Regents rolling out graduate income and debt dashboard, per new law

In late May, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed new legislation into law requiring Iowa’s Board of Regents to report specific financial-success metrics of its public university graduates — including their median annual income one, five, and 10 years post-graduation; median debt of those who took out student loans; and the percent of a graduate’s income spent paying off student-loan debt.

The Board of Regents for years and through a variety of annual reports has touted student success rates; financial benefits of a regent degree; and the economic impact on the state — reporting earlier this year that regent university students experience an average rate of return for their time and money investment of nearly 16 percent.

“The net higher earnings of students yield a cumulative discounted sum of approximately $7.5 billion,” according to an “economic value of Iowa’s regent universities” report that said it another way. “In return, students will receive a present value of $7.5 billion in increased earnings over their working lives.

“This translates to a return of $5.40 in higher future earnings for every dollar that students invest in their education at the universities.”

But lawmakers — who in recent years have persisted with value-related questions for Iowa’s public universities, including graduation rates per major; student debt load per major; and five-year salary projections by major — want exact, comparable data per institution in an easy-to-digest format.

“The Board of Regents is both required to and voluntarily elects to publish a series of yearly reports that address in part or in full many of the reporting requirements in this bill,” according to a fiscal note from Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency, noting House File 135 “expands the reporting requirements.”

“The bill also requires first-year undergraduate students to provide written notice to the institution indicating the student has been provided with the link to the report.”

That Legislative Services Agency note reported expectations the bill would require additional information technology and staffing resources — including a new full-time employee at $100,000 a year, or up to $300,000 across the three universities each year.

What’s happened since:

Board of Regents staff have been developing a searchable online dashboard to address requirements of House File 135 that uses bar graphs, pie charts and university-associated color coding to let users — among other things — see median income, student-debt spending, and the percent of graduates with federal loan debt by major.

The board only became capable of providing such a comprehensive landing page for all that post-graduation data in the last few years — given new and expanding data sources, according to Jason Pontius, associated chief academic officer.

“It includes kind of a conglomeration of three different main sources,” Pontius said.

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The wage data is coming through an arrangement with the U.S. Census Bureau; debt data is coming from the U.S. Department of Education’s college score card; and graduate-degree details are coming via 10-year mapping through the National Student Clearinghouse.

The new virtual dashboard will be available on the Board of Regents website — where users will be able to toggle between each of the public universities and various majors — and on the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa websites.

Although no firm date has been set on when it will go live, the dashboard should be available by the end of this year, according to regents spokesman Josh Lehman.

Given the law requires the regent universities to provide the annually-updated report to students “in the process of completing their first year of a bachelor’s degree program,” the board has developed a communications plan.

For this first year, the universities will send the information to all new students before the end of the spring 2024 semester. Going forward, the universities will send out the information to all new students at least once during their first year on campus.

An example of the new dashboard Pontius presented to the board last month showed the median income for a UNI graduate who majored in accounting or a related service 10 years after graduation is $84,713. Those with student-loan debt are spending about 6 percent of their income paying that back one year post-graduation and about 3 percent of their income on student debt in year 10.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com