What is the Voluntary System of
Accountability (VSA) College Portrait?
The VSA College Portrait attempts to demonstrate higher
education accountability and stewardship to the public; to
assemble transparent and easy-to-understand information that
allows constituents to compare institutions; and to share institutional data on student perceptions and learning outcomes.
The College Portrait consists of five pages and is divided
into three sections: Student/Family Information, Student
Experiences and Perceptions, and Student Learning Outcomes.
Institutions also have the option to include one additional
graduated from their original institution; those who graduated from another institution; those who are still enrolled at
the original institution; and those who are enrolled at other
institutions. This rate better reflects today’s undergraduates,
who are likely to attend more than one institution before they
receive their baccalaureate degrees.
The second new resource is a cost calculator. During the
VSA development process, university leaders conducted several regional focus groups that engaged participants in conversations about the perceived cost of an education at a four-year
public university. In each of these groups, participants grossly
To date, more than 300 institutions representing
60 percent of NASULGC’s and AASCU’s
membership are participating in the VSA program.
page, clearly marked as a supplemental page, if they want to
share information not included in the five standardized pages.
To date, more than 300 institutions representing 60 percent
of NASULGC’s and AASCU’s membership are participating
in the VSA program. As soon as a university officially joins
the VSA, a series of individualized deadlines are triggered for
each section.
Student/Family Information
Section I of the template, Student/Family Information,
includes information about student demographics, student
success, retention, cost of attendance, areas of study, and campus life. The fields in this section are populated with data from
institutional or pre-existing sources such as the Common Data
Set (CDS), Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
(IPEDS), and the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC).
No direct costs are associated with using data from the CDS
and IPEDS, and the annual cost for using NSC data could be
up to five cents per student. As the easiest and least expensive
section to complete, the expectation is that the majority of
this information will be posted within three months of VSA
participation.
Two innovations are part of this section. The macro-level
data used to compile the student success and progress rate
reflect “student success” versus “institutional success.” Rather
than cite only those students who were retained by or graduated from a single institution as successful, the success and
progress rate reflects the success of an entering student cohort
across institutions. For the College Portrait, then, success and
progress are noted when a student continues his or her college pursuits and graduates. Enrollment at one, two, or more
schools “counts” as student success because it presumes that
the student is making progress toward a degree.
To that end, the College Portrait success rate accounts for
students in each of the following four categories: those who
overestimated the cost, which prompted task force members
to include a tool that provides prospective students and their
families more accurate estimates of cost and available financial
aid. The college cost calculator is intended to help debunk the
myth that public education is unaffordable.
Student Experiences and Perceptions
In Section II, Student Experiences and Perceptions, participating universities select one of four student surveys:
the College Student Experience Questionnaire (CSEQ);
the College Senior Survey (CSS); the National Survey for
Student Engagement (NSSE); or the University of California
Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES). For each
survey, VSA participating institutions report selected results
from senior students in six areas that correlate with increased
student learning and success: active learning; group learning;
experiences with diverse people and ideas; faculty-student
interaction; student satisfaction; and institutional commitments to student success.
Unlike data used in Section I, which are drawn from CDS
and IPEDS, the data reflected in Section II are drawn from
surveys with associated administrative costs correlated with
undergraduate enrollment figures. To administer these surveys,
a university can expect to pay between $3,000 and $16,000,
depending on the numbers of students it enrolls. VSA leaders
anticipate that the campus’ selection of the instrument it will
use, its correlative costs, and its extractions and analyses of
data may generate campus conversations that are more lengthy
and spirited than those that emerge in response to or in anticipation of Section I data. Therefore, the timeline for completing this section is longer than Section I; the VSA requires
that schools begin reporting Section II data within two years
of becoming participants and update data every three years.
Some schools may choose to conduct the surveys on a more
frequent basis and report new data as they are collected.
