community College. And Debbie has a job that, from my perspective, is one of the most important in colleges. But of course, I'm a data nerd. Debbie is the executive director for the Office of Planning, Assessment and Data at Des Moines Area College. Debbie, good morning and welcome.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (00:33)
Thank you, Gary. Thanks for having me.
Gary (00:35)
So institutional research, in and of itself, it sounds boring. But tell us what it is and what important roles it plays for colleges throughout the country.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (00:46)
Well, I could go on for quite a while about this, but essentially what institutional research does is it identifies and analyzes data for internal decision -making needs, and it also identifies data needed for compliance reporting to external agencies like the state governments, federal governments, and accreditors.
Gary (01:15)
So Iowa in my mind, and again, I do research on the financial health and viability of public and private colleges across the country. And Iowa is one of the four states that I categorize as high risk. Iowa, Wisconsin, New York, and Pennsylvania are my four high risk states. You're a data person. What does your Des Moines area community college do to support that colleges, the community colleges and subsidiaries efforts to stay financially healthy?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (01:44)
So one thing my office has done more recently to help support a healthy and growing community college here is we've started something called Data Days. And I like to call it Data Days at DMACC. I like the alliteration. And we have it on the third Thursday of every month. We have an hour. And what I do,
is I open our office space. I bought a conference table and a large screen TV that works as a monitor. And I invite people from across the college in to view and ask questions about and explore specific pieces of data. We focus on one or two topics every month. And then of course at the end, if there's time for Q &A.
Gary (02:30)
Thank you.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (02:38)
We allow them to ask questions about other things. But my goal here is to get, to allow faculty and staff at DMACC to become more data literate so that they're able to see some data. Like they can look at an enrollment report and they know what their role is in that and how they might affect that. So that's one of the things we've done.
Gary (02:54)
Thanks.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (03:07)
Another thing we've done is we've started looking at specific things like the enrollment cliff and taking that information to leadership with presentations. We kind of put DMACC in the wider regional context as well as the context of the whole US. And we also look at things like student behaviors and
make leadership and others aware that sometimes what we think students should be doing or what we think is good for students, the data actually points us in a different direction. One example of this is what I call the 15 to finish. That's where students should be encouraged to take 15 credit hours in their first semester.
All the data, whether it's internal to us or external, points to the fact that students who take 15 credit hours or more are more successful and get out of college faster and into a job, earning money, etc., etc. They don't have the loan debt. So that's something that we're looking at. And one last thing, we've also implemented a program viability process where we're looking at our programs.
to ensure that we're not carrying too many programs, too many maybe excess faculty or staff, that maybe it's not even about reducing faculty and staff, but focusing on the programs that our students really want and need and allow the students to be successful when they get out.
Gary (04:55)
So you started off, Debbie, talking about what institutional research does. And it's fair to say, correct me if I'm wrong, that institutional research for colleges and universities tend to focus on internal data. Is that fair? And then I want to go back to the comment I had right before you answered that last question. And that I've labeled Iowa as a high -risk state, especially for private colleges. Do you agree, disagree? How would you characterize Iowa as an overall college market?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (05:06)
Yes. That's a really good question. I would say it depends on what part of Iowa you're talking about.
What we're seeing in the statewide data, because we do look external to the institution, what we're seeing in the statewide data is that the metro areas and the suburban areas are projected to grow, but the rural areas are projected to contract. So, I mean, we can think about it in a way that the people from the rural countryside are moving towards the cities more.
but that may not actually be what's happening. So I don't wanna say that that's specifically what's happening. We know though that there's growth in the Des Moines metro area. We know there's growth in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa city area. There's growth on the Western border near Omaha. So some of the colleges that have markets in those areas, I don't think are going to feel as stressed.
as those who maybe don't or never built the market pipeline from the metro and...
Gary (06:30)
Thank you.
So when we talk about data, and we've all heard the line that you can make data to say anything you want it to say, and when you look at it from the institute, what I'm trying to get at here is, is there a way to make it more honest? And when you look at the data that you try and capture at Des Moines Area Community College, what are some of the challenges you face in getting good data?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (07:00)
Well, a few things. So one of the challenges that we have is trust. People don't always trust the data because there is this idea that statistics can tell you anything. You can make numbers and statistics do whatever you want. And yes, sure, you can, but it's not the most honest way to approach it.
So from our internal perspective, internal to my office, we do follow the Association of Institutional Research's code of ethics. And their code of ethics says, be honest in your research. Yes, people are going to make mistakes. That's not what we're talking here. And when you make a mistake, you, of course, go back and correct it. But don't.
Don't use small data sets to project onto larger happenings. Make sure you've got a large enough set of data. Make sure that you're asking the right questions of the data. That's really important. And the other thing I would say is when you're doing data verification, which we're in the process of doing one for a dashboard right now, you can gain a lot of trust.
by involving people from the offices that are going to use the data to verify the data. If they've done the verification themselves and they see, OK, this matches what I'm seeing on this screen over here, I now trust this dashboard, you gain a lot of trust just by involving other people.
Gary (08:47)
Yeah, yeah. So I know one of the roles that you play in institutional research is with accreditors. I presume HLC is part of your job. And this is kind of a, is Gary right or wrong question? And I have always viewed those accrediting agencies more as iDotters and T -Crossers, kind of a quality assurance of content, if you will.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (08:58)
Yes.
Well, I would say you're both right and wrong. You're right in the fact that
Gary (09:15)
And they don't really provide, in my mind, they don't really provide any predictive financial health or viability insurance for students. Debbie, am I right or am I wrong?
There you go. There you go.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (09:35)
The accreditors sometimes aren't the places where students or their parents would go to find out if a college is healthy or not. And while most colleges do, I mean, they're required to show on their website whether they're accredited and when their last accreditation date was and all that stuff. And also if they are on probation, they're also required to put that out there too.
But again, it's not the big marketing message that you get, that students are getting. So, you know, no college is going to say, hey, our creditor put us on probation, come here. No. But the accreditors do have, they do collect information that then they call both financial and non -financial indicators.
Gary (10:06)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (10:34)
of a college's health. And the financial indicators are things like your reserves and your expenditures and all sorts of things like that. And they have a ratio that they come up with and they'll put colleges and universities on probation just for that ratio. I think though that the non -financial indicators are more important.
Gary (11:01)
Interesting,
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (11:02)
to determining or assessing a college's health. And these are things like any large swings in enrollment, large swings in degree attainment or degrees awarded, swings in the number of full -time faculty. That's like a huge red flag there. Because a college or university, 80 plus percent of their costs are in their...
human resources. So when you see a college shift drastically from maybe full -time to part -time faculty or you've got a lot of full -time faculty either leaving or being laid off, that's a key indicator there and it probably won't show up in the finances yet, but it's going to show up on those numbers of faculty.
Gary (11:59)
So the next question is kind of along the similar lines of viability. And as you know, I've developed the college viability app and the 2024 versions, both the public and private college versions are out. And those versions are for college leaders and there's a version for faculty and staff, and there's a version for students and families and for others that compares the financial health and enrollment and outcomes for colleges across the country. And community colleges are included in the public college version.
Just a quick look at that and once you comment on this, Debbie, of the 16 community colleges in Iowa from 2015 to 2022, the last reported data, 15 of those 16 had decreases in FTE enrollment. How do you interpret and analyze those trends just for the community college portion of the market in Iowa?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (12:36)
Yeah, so our 15 community colleges are, they cover specific districts.
And some of those districts are very rural and like we talked about a few minutes ago, some of our more rural areas are stretched for population and so on. So that's maybe some of it. Other things that are playing into this though, I think are the push, especially I want to say this is about five years ago, four or five years ago, where we saw the
Gary (13:22)
Okay.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (13:26)
the region institutions, so this is Iowa, Iowa State, and UNI, they had pressure put on them to enroll more in -state students. So students who may have gone somewhere else were, pressure was put on the institution, those big institutions to enroll them there. And you do see, if you look at those institutions, you'll see a bump.
Gary (13:53)
Interesting. That's an interesting analysis. Go ahead.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (13:54)
you know, an increase in their enrollments. And that was more than likely to the detriment of other colleges and universities, private universities in the state. So that might be some of it. Something else that's, I think, maybe playing into it, and I have done no research on this. It's just something in the back of my mind that says this is probably
playing a role. Iowa has really high rates of dual enrollment attainment from students who are graduating from high schools. So we have a lot of our high school students taking dual enrollment courses in the high schools. And Iowa supports those students by providing those classes for free to the students and free including the textbooks. And we're one of a few states, only a handful of states.
support dual enrollment at this level. So we do have a very high dual enrollment rate in the state of Iowa. But what that also probably means, again, done no research here, but it probably means that we've got students leaving high schools who've already completed at least one year of college. Once they get into college, they're not gonna spend as much time there, whether it's at a two year or a four year.
and you're going to see the enrollment decreases at the post -secondary level because they've already taken some of that in the high schools. Now, that being said, I don't want to say, hey, dual enrollment's a bad thing because it's not. Dual enrollment's a great thing for students. So I think they should all be doing it if they are so inclined or capable. So it's a bonus for students.
Gary (15:39)
Yeah.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (15:52)
We're just gonna have to adjust.
Gary (15:53)
So one of the points I like to make with the college viability app is that's the comparisons that matter. So let me just give a generic example. It can be a two -year or four -year. You can draw your own analysis point. So say college one has lost 200 students in the last eight years, and college two has lost 400 students in the last eight years. Is that a fair comparison to say college one is doing something better or college two is doing something worse?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (16:12)
Mm -hmm.
I'd have to say I need to know what size these two colleges are. If they're about the same size, yeah. Are we talking FTE? Is this headcount? Or are we talking maybe there's some part -timers in there? It's hard to really put a value on whether a student is a part -time student or a full -time student, because typically part -time students take longer to finish.
Gary (16:22)
Yeah, same idea. Okay.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (16:48)
So they're going to be enrolled for a longer period of time, theoretically. In practical terms, that's typically not what happens. Part -time students don't complete at the same rate. But yeah, if it was a complete apples to apples comparison, I would say yes. If it was not, and we've got, let's say, college just lost 200 students.
Gary (16:53)
Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (17:16)
and they're in a growing geographic area, and another college lost 400, but they're in a declining area, well, we can probably tell you why that 400 students is gone. I'd be more worried about the 200 student decline in a growing area.
Gary (17:16)
Okay.
Interesting, interesting. And then a question about, you mentioned completions a minute ago, and while I don't rant and rave, I'm tempted to on occasion, because I look at, mostly at the four -year, and I know we're talking two -year at Des Moines Area College, but the four -year graduation rates are stunningly bad in way, way, way too many public and private colleges. How do you see the community college and the work that you do help bump those numbers up, not necessarily just on the two -year end?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (17:58)
I think community colleges have a really unique role that they can play on both ends of a four -year degree. And I've said this in other places when I've been invited to speak. So.
Gary (18:07)
but on the four year end as well.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (18:28)
On the front end, a two -year college can be that place where somebody goes because they want to live at home, they want to save money, but they still want to go to college. They want to start their college experience. So that's where they can come in. It can also be a help on the front end where you might have a student who isn't quite ready to...
Do the work at a four -year institution. Like maybe the four -year institution has said, you're not qualified yet. You don't meet our incoming freshmen qualifications. Go get your associate's degree and then transfer in. There are very few four -year institutions out there that aren't looking for transfers now. That was not the case 10 years ago. 10 years ago, there were some of the elite four -year, even the small private.
Gary (19:06)
Okay. All right.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (19:24)
elite four years that would not go looking for transfer students. They're not doing that anymore. They're looking for transfers. So that's how the majority of the way a community college can support the four years. But there has to be some really deliberate partnerships because our students can't get to the four years and then have to retake all their gen eds because their gen ed packages are different.
Gary (19:28)
Thank you.
Yeah. And just one last final wrap up and follow up, sorry, follow up question to that is the graduation rate. In your own personal opinion, do we need to do much, much better on those really two and four year graduation rates?
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (19:58)
I think so. I do think that beyond doing better, what we also need to do or what the federal government probably ought to do with some of these calculations is realize that the data that they're collecting is not telling the whole story. They're collecting data that was collected in 1980.
eight, it's the same data points. When in 1988, students left high school and they went to college and they either finished or they didn't. And those who didn't finish were typically called dropouts because they didn't go anywhere else, typically. And most students came out of high school without any college credits at all. That is not what's happening today. And yet we're still saying, tell us your first time freshmen numbers.
Gary (20:33)
Yeah.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (20:57)
tell us how many of those students graduated in 150 % of the time and we'll do the calculation for you. And it's like, well, okay, but we have students who are swirling in and out of colleges. They're starting here and going somewhere else and coming back here and picking up a certificate. How do we account for those students? That is so much more common today than it was in 80s and 90s.
Gary (20:59)
you
And I lied to you, one more final question. So is, same topic, is that a, in your mind, is that a statistically significant number that fall outside that traditional start year one and finish in four year four, finish on year? Okay. Okay.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (21:42)
Oh yeah, I think it's a huge number. Especially when we're talking about the adult student market that community colleges focus on. We have, I don't remember the exact percentage, but it's a predictable number that they've done for the state of Iowa where X number of adults have some college but no degree.
And yet we see these students come back to us in their 30s and 40s. We don't get to count them. The federal government doesn't care about the graduation rate of those students because they're never in our first -time freshman cohort because they already have college credit under their belt.
Gary (22:27)
Interesting, interesting. Well, my guest today has been Debbie Keppel -Mamras from the Des Moines Area Community College in Basketball Crazy, Iowa. Debbie, I appreciate you making time this morning.
Debbie Kepple-Mamros (22:38)
Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much. It's