The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system today launched the Board of Trustees Accountability Dashboard to track performance of the system and its 32 colleges and universities on 10 key measures. As a member institution, data on Lake Superior College’s performance is included on the site.

The dashboard, available online at www.mnscu.edu, displays such indicators as net tuition and fees as percent of median income, student persistence and completion, related employment of graduates, licensure exam pass rates, percent change in enrollment and condition of facilities. Data are available for six of the 10 performance indicators. The other four indicators are under development.

Board Chair David Olson said: “Delivering the best possible quality of education while making effective use of resources is a fundamental obligation of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. This dashboard will help the Board of Trustees determine how to better use the system’s resources and ensure that our colleges and universities meet the educational needs of the growing numbers of Minnesotans pursuing higher education.”

In explaining why the dashboard was developed, Chancellor James H. McCormick said: “Higher education has entered a new era of accountability. For the last several years, policymakers and the public have been calling for higher education to become more transparent in what we do and how we are performing.

“It’s time for us to embrace the call for accountability with a visible, useable tool,” McCormick said, “We need to be straightforward with the public about our strengths and those areas that need improvement.”

Designed to be easy to use and understand, the dashboard provides information on how each college and university performs on the indicators. The dashboard, which took about two years to develop, assigns one of three categories to each indicator – gold for “exceeds expectations”, “blue for meets expectations” and red for “needs attention.”

To access the dashboard, go to www.mnscu.edu and look in the right hand column. Click on accountability. The dashboard works best with Internet Explorer.

A more detailed version of this press release is available at: www.mnscu.edu/media/newsreleases/current/article.php5?id=50.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.