MAPS Research

The MAPS Project team at the Sorenson Impact Center has compiled several resources to complement the MAPS data tools.

Use cases, an additional data dashboard showing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education, and topical white papers can help leaders apply context to the data found in the dashboards.

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Dashboard Use Cases

To learn more about how the MAPS data tools can be applied, please read through our use cases.

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Student Publications

The MAPS Student Coalition for Higher Education published a guidebook in 2021, Catalyzing Student Equity in Higher Education. This guidebook elevates effective and innovative strategies institutional leaders and decision makers should consider when centering outcomes for students. The guidebook presents a number of case studies across a variety of critical themes when reorienting programs, services, and structures with student-centricity in mind.

Read the Student Guidebook

White Papers & Reports

Our team produced the white paper Five Themes for Centering Student Equity after holding our Fall 2020 convening. The paper synthesizes insights from a diverse group of higher education stakeholders—including students, researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers—to identify strategies to foreground equity. The takeaways of this white paper would become guiding principles as the MAPS Project continued to evolve in coming years.

In the spring of 2022, our team reviewed several leading data sources and interviewed more than 30 higher education leaders about how they measure and address gaps at their institutions. While most leaders agree that addressing gaps is a priority, a lack of robust and consistent metrics makes it difficult to define and track equitable institutional achievement. We outline the challenges and opportunities for improving the measurement and highlight several promising initiatives focused on improving high-quality postsecondary data in our white paper, Missing Metrics: An Analysis of Measurement Gaps in Higher Education.

Threats of undergraduate enrollment decline have dominated higher education headlines for years. But are enrollment declines impacting all sectors and types of students in the same way? In Uneven Terrain: The Shifting Landscape of Enrollment Trends in Higher Education, we explore the trends around enrollment in higher education, illuminating the disparate experiences of different types of institutions in a system that is too often treated as monolithic. This paper also covers enrollment trends for students with an intersectional demographic lens, exploring trends by race, gender, and type of institution. Finally, this paper covers innovative strategies for increasing enrollment and retention, as well as system-wide tools designed to support the sector as a whole in reviving and better serving an increasingly diverse student population.

Maps Project

Undergraduate Studies