Reporting Changes Alter CCWeek’s Top 100 Listings

In the June 15 print edition of Community College Week, we presented our annual Top 100 analysis of institutions conferring the most associate degrees and one- and two-year certificates. Soon after the edition went to press, we discovered that some institutions were inadvertently omitted from the listings.

It was too late to stop the presses from rolling, but we corrected all the lists posted on www.ccweek.com. The number of institutions excluded from the printed lists was relatively small and the overall total degree conferral figures we reported in our analysis were unaffected. Unfortunately, some institutions appearing at the bottom of our listings were bumped off when the omitted schools were included.

We would like both to apologize for the omissions and explain the source of the error in the print edition, as it relates to a larger issue that will affect many such analyses for years to come.

Starting in 2011, all colleges and universities are required report data to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics using a new “two question” format for representing race/ethnicity.  This format has been used by the U.S. Census Bureau for more than a decade and requires respondents to first answer a “yes” or “no” question regarding whether they are of Hispanic Origin.

Respondents answering “yes” then are separately asked to indicate “all that apply” among a set of racial and ethnic categories. Colleges can use a variety of categories for this second question. But when reporting the data, colleges must place their responses into a common structure. That means anyone who answers “yes” to the Hispanic origin question is categorized as Hispanic.

Non-Hispanic individuals indicating only one choice among the provided racial ethnic groups must be reported in one of the following categories:  1) American Indian or Alaskan Native; 2) Asian; 3) Black or African American; 4) Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; or 5) white.  Anyone who checks off more than one race/ethnicity will be reported in a separate category of “two or more races.” 

It was the new format for reporting data that that tripped us up. Although the new rules become mandatory in two years, NCES made it optional this year. NCES allowed institutions to report using the old format, the new format, or a mix of old and new formats. About 10 percent of institutions used either the new format or a mix of old and new. Our original computer analysis did not capture those schools.

Although we were able to adjust the lists to place schools using the new formats into the categories we’ve been using for years, it is important to note that the content of these categories will change in future years as more institutions employ the new format.

Logically, we expect this method will increase the numbers of Hispanics. Previously, a person of mixed heritage that included Hispanic might have selected their non-Hispanic heritage when choosing from one of the available categories.  Now, if they answer “yes” to the Hispanic origin question, they will be recorded as Hispanic even if they indicate other racial identities.

Moreover, any non-Hispanic person who selects more than one racial category will not be reported in any specific category, but rather will be placed in the “two or more races” bin. President Obama and golfer Tiger Woods would fall into this category, for example.

We do not yet know exactly how this will affect future trend analysis, but we do know that it will.  For example, what will happen to documented performance gaps between racial groups when individuals of mixed race backgrounds are removed from each category? That remains to be seen.

We regret getting tripped up by a technical issue relating to this pending change, and we offer this as an object lesson: Any and all trend analyses involving racial/ethnic groups will be affected as the change permeates national higher education data collections as well as other public domains.

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