New Heights in Higher Education (by John G. Craig, Jr.)

Sydney J. Harris, now deceased, was a syndicated newspaper columnist who regularly wrote about things he learned while looking up information about an entirely different subject.  It is that spirit that I call your attention to the tables below.

They came to my attention as part of research we were doing at the Regional Indicator site in preparation for a report on how Pittsburgh had changed in the past 30 years.  The news hook was the much ballyhooed G20 economic summit of which you may have heard a word of two.  It seemed to me that that the role of our institutions of higher education had changed very much during the period and in the process produced  positive things for the region.  Data confirming that new reality was important to share if it could be obtained.

Unfortunately, the information did not arrive in time to make it into the Indicator project’s pre-summit reporting.  We had to be content with data documenting the metamorphosis of UPMC between 1980 and 2008, an extraordinary story in itself. (To see that earlier report click here for my report in the fall issue of Pittsburgh Quarterly.)

The first table here concerns the  University of Pittsburgh of which UPMC is a part.  However, with the exception of some of the data on National Institute of Health grants in its last section, this report deals with different matters than the published UPMC data.  It is most particularly concerned with documenting the growth in the size and quality of the student  population at Pitt’s Oakland campus.  The changes, particularly those in the last 15 years, have been significant.

 

The second table comes from Carnegie Mellon University and concerns two areas. The first looks at changes in student enrollment and pre-admission achievement levels.  The second concerns research dollars.  CMU, like Pitt, saw significant changes -- both qualitatively and in total counts.   Particularly notable at CMU is the increase in students from outside the United States, up just over 500 percent in the last 20 years, while total enrollment during the same period was up 44 percent.

Obviously, West Virginia University and dozens of other post-secondary educational institutions in this region would have to be part of any meaningful benchmarking effort,  But this simple accounting suggests to me that this is an aspect of our regional life that should be part of a regular system of benchmarking.  It has become much more important to the region’s general welfare.

For detailed data tables please click here to download the report.

One Place at One Time (by John G. Craig Jr.)

Most indicator programs issue reports, more often than not bi-annually. Pittsburgh Indicators depends on a web site that is updated every time new data become available with the result that it is changing weekly. An unfortunate by-product of this important emphasis on timely information is a lack of appreciation of the volume and comprehensiveness of information available on www.pittsburghtoday.org.

Thanks to the magazine Pittsburgh Quarterly and the Pittsburgh Foundation, which have supported indicator work since its inception, a new 20-page report has been made available in the magazine's winter issue that addresses the problem. It does so by pulling together an overview of all the data available in topic areas and accompanying it with explanatory material on the significance of particular indictors.

There is also information on the organizational structure of Pittsburgh Indicators as well as brief essays from experts in various areas of Pittsburgh life on why they are involved in the project and why particular information is worth paying attention to.

To view the entire article click here, to get a hard copy of the report pick up a copy of the magazine.

The indicator report is presented in a format that permits its easy separation from the rest of the publication, permitting its retention as a separate piece of reference and reading material. As always, all criticism, proposed improvements for the web site and its content and the direction of the project are particularly welcome in this Forum.