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Benchmark Reports

These reports provide comparative data from The Cost Study.  Click on each link below to read more about each report and decide which benchmarks are best for your institution!

  • Tableau and Excel Dashboards: Request a dashboard file to see your institution’s annual data compared to all three norm benchmark group categories (Carnegie Class Set, Highest Degree, and Percent Undergrad) for several of our key cost and productivity metrics. The data file format is optimized for creating visualizations, so you can also create your own!
  • Norms (Norm Tables, Ratio Tables, Quartiles):  Norms are the final comparative results from each study year, presented at the 2-digit and 4-digit CIP level.  Institutions have access to the norms from each year they participate in The Cost Study.  Data in the norms is considered a frozen file at the time the norms are released, typically in July each year (though preliminary norms are released in May). Comparative values are available for three norm groups: Carnegie Class Set, Highest Degree, and Percent Undergrad.
  • Peer Analyses: Participants have the option to request our Standard Peer Analysis or our new Program-Specific Peer Analyses.  Customize the peer analyses with self-selected peers through our online portal.  The Cost Study team can also provide data-informed peer groups by request.
  • Three-Year-Average Benchmarks: The institution report with three-year-average benchmarks for Table 3 and Table 4 is beneficial to institutions because it provides comparative data earlier in the study cycle (typically around February / March) once an institution’s data has been validated and approved by The Cost Study team. These benchmark values are calculated averages from all the programs reported at the same CIP4 level over the previous three study years.  Comparative values are available for three benchmark groups: Carnegie Class, Highest Degree, and Percent Undergrad and control type: Public, Private, or All.  Note that here, the Carnegie Class option is specific to a single Carnegie Class compared to the norm benchmark option which uses a set of Carnegie Classes grouped together.