Risk Indicators

Student Success Indicators

In spring 2025, HLC expanded our risk indicator processes to include student success indicators. HLC will use publicly available data from the IPEDS Fall Enrollment, Graduation Rates and Outcome Measures surveys to compute and evaluate three educational outcome measures for institutions that enroll undergraduate students:

• First-year retention rate
• Graduation rate within 150% of normal time
• Completion and transfer rate at eight years after entry

Documents and Forms

• Student Success Indicators Procedure
• Student Success Improvement Plan Template
• Student Success Improvement Plan Update Template

Peer Groups

HLC recognizes that the student success process has to take into account the diverse characteristics of our member institutions. To achieve that goal, HLC will divide institutions into peer groups for the purposes of setting benchmarks and evaluating institutional performance.

HLC will consider institutional characteristics in a tiered format at different points in the indicator process. This tiered approach allows us to set meaningful benchmark values and indicator conditions using larger groups of institutions, while still taking institutions’ unique context into account at other points in the process.

• First, to set benchmarks, HLC will assign institutions into three primary peer groups:
  • Two-year institutions
  • Four-year institutions
  • Tribal institutions
• Next, to identify conditions that require HLC follow-up based on these benchmarks, HLC will consider the composition of entering student class for four-year institutions. As a result, institutions will be assigned into four groups at this point in the process:
  • Two-year institutions
  • Tribal institutions
  • Four-year traditional institutions
  • Four-year non-traditional institutions
• Finally, HLC will further refine the institutional groups for the purposes of evaluating those institutions that meet the indicator conditions. We will consider various institutional characteristics, including geographic area, enrollment size, institutional control and entering student class composition.

Benchmarks

For each primary peer group, HLC calculates the median value of each outcome measure. An individual institution’s outcomes will be compared against the median of their peer group and categorized as one of the following:

• At or above the median
• Between the median and 25^th percentile
• Between the 25^th percentile and 5^th percentile
• Within the lowest 5^th percentile

Institutions may be required to submit additional information for staff review or complete a three-year Student Success Improvement Plan if certain outcome measures are between the 25^th and 5^th percentile and/or within the lowest 5^th percentile of their peer group.

Relationship to the Revised Criteria for Accreditation

In June 2024, HLC’s Board of Trustees adopted revised Criteria for Accreditation, which will go into effect on September 1, 2025. The revised Criteria include Core Component 3.G, Student Success Outcomes, which states:

The institution’s student success outcomes demonstrate continuous improvement, taking into account the student populations it serves and benchmarks that reference peer institutions.

In demonstrating compliance with this Core Component, institutions are not limited to the three measures evaluated under the student success indicators or the peer groups described above. Institutions may look at these measures and peer groups for that purpose, and/or they may develop more customized benchmarking activities using other data points and peer institutions. As is the case with all Core Components, an institution’s distinctive mission will inform how it demonstrates that it meets Core Component 3.G.