This volume provides an updated examination of student tracking systems. It illustrates how policymakers, administrators, and institutional researchers are using data to follow student paths through postsecondary education and to measure student success.

Chapters discuss:

1. Using Transcripts in Analyses: Directions and Opportunities
2. Retention Tracking Using Institutional Data
3. Using Student Tracking Data from an Institutional Perspective
4. A Statewide Student Unit Record System: Florida as a Case Study
5. The National Student Clearinghouse: The Largest Current Student Tracking Database
6. Tracking Low-Skill Adult Students Longitudinally Using Research to Guide Policy and Practice
7. Using State Student Unit Record Data to Increase Community College Student Success
8. Beyond Higher Education: Other Sources of Data for Tracking Students

The focus in student tracking today has shifted away from an examination of prospective students and students in academic difficulty, and toward an understanding of student progress through and beyond a single college or university. This new emphasis results from a variety of pressures: state and public calls for accountability, accreditation criteria that place greater attention on learning outcomes, recognition that enrollment does not ensure success, and an understanding that many students swirl through multiple institutions.

This is the 143rd volume of the Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly report series New Directions for Community Colleges. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.