Benchmarking Directory
Peer benchmarking provides essential insights that help institutions identify strengths, uncover areas for improvement, and craft targeted strategies to enhance student success. MCCA maintains a list of widely used benchmarking tools, agencies, and resources, including the National Student Clearinghouse, the National Community College Benchmarking Project, and other key platforms. Leveraging these resources enables colleges to effectively track and evaluate their progress on critical metrics, including graduation rates, retention, student engagement, and post-graduation outcomes.
Organization: The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program Benchmarking Tool
Primary Data Reported: Phase 1 utilizes publicly available data from IPEDS. Phase 2 requests selected institutions submit data on gateway completion, momentum, and transfer metrics.
Benchmarking Ability: Aspen allows for institutions to compare to other states across the country or build custom comparison groups.
Focus: Identifying and rewarding community colleges that achieve exceptional outcomes in student success, emphasizing access, completion, learning, and equity.
Organization: Campus Pride Index
Primary Data Reported: Assesses LGBTQ policies, programs, and practices for inclusivity.
Benchmarking Ability: Provides annual updates and benchmarking opportunities for participating institutions
Focus: College-facing; focuses on creating inclusive and safe campuses for LGBTQ students.
Organization: Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE)
Primary Data Reported: The Dual Enrollment Survey of Student Engagement is a student-reported survey of data on dual enrollment experiences, with focus on access, support, and outcomes.
Benchmarking Ability: Allows colleges to compare engagement of dually enrolled students nationally and with peer institutions.
Focus: Understanding and improving dual enrollment experiences, especially for historically underserved students.
Organization: Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE)
Primary Data Reported: Data on student engagement, including active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, support services, and other educational practices.
Benchmarking Ability: Comparison group of similar institutions and full CCSSE cohort.
Focus: Assessing the quality of the educational experience by measuring levels of student engagement, which are linked to learning and retention.
Organization: Higher Education Research Institute (HERI): Diverse Learning Environments (DLE) Survey
Primary Data Reported: Evaluates campus climate, diversity-related institutional practices, and student outcomes disaggregated by social identities.
Benchmarking Ability: Provides data comparisons for institutions to track diversity progress and identify areas for improvement.
Focus: Student-facing; emphasizes fostering dialogue and assessing inclusivity.
Organization: The Hope Center
Primary Data Reported: Assesses basic needs insecurity among college students, including food, housing, homelessness, mental health, childcare, technology, transportation, and more.
Benchmarking Ability: Allows colleges to benchmark their students’ basic needs against national data, offering a view of how well their services and supports meet student needs.
Focus: College-facing; focuses on addressing basic needs insecurities among students and improving services through data-driven actions.
Organization: Interfaith, Spiritual, Religious, and Secular (INSPIRES) Campus Climate Index
Primary Data Reported: Assesses how welcoming campuses are for students with diverse spiritual, religious, and secular worldviews.
Benchmarking Ability: Offers a campus climate index that allows institutions to evaluate and compare how inclusive their environment is.
Focus: College-facing; fosters inclusivity for students with diverse belief systems.
Organization: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
Primary Data Reported: Enrollment data, graduation rates, outcome measures, financial aid, institutional finances, human resources, and academic offerings.
Benchmarking Ability: Peer Institution cohort via IPEDS Summary Reports, ability to review 1:1 institution comparisons, NACUBO IPEDS Peer Benchmarking Tool eases the burden of benchmarking.
Focus: Comprehensive data collection and reporting for all U.S. Title IV eligible postsecondary institutions, aimed at providing broad educational statistics and compliance with federal reporting requirements.
Organization: National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP)
Primary Data Reported: Student enrollment, persistence, transfer behavior, and degree completion data.
Benchmarking Ability: Ability select institutions to build comparison groups of other PDP participants.
Focus: Providing a comprehensive view of student mobility and success across institutions and states to support data-driven decision-making.
Organization: National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE)
Primary Data Reported: Examines student engagement, institutional strengths, and areas for improvement.
Benchmarking Ability: Offers comparative data to benchmark against other institutions participating in NSSE.
Focus: Student-facing; improves undergraduate experience through engagement insights.
Organization: National Community College Benchmark Project (NCCBP)
Primary Data Reported: Student outcomes, course completion rates, retention, developmental education success, workforce and economic development measures.
Benchmarking Ability: Peer comparison group.
Focus: Benchmarking performance of community colleges against peers to inform institutional improvement, strategic planning, and accountability.
Organization: Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory
Primary Data Reported: Measures satisfaction and importance levels across multiple dimensions of student and employee experience.
Benchmarking Ability: Allows comparison of satisfaction scores with peer institutions.
Focus: Student- and employee-facing; improves focus on what matters most to campus communities.
Organization: Sense of Social Fit Scale
Primary Data Reported: Measures how much a person feels they belong in a group (e.g., school or department).
Benchmarking Ability: Enables institutions to evaluate and enhance students’ sense of belonging.
Focus: Student-facing; designed to improve student fit and integration.
Organization: Trellis Research Student Financial Wellness Survey
Primary Data Reported: The student-facing survey collects data on sense of belonging, institutional customer service, institutional diversity, campus accessibility, and demographics. The staff/faculty survey includes sense of belonging, institutional diversity, and campus experience.
Benchmarking Ability: Customizable to meet the institution's needs, providing comparative data for targeted improvements.
Focus: Enhancing institutional understanding of student and staff/faculty experiences, particularly regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and campus accessibility.
Organization: Trellis Research Some College, No Credential
Primary Data Reported: The causes and effects of students stopping out of college to align administrative processes to student needs.
Benchmarking Ability: Trellis Research's expert contact center conducts outreach campaigns to provide institutions with an assessment to identify opportunities to support students during the re-engagement process to develop an understanding of students who enrolled at other institutions, and craft solutions to target those with the highest likelihood of re-enrollment.
Focus: Identify individuals with some college experience but no credential to engage and encourage students to consider returning to college.
Organization: Viewfinder Campus Climate Survey
Primary Data Reported: Measures campus climate and diversity efforts for students, faculty, staff, and administrators.
Benchmarking Ability: Provides comparative data for benchmarking diversity and inclusion efforts.
Focus: Student-, staff-, and administrator-facing; assesses institutional diversity and inclusion strengths and weaknesses.