Iowa Board of Regents official details use of Census PSEO to track college outcomes, warns of enrollment shifts

Dr. Jason Pontius, associate chief academic officer for the Iowa Board of Regents, told a Midwestern Higher Education Compact meeting that the board is using a combination of public datasets — notably the US Census Bureau’s PSEO — to track where graduates go, what industries they enter and how their earnings evolve.

Pontius said the PSEO data allow the board to see percentile earnings (25th, 50th, 75th) and follow graduates at one, five and 10 years after college. "We keep [Social Security numbers] for about a week," he said, describing the process for matching and then purging identifiers on the Census side. "We do not wanna store SSNs. We just do not." The board also combines PSEO with state longitudinal student data and College Scorecard information to assess net price, debt and outcomes by field of study.

Why it matters: national headlines about an "enrollment cliff" often use broad demographic forecasts. Pontius referenced a projection of roughly a 15% national drop in high school graduates but said Iowa’s internal modeling — which tracks first-grade cohorts forward and applies statistical smoothing — produces a less severe outlook. "For the state of Iowa, we're not quite so dire," he said, adding that Iowa’s worst-case projection…