University of California President Mark G. Yudof has issued the first comprehensive assessment of the UC system's progress in meeting key teaching, research and public service goals. Available online at www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability, the report is expected to be updated and published annually.

The report is the result of a yearlong process that began shortly after Yudof took office as president and included a period of review and comment from members of the public and the UC community.

The report presents 131 individual measures of university performance in 15 categories across the 10 campuses, assessing progress in areas such as student success, access and affordability; research impact and funding; faculty diversity and quality; and university finance. The data are presented in ways to highlight trends over time and, wherever possible, to compare the University of California's performance with averages for the 34 public and 26 private U.S. research universities in the elite Association of American Universities (AAU). The comparison group is expected to evolve over time as the report develops.

Although UC campuses have long collected and publicly reported a broad range of performance data, the new accountability framework launched by Yudof gives the university its first comprehensive mechanism to make these data routinely and widely available to the public. In addition to providing transparency, the report provides important baselines and benchmarks, which inform policy and decision-making.

"We should be accountable to the Legislature, the parents, the taxpayers, the students," Yudof said. "People deserve an honest answer to the question of how you're doing, and it needs to be backed up by statistical data. Numbers do not measure everything, but the fact you can't measure everything doesn't mean you don't measure anything."

Periodic sub-reports will be presented to the Board of Regents throughout the year, focusing on specific areas of the university's service to California. The first student success sub-report will be presented today by University of California Vice Provost for Academic Planning, Programs & Coordination Daniel Greenstein. View the report at this link: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/chapter/1

The student success sub-report captures what students achieved at the university, as well as what they accomplished after graduation. UC freshman graduation rates show a diverse student body with a high graduation rate. The university has improved its six-year graduation rates for entering freshmen from 80 percent for students entering in 1997 to 82 percent for students entering in 2002. What is even more striking is that the proportion graduating in four years has increased from 46 to 59 percent over the same time period.

In addition, the graduation rates for upper-division community college transfer students parallel those for entering freshmen: Fifty-two percent of community college transfers graduate in two years, 81 percent graduate in three years, and 86 percent graduate in four years. Two-year graduation rates have increased from 39 percent for transfer students entering in 1997 to 52 percent for students in 2006. This means that more than half of the community college transfer students are sufficiently prepared. When they transfer, they can complete their upper division major requirements in just two years.

The data presented show that the university has made steady progress on one key aspect of student success -- graduating a greater proportion of its new students and graduating more of them in a shorter period of time.

The current budget crisis underscores the need -- already acutely felt -- for richer and more detailed data about the impact of a University of California education on students. Over the coming year, the university plans development of additional indicators of student success. For example, baccalaureate recipients who attended the university five, 10 and even 15 or 20 years ago will be surveyed to learn how their UC education affected their careers.

The university will continue efforts to see if there are better ways to ensure that students know what learning outcomes are expected of them and ways to directly measure those outcomes. These efforts, among others, will help UC continue to improve as it carries out its mission to prepare students to assume roles as the next generation of leaders for California and the nation.

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