Complete College America

Common Metrics

Uniformly measure progress and success

Common metrics — uniformly designed and applied — help us frame our data collection to be most useful for driving change. Moreover, adopting and reporting these common metrics unifies us in a shared goal and communicates our commitment to doing the hard work necessary to bring about improvement.

 In July 2010, the National Governors Association adopted these common metrics in the announcement of their "Complete to Compete" initiative. The report, available here, puts these common metrics at the core of NGA's call to governors to make college completion a priority. Moreover, it signals a new national focus on the importance of consistent data about how the progress and success of our nation's postsecondary students. Read more about  NGA's Complete to Compete initiative >>

 By committing to collect and report these data, the Complete College America Alliance of States will be national leaders in this effort. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Please review the FAQ based on your feedback. If you have additional questions not addressed here, please contact us. The FAQ will be updated frequently.

State and Campus Data Templates

Complete College America, SHEEO and NGA have developed state and campus-level templates to help compile and organize the data for the common metrics. These templates are intended to serve as an intermediate tool to help states move from raw data to analysis and reporting of the metrics.

Note: we want these templates to be as useful as possible. If you see revisions or improvements that would help you and other state teams with this effort, please contact Jeff Stanley (jstanley [at] sheeo.org). These templates may be revised based on your feedback.