Reading your metric 'Gauges': Savvy financial aid directors use metric 'dashboards' to track what's really important - On the Money

University Business, April, 2003 by Kathy Kurz, Jim Scannell

Ever ask financial aid directors how they spend their working hours? There's no standard answer to this question, and the broad range of responses might surprise you. That's due in I part to the size and complexity of the institution--that is, total enrollments and the number of different populations that the financial aid office serves (e.g., undergraduate, graduate, professional; part-time/full-time; transfer/freshman; independent/dependent). But it's also a function of institutional control (i.e., state-supported, private, or for-profit).

Still, regardless of these factors, there is a common denominator in managing today's financial aid office, and that common denominator is metrics--the data and trends that need to be maintained, monitored, analyzed, and routinely compared, in order for you to know if you are actually doing the right things, and if you're doing them the right way. To put this in the form of two questions you could ask yourself: Are you utilizing data to conduct formative and summative evaluation in an ongoing, continuous way? Are you including longitudinal analysis required for a "vision with precision" of how things are changing? You'd better be, because there's only one constant in the world of financial aid, and that constant is change. Don't believe us? To prove this point, we asked two veteran chief financial aid officers to run through an exercise, and break down precisely how they spend their working time.

Shirley Ort is the associate provost and director of the Scholarship and Student Aid Office at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill The university has over 25,000 students (15,800 undergrad and 9,600 graduate and professional students). Fifty-three percent of the undergraduates receive financial aid, as do 44 percent of the graduate and professional students. Ort reports that 30 percent of her time is devoted to forming policy through data--or, stated another way, in research and policy development. In this role, she is working with state legislators, governing board members, senior administrators, and the faculty in order to be sure that all the stakeholders are properly informed and educated about current and future student financial need. Access is a very important, even foundational, priority at Chapel Hill, she points out. Another 30 percent of her time is spent "moving things forward" in both the financial aid office and, more broadly, across the institution. Finally, 30 percent of her time is dedicated to working on the area of scholarships, troubleshooting, improving workflow and systems, and working with Development to make the case. Without a doubt, the three major tasks consuming 90 percent of her time are all based on having accurate, timely, and understandable data.

Troy Martin, director of Student Financial Services at Houghton College, spends his time quite differently. Houghton is a relatively small liberal arts school located in southern New York state. The college has a total of 1,350 students, 1,200 of whom are traditional college age, the other 150 adult degree-seeking students. Seventy-five percent of the students receive Houghton College money, and the financial aid office produces almost 1,200 awards a year.

Martin spends more than 50 percent of his time providing personal attention to individuals: both internal campus constituencies (including his own staff of five), as well as external "customers" (students and parents). About 25 percent of his time, he says, is spent on packaging financial aid awards. The remaining 25 percent includes such things as making sure Houghton is in compliance, and participating in professional associations. Yet, a most important segment of that time, Martin reports, is spent I contributing to the strategic discussion on campus regarding how I Houghton should allocate its financial aid resources to meet enrollment goals. Once again, the quality and accuracy of his efforts are dictated by the availability and usefulness of good data.

12 DASHBOARD METRICS

Although clearly, the data needs of financial aid offices will differ (just as the activities of directors of financial aid differ), there are some metrics useful in any aid office for tracking and managing the use of institutional resources over time, and benchmarking with other appropriate IHEs. At any institution--regardless of size, complexity, and institutional control--a financial aid "dashboard" would include the following 12 items, completed with the help of Mike Bartini, director of Financial Aid at Brown University:

1--Aid expenditures by type of aid (institutional scholarships/grants, state/federal grants, loans, work awards, etc.). This report is typically produced yearly by financial aid offices, and provides a solid means of monitoring changes in funding sources over time.

2--Profile of students (segmented by undergraduate, graduate, and professional), noting those students eligible for merit versus need-based aid, need levels versus costs, and so forth. Such data provide ongoing information about the percentage of students receiving institutional aid, the percent of students showing need, etc.