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Outstanding Project

Tracking Wages of California Community College Completers

Alice Van Ommerman, Dean, Research, Analysis and Accountability, and members of the Technology, Research and Information Systems (TRIS) Division, California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office

2014

Statewide/Regional - Project of the Year

Description: Framework for tracking the earnings or wages of students after completing an award at a California Community College.

Structure
The system for estimating the annual earnings of those who completed an award uses thes tudent records of completers from the Chancellor’s Office Management Information System (COMIS) and joins those records with the California Employment Development (EDD) Unemployment Insurance (UI) wages. Several different methodologies for aggregating cohorts were used to create four tools, with each tool or application targeting a different audience or user:

  • Salary Surfer is a web application designed for students and families that provides anestimate on the potential median wages to be earned after completing an award orcertificate in 179 of the most widely enrolled disciplines. Median wages, or the middlewage value, was used instead of average to compensate for outliers. The application also provides information on which colleges are offering programs in that specific discipline.

  • System Wage Tracker is one of the two wage tools available on the Datamart. The Datamart is an existing web application created a decade ago and mostly used by college researchers, faculty and administrators. This system wage tracker tool duplicates the results of the Salary Searcher but has some additional features and information for an audience familiar with the California Community College system.

  • College Wage Tracker is the second wage tool available on the Datamart. This wage tool allows one to estimate median wages by discipline and by college. In order to increase the number of cases or student matches, the methodology and display are different from the two previous tools.

  • College Wages by Program is the fourth tool and provides the ability for researchers to download for their particular college the median wages of completers aggregated by program. Programs (identified by program codes) are unique to each college, where disciplines (identified by TOP codes) are similar across colleges. These datasets are only available through Data-on-Demand, a password protected site.'