Five Lessons from State Leaders Leveraging Data to Improve Postsecondary Value
Published Oct 26, 2026
Students, families, policymakers, and taxpayers are all asking whether college is worth it, and colleges and universities are increasingly expected to answer with evidence. New federal accountability regulations under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tie programs’ access to federal loans to their graduates’ earnings. At the same time, enrollment pressures and tight budgets mean institutions and states need to show a clear picture of the value they provide.
The good news is that, on average, college pays off, and some states have spent years using data to show their value and strengthen it. At IHEP’s October 6 webinar, “How Institutions and States Are Using Data to Drive Student Value,” three state leaders shared what they’ve learned: David Troutman of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Natalie Cartwright of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), and Brian Bridges, former Secretary of Higher Education for New Jersey. Each took a different path, but their lessons apply beyond Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
Below are five lessons that campus leaders, state policymakers, and the data teams that support them can apply to their own work.
1) Break down the data to see the full picture
Median earnings are the headline number in most value conversations, but “what surprised me most is how much variation gets hidden by looking at the median,” Troutman said. A median tells you where the typical graduate lands. It says nothing about how outcomes differ by region, industry, race, ethnicity, and the intersections among them.
Geography deserves special attention. “Cost of living will dictate a lot of the earnings outcomes,” Troutman noted. A salary that goes far in one region may barely cover the bills in another.
Earnings alone also leave out what students paid. A program can pass the new federal earnings test and still not be worth the cost. IHEP’s new report, When Purpose Meets Payoff, shows where that gap is widest and what colleges and policymakers can do about it.
2) Start small and stay persistent
Value research can feel overwhelming at the outset. For PASSHE, the work began with “turning an anecdote into evidence,” Cartwright said. The team started with a single question leadership needed answered and brought its findings back to them, which spurred further questions. “Don’t try and take the big bite,” she said. “Take the small bite and then see where the next question takes you.”
Getting people to listen can take time. Troutman said his early findings were often ignored or met with doubt. His advice: “Be a broken record. Say it over and over again until they’re ready to hear this message.”
3) Translate value into terms each audience cares about
In New Jersey, Bridges’ guiding principle was to make data more valuable by making it more accessible. His office trimmed long reports down to their most meaningful elements and launched an annual enrollment infographic for decision makers. “You have to help people understand the value to each of their constituencies,” he said.
That thinking shaped the state’s effort to re-enroll students who left college before finishing. Nearly a million state residents had some college but no credential, including about 400,000 who stopped out in the previous decade alone. Bridges’ team framed that one finding three ways: recaptured tuition and higher graduation rates for institutions, better earnings for individuals, and economic gains for the state. “We often don’t look at the lost opportunity costs when we don’t act on something,” Bridges said. That finding caught the governor’s attention, and the initiative has since re-enrolled more than 15,000 people.
PASSHE applies the same idea in its advocacy with state appropriators. Its value research found that PASSHE graduates earn 65 percent more over their careers than those with only a high school diploma, and their credential costs about 2 percent of their lifetime earnings. Leaders in any state can make a similar case with IHEP’s Economic Value Simulator, a tool that estimates what public four-year graduates add to their state’s economy.
4) Turn data findings into informed decisions
Troutman starts his work with one question: “Did that credential actually improve the student’s economic trajectory?” Texas weighs students’ net costs and forgone wages against how much more they earn than high school graduates to calculate when a credential pays off. It then uses the results to set statewide goals, approve programs, and power tools like My Texas Future that help students and families compare their options.
The biggest shift came through House Bill 8, which tied about 95 percent of Texas’s roughly $1.3 billion in biennial community college funding to whether students earn a “credential of value.” Colleges are now shifting toward programs that pay off.
The change took buy-in. The coordinating board met monthly with community college presidents for 18 months, and by the time the bill reached the floor, all 50 presidents had signed a letter of support. Troutman’s one caution: when funding is tied to outcomes, give institutions realistic time to adjust their programs and practices before the financial stakes take effect.
5) Invest in data capacity before you need it
Panelists agreed that few states, if any, were ready for the new federal accountability rules. The federal measure looks at graduates’ earnings several years after completion, and many institutions don’t have access to that data themselves. States that had already built shared data systems had a head start. In New Jersey, Bridges’ office submitted federal IPEDS data on behalf of 43 public and private institutions, so the within-state data sharing and reporting structure was already in place. Texas spent years connecting data on student records, costs, workforce demand, and earnings, and a data-sharing agreement among three state agencies now lets them exchange data in about two weeks instead of months. “There’s an important distinction between being ready for particular federal policy and having the infrastructure that allows you to respond when policy changes,” Troutman said.
Capacity also means people. “Investing in infrastructure is never the glamorous thing,” Cartwright said, and for PASSHE that included staff who understand labor market information. That expertise revealed that many graduates land in jobs adjacent to their field rather than directly aligned with it, which matters because alignment drives earnings. PASSHE is now mapping the skills each credential builds to the skills employers want, so faculty advisors can show students how their coursework connects to the labor market.
Where to start
Behind every earnings figure is a student who invested time and money expecting a return. Breaking down the data, sharing it in terms people understand, and acting on what it shows is how states and institutions can ensure more of those investments lead to good jobs and economic mobility.
You don’t need a statewide data system to begin. Free public sources such as the Census Bureau’s Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) data and the American Community Survey can get you started, and IHEP’s How to Measure What Matters guide walks through the process step by step.
