Program review
Rebuilding a program review on regional evidence
A multi-campus college replaces a program review that relied on national growth rates with regional demand, wage and completions evidence.
Who this is: Dean of Instruction and an Institutional Research analyst at a two-campus community college
Program review ran on national occupational growth rates and a placement survey with a 30% response rate. Two programs had been flagged for years without anyone being able to say whether regional demand actually existed, and the curriculum committee had stopped trusting the evidence packet.
Configure the college's four-county service area. For each program under review, pull regional employment and projected openings for the occupations its CIP codes map to, the full wage distribution rather than a median, five-year completions trend, and completions from every other institution in the service area feeding the same occupations.
The packet now states, per program, what the region employs, what it pays across the distribution, what is projected, and who else trains for it — each dated and attributable. Two flagged programs turn out to face genuinely different problems: one has regional demand and a wage problem, the other has neither.
The failure mode being fixed
National growth rates are the most commonly cited and least useful labor market figure in program review. An occupation projected to grow 12% nationally can be flat or shrinking in a specific four-county region — and the region is where the graduates will look for work. Placement surveys have the opposite problem: they measure the right population but with a response rate that will not survive scrutiny.
Why the wage distribution rather than the median
A median tells you where the middle of the market sits, not what a new graduate can expect. The full distribution runs from the 10th through 90th percentile and separates entry-level from experienced wages. A program whose graduates enter at the 10th percentile of a well-paid occupation and one whose graduates enter at the median of a poorly-paid one look identical on a median-only chart and are completely different propositions for a student.
The competitive picture
Completions are reported for every institution in the region. A program that looks under-supplied against regional openings may be well supplied once the three other institutions in the service area are counted — which changes the recommendation from "expand" to "differentiate".
Illustrative figures. The point is the spread: a median-only chart hides where graduates actually enter.
What to take from this
- Resolve demand to the service area, not the nation.
- Show the whole wage distribution, and separate entry from experienced.
- Count every institution in the region that feeds the same occupations.
- Attach the vintage and the method to each figure in the packet.
The methods behind this, documented
Illustrative scenario. Figures shown are for demonstration of method and are not outcomes attributed to a specific institution.
Walk this through on your region.
Thirty minutes, your service area, your programs. We will run the same analysis live and you keep the export.