Connecting Outcomes-Based Assessment Findings to Social Mobility Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

ABSTRACT Offering higher education to advance the public good has been a long-standing ideal for faculty, staff, students, and community benefactors. However, defining the extent to which institutions are serving the public good and providing evidence of that is not necessarily something that has been made publicly transparent. Recent changes in U.S. News & World Report ranking methodology, which now places more weight on criteria intended to showcase how institutions are advancing social mobility, have provided one transparent view of public good. This article illustrates the importance of aligning outcomes-based assessment practices with key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be used to monitor institutional comparable contributions to social mobility, while also highlighting the limitations of some comparable KPIs. While this article focuses primarily on undergraduate education, suggestions to design institutional processes for undergraduate and graduate education are presented. Questions to consider when defining institutional social mobility indicators that may or may not align with publicly available social mobility indicators are also presented.