What equity differences exist among our students when they arrive at our campus? How successful are we at including all our students in graduation? Consider the big-picture reality of our campus when summarized using the paintbrush of data.

Diversity: what is the profile of diversity in our student community?

We will examine our entering undergraduate students as we conventionally count them, by examining entering first-time, full-time freshman in the fall. These are the race/ethnicity categories that students declare upon enrollment, which are the categories that the U.S. Dept of Education expects higher education to report.

First, let us acknowledge that these race/ethnicity categories have a racist history and reflect societal categorization much more so that any biological meaning. They obscure diversity within categories such as the vast diversity within the category “Asian”. That said, it is the data that we have in hand to represent our diversity, so let us use it for good. First, I’m going to shorten and modernize these names for the purposes of this presentation.

 

UNL is an instance of what is known as a “Predominantly White Institution”.

Keeping with this group of first-time, full-time undergraduate students starting in the Fall (or prior summer), what does this look like over time?

 

Expand to include all other students

Let’s expand our framework to include all undergraduate students. That includes transfer students, part-time students, students that begin in the Spring semester. It is a similar composition, but with more international students. As well, let’s include graduate and professional students, which includes more interantional students.

Instead of incoming students, let’s look at our current diversity. Here is the diversity of all current students for Spring 2021.

 

What about other axes of diversity?

Generation

At enrollment, students are asked if they have a parent that graduated from a 4-year institution of higher education. If not, they are “first” generation. If so, they are “continuing” generation.

 

Age

Age distribution of undergrads

 

Intersectionality

Here is the combination of the institutional high-priority diversity categories of race/ethnicity, gender, and first generation. This includes all students (graduate and undergraduate) enrolled in Spring 2021.

 

Remove the majority student of white, continuing generation, and illustrate again to highlight the non-majority intersectionality.

 

Note, we currently only collect binary gender, but we are in the process of updating all of our computer systems in order to process non-binary gender information.

Equity: what are the equity differences among our student community?

Equity references the support structures and opportunities afforded each of our students. A lack of equity an result in differential outcomes, or equity gaps.

Equity Gaps in Student Success

Our simplest measure of student success is receiving a degree from UNL. Let’s focus on undergraduate students who receive a degree within 6 years of starting. I am going to include all first-time and transfer students who began in 2012-2013, 2013-2014, or 2014-2015. We have to go back far enough in time to provide the 6-year window for graduation.

 

Gray bars represent 95% credible intervals.

There is no overlap between graduation rates of our white majority students and the race/ethnicity categories of Multiple, Latinx, Black, and Native. I am going to group these four categoires into “Underrepresented” so as to increase the statistical power for each.

Intersectionality

 

Female, represented, continuing generations students gradauted at a rate over 70%. In contrast male, underrepresented, first generation students graduated at a rate of 40%–nearly half the rate!

Program Specific Metrics

I’ve generated analysis for programs to examine their declared majors, including statistics on how their majors compare to the overall university equity gap among declared majors and a zero equity gap. Here are the top ten majors by student enrollment.

Equity in Graduation for Race/Ethnicity
Percent that Did Not Graduate
Gap 95% CI2 Lost Underrepresented1 Represented
Fraction Number Declared Fraction Number Declared
BSAD 17
31.7 43% 79 183 26% 400 1548
BIOS 13
13.5 43% 44 102 30% 215 719
MECH 12
5.9 40% 19 48 27% 188 687
PSYC 11
20.1 38% 71 187 27% 265 973
ADPR 10
10.1 25% 26 105 15% 109 719
MRKT 9
7.3 29% 24 84 20% 147 739
ACCG 8
4.9 25% 15 59 17% 128 746
NEHS 7
4.2 41% 25 61 34% 210 616
FINA 5
1.9 18% 7 40 13% 107 834
MNGT 4
2.7 20% 13 64 16% 81 502

1 Includes American Indian or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Hispanic, and Two or More Races

2 Gap's 95% credible interval is black line, zero gap is is green bar, UNL-wide gap is red bar, and the calculated gap is black circle

 

Course Metrics with a Department: DFW Equity Gaps

A department can dig into it’s courses (major and non-major courses) to examine course equity that may be related to equity gaps at the program level.

Equity gaps in DFW by course
Gap Unrealized Underrepresented Represented Melt1
Fraction DFW Students Fraction DFW Students
BIOS101L 24 39.0 39% 65 166 16% 113 722 44%
BIOS101 17 30.4 45% 80 176 28% 213 756 36%
BIOS116 17 17.8 31% 33 105 15% 62 427 19%
BIOS206 16 17.4 32% 35 108 16% 124 760 15%
BIOS465 16 2.2 21% 3 14 6% 7 119 70%
LIFE120 14 65.5 28% 134 473 14% 359 2480 43%
BIOS214 13 14.6 35% 40 114 22% 172 772 28%
BIOS213L 13 21.2 24% 40 168 11% 123 1099 25%
BIOS213 12 19.8 23% 39 169 11% 126 1110 25%
LIFE120L 10 43.9 20% 88 438 10% 241 2395 53%
BIOS205 10 4.6 17% 8 48 7% 27 378 17%
BIOS386 9 1.1 25% 3 12 16% 15 94 17%
BIOS111 8 5.1 15% 9 60 7% 26 397 46%
BIOS432 8 2.5 16% 5 31 8% 29 357 3%
BIOS402 7 0.9 8% 1 12 1% 1 99
BIOS443 7 1.4 16% 3 19 8% 10 118 0%
BIOS369 7 0.7 10% 1 10 3% 3 103
BIOS310 6 2.2 11% 4 35 5% 12 229 25%
other BIOS3XX 6 1.8 10% 3 31 4% 13 336 6%
BIOS100 5 1.0 11% 2 19 5% 6 116
BIOS207 5 2.3 6% 3 49 1% 5 358
BIOS99 4 1.7 5% 2 40 1% 2 230
BIOS431 4 2.3 13% 8 60 9% 52 550 8%
LIFE121 4 9.9 12% 30 254 8% 127 1601 32%
LIFE121L 4 9.8 9% 23 253 5% 82 1571 42%
BIOS115 4 4.9 11% 15 133 8% 50 657 37%
BIOS314 3 1.7 5% 3 61 2% 12 575 33%
other BIOS4XX 0 0.2 5% 6 133 4% 66 1509 7%
BIOS312 −0 −0.1 1% 1 72 1% 11 738 17%
other BIOS2XX −2 −0.1 0% 0 4 2% 1 54
BIOS484 −3 −0.4 0% 0 15 3% 4 136
BIOS416 −4 −0.5 8% 1 13 11% 6 53
other BIOS1XX −5 −0.5 0% 0 11 5% 5 103

1 Melt is the fraction of DFW students, regardless of generation, that failed to register the subsequent Fall and did not graduate with a degree. It is only shown for courses with at least 10 DFW students.

 

Progress

Looking at six-year graduate rates is very much a lagging indicator of our campus because. We can project 6-year graduation rates by multiplying one-year retention rates by class (i.e. freshman, sophmores, juniors, etc).

 

There are signs of progress in the last three years. We attribute some of that progress to efforts as the adminstration level to support students. We are now pivoting to bring departments and instructors on board with strategies to reduce equity gaps.