How to Create Custom Tables with the SF State IR Enrolled Students Dashboard

The SF State Office of Institutional Research Enrolled Student Dashboard contains several years’ worth of historical data. Users can choose from a variety of filters and options to create custom tables. All data comes from the Data Warehouse maintained by the Office of Institutional Analytics. Student demographic fields such as sex, ethnicity and parent education and others are derived from what was self-reported on the admission application. Current term enrollment data such as student level and full/part time are system-generated based on the number of units a student has registered for during that term and has earned in total. Information on the web site of the Office of Institutional Research (IR) may differ from the information reported to by the CSU Chancellor’s Office to federal and state agencies due to differences in reporting guidelines, definitions and dates.

The totals here are for campus state-supported enrollment only, so will not capture enrollments in the College of Extended Learning (see FAQ).

If you see any errors or have any questions, please send a note to the Institutional Research email address: institutionalresearch@sfsu.edu

A printable PDF version of the instructions can be found on the IR webpage

So what can you do?

  • Create custom snapshots of the term enrollment, for one term or multiple terms, using a variety of student demographic and other characteristics.

  • Render tables in HTML or download the tables to Excel for custom formatting and analysis.

How to make custom tables

The default view when the page first loads is headcount enrollment by student level (undergraduate, 2nd/post-bac, and graduates) for the most recent four fall terms, along with percentages.

For custom tables you can select either full headcount enrollment or FTE. You can also remove the percentages. Unfortunately, due to limitations in the software, percentages can only be calculated for the entire column, not within by-groups. If you want to calculate percent for a different by-group than the entire pool, you’ll need to download the Excel file.

At any point you can return to the default view by clicking the ‘Reset’ button.

Examples of custom charts are provided below, but there are of course many more possibilities.

1) Enrollment (headcount, FTE or both) by college and student level, last five Fall semesters

  • Leave default Term as Fall
  • Select the most previous five years with fall enrollment
  • Leave the ‘Ordered By (#1)’ as is (Student Level)
  • Set ‘Ordered By ‘(#2)’ to College
  • Set either/both Headcount and FTES to show

Use the arrows by each column name to sort, filter, or export the data:

2) Fall and Spring enrollment by Ethnicity and Student level, AY 2018-19

  • Select Fall and Spring Terms
  • Select 2018 and 2019 as years
  • Leave the ‘Ordered By (#1)’ as is (Student Level)
  • Set ‘Ordered By ‘(#2)’ to Ethnicity or Ethnicity Detail (see Glossary for difference)
  • Leave Headcount = Show and change Percent to Hide

Again, use the arrows by each column name to sort, filter, or export the data accordingly.

3) What number of students (headcount) are new, continuing or returning in terms Fall 2016 to Fall 2018

  • Leave default Term as Fall
  • Leave the ‘Ordered By (#1)’ as is (Student Level)
  • Set ‘Ordered By ‘(#2)’ to Enrollment Type
  • Leave Headcount = Show and change Percent to Hide

Use the arrows by each column name to sort, filter, or export the data accordingly.

4) Summer enrollment by major and student level, College of Liberal and Creative Arts, 2016 to 2018

  • Set Term to Summer
  • Select 2016, 2017 and 2018 as years
  • Select Liberal and Creative Arts in College" drop-down menu
  • Leave the ‘Ordered By (#1)’ as is (Student Level)
  • Set ‘Ordered By ‘(#2)’ to Program
  • Leave Headcount = Show and change Percent to Hide

Use the arrows by each column name to sort, filter, or export the data accordingly.

Glossary of Terms, filters and categories:

Report filters:

  • Year: Academic year, consisting of Fall, Spring and Summer terms

  • Term: Semester unit, Fall, Spring or Summer

  • College, Department and Major: SF State Academic units

  • Headcount is total number of students enrolled

  • FTE is adjusted student count based on units taken

Report categories (in Ordered by drop-down menus)

  • Age: Six categories; 19 and under, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-59, 60+

  • College and Department: Same as in filter

  • Enrollment Type: New (Freshman, Transfer, etc), Continuing (no gap in enrollment from prior terms), Returning (registered again after gap in enrollment), Transitory (Early Start or Step to College)

  • Ethnicity: Grouped per the specifications from the U.S. Department of Education. Numbers ahead of abbreviations are due to data warehouse sorting. This grouping includes International students in each ethnicity category.

  • Ethnicity Detail: Grouped the same as Ethnicity, except International students are separated out. Some reporting requires this grouping. See FAQ for more detail.

  • Feeder school: Type of school (e.g. California public high school, California community college, etc.) the applicant attended.

  • Full/Part time: Based on total units attempted (registered for at Census). Full-time = 12+ units for undergraduates and 9+ for Graduate students.

  • Parent Education: Highest parent education level grouped as First Generation (neither parent has attended any college) and College Experience. If no parent education level was entered on application, value is Unknown.

  • Pell Eligible: Proxy for low-income, based on application response to parent income. Set to roughly the level where the student would qualify for a Pell grant.

  • Program: Major as declared at census

  • Residency: California Resident or non-resident (combined out-of-state and International).

  • Resident Area: Residence at time of application. Geographic regions- For California divided by county of residence at the time of application.

  • Sex: Sex at birth, Male or Female (see FAQ)

  • Student level: Undergraduate, 2nd/Post Bac, Graduate, Unknown

FAQ

Who decided on the Ethnicity groupings?

Though applicants do provide more detailed ethnicity information on the application, we present here the same categories used in most reporting. The categories come from the U.S. Department of Education and follows how ethnicity is collected on other U.S. government forms, including the U.S. Census. As some reporting does require International students to be separate from U.S. domestic students, we offer both the combined groups (Ethnicity) and the separated groups (Ethnicity Detail).

How is California Resident defined?

For dependent students residency is tied to their parent or guardian’s tax filings, with exemptions for military and other situations. More detailed information is available in the SF State Bulletin.

How is an International student defined?

Student is not a U.S. Citizen, Permanent Resident, nor has immigrant/refugee status.

Why is Sex limited to Male and Female?

The CSU system only recently began to collect “non-binary” sex on the application. When we have more years for comparison we will add that as a filter.

What’s up with all the missing/unknown in Parent Education before Fall 2013?

Although our enrollment table goes back further, our applicant table (the source of the Parent Education field) only goes back to 2007. So the enrollment tables won’t account for any entrants prior to Fall 2007. As new students from 2007 on become a greater proportion of all students, the missing/unknown group will shrink. Probably best to only look at Fall 2014 onward for the best representation of Parent Education status. If you need custom tables, please submit a data request and we’ll use archived data to put something together for you.

Why did summer enrollments drop off so much in 2010 and increase again in 2015?

For a few years summer enrollment was handled by the College of Extended Learning, which operates as an auxiliary, non-state-supported academic unit. The totals here only reflect state-supported enrollment. If you need non-state-supported enrollment numbers, please submit a data request.

Notes:

  • If you use this data in a report or presentation, please reference the source as: SF State Office of Institutional Analytics, Data Warehouse,

  • The line graphs below the tables will only display the top-line numbers, not the more detailed demographic variables.

  • Dashboard works best in Chrome and Internet Explorer. We have seen some issues with the radio-button filters not rendering properly in Firefox.

Cheers to our Institutional Analytics colleague Ivan Lee for rebuilding these tables and collaborating with the IR staff to make them as robust as possible for you, the user.