Graduate student cohort data for individual advising and resource allocation

Data of use to students in making plans concerning entry into graduate programs are also likely to be of use to administrators faced with resource allocation decisions. Included are such relatively available data as the percent of students entering a degree program who emerge with degrees, average length of time between entrance to the University and receipt of a graduate degree, and the extent to which sex differences exist in terms of degree completion rate or time required to complete a graduate degree. Average length of time to a degree can be useful in making individual plans and in comparing departments in the efficiency with which they produce degree holders. If these data are available for all degree holders, they allow the individual to make plans for his education and could allow him to compare departments in different universities. If such data are augmented to include all semesters of registration, by those who do not earn degrees as well as those who do, they can be used to yield efficiency indices. Combined with cost data, they can yield figures on the relative costs of the degrees awarded by departments within an institution. The present report summarizes a set of data designed to cast light on the comparative performance of the academic departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the production of graduate degrees and focuses on the methodology involved in developing statistical reports useful for such purposes.Paper presented at the Fifty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, Los Angeles, California, April, 1973.