Compliance & Student Right to Know

This section contains Federal and State compliance reports that are produced by the Office of Institutional Research and Data Management. These reports include the federal Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended in 2008, the Louisiana GRAD Act, and Louisiana House Concurrent Resolutions. See UNO's Institutional Compliance Program for all initiatives across campus.

Louisiana GRAD Act (Act 741)
The Board of Regents posts official annual documents for each public higher education institution: context/key facts, targeted measures, Year 1 report, and Section 5 data. See UNO's GRAD Act section for current instructions and background information.

Louisiana Legislative Compliance
The Legislative Session passed House Concurrent Resolutions requiring universities and their management boards to provide specific information. Links to UNO's responses are below along with links to documentation at the Legislature's web portal.

Federal Compliance "Student Right to Know" Higher Education Act of 1965

IRDM prepares and maintains public reports for the following HEA items:

Completion and Graduation Rates (HEA Item 25)
Diversity (HEA Item 8)
Graduate and Professional Education (HEA Item 29)
Retention (HEA Item 24)
Transfer (HEA Item 25)
See UNO Compliance web for links to additional HEA items

HEA Resources

NCES IPEDS
NCES College Navigator
NCES publication: "Information Required to Be Disclosed Under the Higher Education Act of 1965: Suggestions for Dissemination"

Completion/Graduation rates (HEA Item 25)
Institutions are required to disclose the completion or graduation rates of certificate- or degree-seeking, first-time, full-time, undergraduate students by July 1 of each year for the most recent cohort that has had 150 percent of normal time for completion by August 31 of the prior year. This information is collected in the IPEDS Graduation Rate Survey (GRS).

The following charts comply with requirements of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, and with the Student Right to Know. In addition to UNO's graduation and retention, links to more details are provided.

Some students graduate in 4 years but many take 5 or 6 years to earn degrees while others take 7 years or more. The most frequently used graduation rate is the IPEDS 6-year graduation rate which tracks a specific cohort of students and records their graduation status at 150% time or 6 years. This rate does not include students who transfer to (and graduate from) another institution.

Things to know about 6-year graduation data:

• Official graduation rates are based on an entering Fall semester cohort composed of first-time, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen.
• This cohort is then tracked to determine their graduation status within 150% time (6 years).
• These freshmen must be enrolled for the first time in college in the Fall Semester for 12 hours or more.
• These freshmen must be degree-seeking.
• The academic year reported to IPEDS consists of Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters.

Many freshmen are not eligible to be in the cohort:

• Part-time freshmen are NOT part of the cohort. New freshmen enrolling in Spring are NOT part of the cohort. Freshmen who transfer into UNO are NOT part of the cohort. Freshmen who do not enter as degree-seeking are NOT part of the cohort.
• Rates do NOT include any who take longer than 6 years to graduate.
• Rates do NOT include those who leave to serve in the armed forces or official church missions.
• Rates do NOT include those who transfer out and graduate from another college.

Diversity of the Student Body (HEA Item 8)
Institutions are required to provide information about student body diversity, including the percentage of enrolled, full-time students in the following categories: male, female, self-identified major racial or ethnic group, and Federal Pell Grant recipients.

Race/ethnicity/gender information is collected in the IPEDS Fall Enrollment Survey. Pell Grant recipient information is collected for the prior year in the IPEDS Student Financial Aid Survey.

.Click here for more detailed information with disaggregated fulltime undergraduate enrollment rates by gender, race/ethnicity and Federal Pell Grant recipient. Students are to be considered to have received a grant or loan if they received it [for] the period used for determining the cohort − fall term or full year.

Graduate and Professional Education (HEA Item 29)
Information about the types of "Graduate and Professional Education in Which the Institution's Graduates Enroll" must be available to current and prospective students. This has information about the types of graduate and professional education in which UNO's own 4-year degree program graduates enroll. The pdf displays information about current graduate students who received their baccalaureate degrees from UNO.

Students with degrees from other institutions are not represented in this chart. This means that the totals shown are not overall totals of all graduate students in a program. Data are from the Fall 2010 14th Day Enrollment of graduate students who also earned an undergraduate from UNO between Fall 1998 and Summer 2010.

Retention rates (HEA Item 24)
Institutions must make available to current and prospective students the retention rate of certificate- or degree-seeking, first-time, undergraduate students as reported annually to IPEDS.
This information is collected in the IPEDS Fall Enrollment Survey.

Retention rates show the percentage of first-time freshmen who enroll full-time for a Fall semester in a degree program and return to UNO the following Fall. UNO's Fall-to-Fall retention fluctuates typically between 67% to 69%. This is sometimes called 1st to 2nd year retention or second year retention.

Things to know about retention rates:

• Students could transfer to another college - they are not counted for UNO's IPEDS retention rates.
• Students could skip the following Fall semester but return in Spring - they would not be counted.
• Students could drop out of college.
• Students who graduate are not included.
  

Transfer Out Rates (HEA Item 25)

An institution whose mission includes providing substantial preparation for students to enroll in another Title IV, HEA-eligible institution must disclose a transfer-out rate for each cohort. Although this is not part of UNO's mission, this information is available from Louisiana Board of Regents reports.

UNO is aware when a student sends a transcript to another institution but is not notified that a student actually enrolls elsewhere. Regents, however, tracks transfer students across Louisiana public institutions.

The following chart shows Fall 2009 to Fall 2010 transfer and retention rates. The retention rate for those returning to UNO is 63.4%; the statewide retention rate (including the total transfers to other Louisiana public institutions) is 75.0%. Of these, 305 are not accounted for - they could have dropped out or transferred to private or to out-of-state institutions. Of the 1218 students in the cohort,144 or 11.8% transferred to other Louisiana public institutions. (Note that students registered in multiple institutions are counted at each institution enrolled.)

Freshmen Student Retention/Transfer Report
Fall 2009-2010 vs Fall 2010-2011
(Source: BOR ID: SPSRETN)