Community colleges typically offer a range of academic programs, from traditional arts and sciences degrees and transfer programs to diplomas and certificates in trades, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing, among other fields.
To optimize limited resources available to invest in academic programs, colleges must proactively evaluate market demand to ensure they continue to attract students and align offerings with real-world needs and opportunities.
Evaluating demand for academic programs requires comprehensive data, systems, and processes. Additionally, for community colleges, there are often nuances when considering career and technical education (CTE) versus transfer programs. Let’s delve into why program evaluation is essential, the data you need, and how academic program evaluation can differ by program type.
Why Evaluate Market Demand? The Universal Need
Evaluating market demand offers significant benefits:
- Resource Optimization: By understanding which programs are in high demand and which are not, colleges can direct resources towards programs with the greatest potential for enrollment and revenue growth, contributing to the financial health of the institution.
- Student Success: Offering programs aligned with market needs increases the likelihood of graduates finding relevant employment or successfully transferring to four-year institutions.
- Community Relevance: Community colleges are inherently tied to their local economies. Evaluating market demand ensures they produce graduates with the skills and knowledge needed by local businesses and industries, contributing to economic growth and development.
- Program Innovation and Adaptation: Understanding market shifts allows colleges to identify emerging fields and adapt their program offerings accordingly, staying ahead of the curve and providing students with cutting-edge skills.
Getting Started: Considerations for Program Evaluation
When evaluating market demand for academic programs, it is critical to compile relevant market data and use crosswalks that accurately reflect the employment opportunities available to graduates.
Market Definitions: The first step is to define the geographic market for evaluation and compile data for a specific market. Community colleges may need more than one market definition for CTE and transfer programs. You can start by compiling student address data for both types of students to determine the core geographies from which you draw these students. For transfer programs, you may want an expanded market definition that includes local four-year colleges to which students typically transfer so you can include demand data for bachelor’s programs in these markets as part of your evaluation.
Crosswalks: The taxonomies used to categorize jobs and academic programs are not the same; therefore, you will need a crosswalk to align data on programs with jobs. Most labor market data providers use variations on the NCES CIP-SOC crosswalk, which aligns academic programs (CIP codes) with the occupations (SOC codes) for which statisticians believe students are directly prepared. This crosswalk may work well for programs such as nursing, where most graduates become nurses.
However, for 77 percent of programs, fewer than a fifth of students go into the fields assigned by NCES; 80 percent of graduates do something else. For example, Automotive Tech grads become mechanics (one of the three jobs that NCES lists), but many go into engineering tech, sales, and management after graduation; as another example, psychology majors often become HR specialists and marketing managers.
Direct-prep crosswalks like NCES may be appropriate for many vocational programs, but less relevant for transfer and other programs with a more tenuous link to specific occupations. For example, Gray DI’s Program Evaluation System includes an enhanced crosswalk using data on alumni outcomes and the American Community Survey to provide connections between academic programs and real-world jobs. This allows schools to accurately see the types of jobs graduates actually get so they can better evaluate the employment opportunities for each program.
Data Requirements: What Data Do You Need and Where To Find It
Once you have defined your markets and crosswalks, compile data across three categories: employment, student demand, and competition. Let’s look at the data you will need in each of these categories:
Employment: Data about your local labor market is critical for evaluating demand for community college programs. You can draw from various sources, including:
- Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): BLS provides geographic-specific employment data by occupation, including current employment levels, wages, and annual job openings. BLS also provides occupational growth projections, which many schools use. However, Gray DI’s analysis found that more than 80 percent of these forecasts were off by 50 percent or more. Therefore, we suggest incorporating historical employment trends to more accurately reflect recent changes in the local job market.
- Job Postings: To understand current employment opportunities, you will want to track job postings to determine which occupations and job titles employers are trying to fill. This data should also provide salary information and required skills to ensure your programs remain relevant to employers and provide good outcomes for your students.
- Alumni Data: Tracking alumni outcomes provides another view of employment outcomes for program graduates that reflects actual jobs and career progression.
Student Demand: Labor market data is essential to making sound program decisions – but not sufficient. Programs that employers want are not guaranteed to attract students. One college invested over $500,000 in an optics lab, but the program attracted fewer than 10 students, stranding investments in faculty and facilities. Student demand drives program size – which in turn drives revenue and margins. As a result, it is one of the most important elements in program evaluation. Below are examples of student demand data across the pipeline:
- Google Search Volumes: This data set allows you to understand what programs prospective students search for as they begin their academic journey.
- Enrollment: For more current data on what programs students are choosing right now, you will want data on enrollment by program. This should include total enrollment to understand the size of the opportunity and new enrollment to track recent trends in program preferences.
- Completions: IPEDS data shows which programs students have completed and how large these programs are. While a lagging indicator reflecting decisions made in the past, it is comprehensive and consistent across institutions and geographies.
- Transfer Program Considerations: For transfer programs, you will want to include student demand data for bachelor’s programs to ensure your associate programs provide a clear pathway to in-demand four-year degrees.
Competition: It is important to identify other institutions that offer each program you are evaluating, including community colleges, private trade schools, and potentially online institutions outside your market.
- On-Ground Competitors: IPEDS provides data on completions by program, award level, and institution so you can track the number of competitors in your market for each program and their size. Including trend data enables you to track market entrants, exits, and growth trends to see how competition has changed over time. You will also want to identify non-IPEDS competitors, such as boot camps, apprenticeship programs, or private trade schools, that may offer programs in your market but do not appear in IPEDS data sets. This is especially relevant for CTE and certificate programs.
- Online Competitors: For programs often offered online, you will also want to identify online schools that compete in your market but do not appear in IPEDS data. For example, Gray DI collects data about online enrollments and Google brand searches to estimate how many students in a given market complete programs online at out-of-market institutions. Sometimes, your biggest competitor may be a large national online institution rather than a local school.
Evaluating market demand is not a one-time task but an ongoing process. It requires leadership engagement, collaborative decision-making, and automated tools to efficiently gather and analyze data, reducing the administrative burden.
Comprehensive academic program evaluation enables community colleges to align and adapt their offerings, optimize resources, and, most importantly, empower students to achieve their educational and career goals.
