Determine the population of institutions
Once you have articulated the outcome upon which you want to benchmark JMU against other institutions, determine the population from which the peers will be drawn. If you only desire institutions outside of Virginia or wish to exclude institutions with a medical school, decide upon these parameters before exploring additional variables.
In essence, this step is meant to determine the non-negotiables—the factors that if all other things were equal about JMU and this institution, we still wouldn’t consider them a peer. A common non-negotiable is a two-year college designation. That is, consider a two-year institution that was exactly like JMU in every other way (size, student demographics, location, etc.), would we consider them a peer? It is likely not because our mission, admissions standards, and other factors are so different from that of a two-year institution, it wouldn’t make sense to consider them a peer under most circumstances.
Other common factors to consider when considering the population of possible peers:
- Private institutions?
- Medical Schools?
- Two-year colleges?
- MHBCUs or HSIs?
Consider this the step at which you are filtering out institutions based on a categorical factor. Private or Public. Medical school, no medical school. Later, you’ll identify variables that are continuous in nature (number of students, graduation rates), but at this point, you’re considering the basic characteristics that might exclude an institution from being considered a peer. Be aware that choosing too many filters at this step may severely limit the number of institutions from which to choose. You are encouraged to use the process outlined in Step 4 to help you decide which of these categorical variables are most relevant to apply.
Action Item: Use the following checklist to determine what institutions to exclude based on specific characteristics.
