With the passage of House Bill 8, Texas joins the growing list of states to adopt a performance-based funding model. Instead of relying on funding based on enrollment and student credit hours, institutions in states with performance-based funding receive funding based on how well they help students transfer, graduate, and/or move into high-demand fields.
To improve student success, community colleges must be able to identify and address the factors that influence student outcomes. This can include providing comprehensive support services – such as tutoring, counseling, and mentoring – to ensure students have the resources they need to thrive academically. Academic advising can also play a critical role in helping students choose the right courses and develop personalized educational plans.
By tying funding directly to student outcomes, performance-based models aim to incentivize community colleges to find and implement more effective strategies that keep learners on path. This, in turn, means the ability to measure and track student persistence and success outcomes is essential to understand the effectiveness of educational programs and support services.
Below are 5 ways community colleges in performance-based funding models have used ZogoTech to improve student success and maximize funding.
Find Potential Graduates
A community college with 10,000 students, 6 catalog years, 100 programs, and stackable credentials can easily have 100 million different student pathways. Some colleges have hacked their degree audit system, but that approach only works for a few hundred students at a time, puts a tremendous burden on the SIS, isn’t done in real-time, and only shows percent complete, not the classes each student needs to complete. This means the college could be missing others who have earned credentials that have not been awarded.
At Brazosport College, Cindy Ullrich, Director of Institutional Research, used ZogoTech to track every student against every credential (declared or not) in the past 10 years. The results? “Pathways Analytics identified more than 1,000 completers who were not yet awarded. This resulted in an additional $364,000 in performance-based funding for the college.” (Watch the webinar, Improving Student Pathways to Completion.)
Find Core Completers
Some performance-based funding comes from achieving outcomes other than degrees, for example getting 15 credit hours or completing the core. Traditional degree audit systems, and even those that have been highly customized, aren’t able to identify students who are close to completing these certificates.
Southwest Texas Junior College is a great example of using ZogoTech to find the core completers that had been missed by other systems. Dr. Renee Zimmerman, Director of Professional Development, comments: “We’re looking at $90,000 as of Texas success points numbers, which we had missed, and the students who really should have been awarded.” (See how SWTJC went From Probation to Aspen.)
Find Near Completers
Not only did most of higher education experience enrollment declines over the last few years, many also saw sharp increases in stop-outs. With this perfect storm, it became critical for institutions to better understand why their students had left. Stop-out students represent a valuable pool of potential because they have already demonstrated interest in higher education. By providing the right support, resources, and incentives, institutions can help stop-outs return and complete their education. And community colleges can fulfill their commitment to student success by empowering individuals to achieve their academic and career goals.
One of the ways North Central Texas College is using ZogoTech is to identify stop-out students that are 1-4 courses away from completing ANY credential (not just the one they declared). Presenting at Jenzabar’s JAM conference this year, Kate Richardson, Registrar at NCTC, explored how “ZogoTech found roughly 7,000 near completers, reflecting over $2,000,000 in potential funding. They also found 532 students who had already completed the requirements for a credential but had not been awarded their degree or certificate, reflecting $159,600 in funding.”
Find Off-Path Students
For many colleges, it’s nearly impossible to keep every student on path because degree audit data are kept in silos and are too complex to quickly combine with other student success data for just-in-time interventions. Unfortunately, this means many colleges can’t surface the insights to know when a student has registered for, or completed, an off-path course until it’s too late, causing excess credits and wasted time and aid for students.
To better serve students, Alvin Community College is one institution monitoring student participation, performance and progression in real-time to identify those who are off-path. The institution is coordinating efforts to help keep students on track toward efficient completion & graduation within their enrolled program, which helps to improve success outcomes across the board. “We’re watching heavily that off-goal piece, so that we can keep people on their goal. Because, if we can keep people taking the classes that they need in the program that they’re enrolled in, they’re going to get done faster,” notes Patrick Sanger, Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Research. (Click here to learn more about Alvin Community College’s story.)
Find Transfer and Reverse Transfer Students
Student transfers and reverse transfers are also essential for community colleges in performance-based funding models because they showcase successful preparation for continued education, boost completion rates, and reinforce the colleges’ role as vital pathways to higher education. Acknowledging reverse transfers ensures proper credit recognition and increased funding. This fosters an educational ecosystem that prioritizes student success, mobility, and workforce development.
ZogoTech integrates with the National Student Clearinghouse to provide detailed data on student enrollments at other colleges and universities, documenting whether a student transferred into, or out of, an institution. As a result, tracking cohorts is easier and measuring outcomes for those cohorts is more accurate. College of the Siskiyous is a great example of using ZogoTech to understand how many students are transferring to 4-year colleges and taking action to support continuous improvement, eliminate performance gaps, and streamline ad-hoc reporting requests. (View College of the Siskiyous NSC Transfers Data.)
