ASSIST General
Information
The Arizona State
System for Information on Student Transfer, or ASSIST, is a relational database
containing enrollment and degree information on students attending Arizona’s
three public universities and ten public community college districts. The
information is made available to participating institutions through a statewide
data warehouse. Data warehousing is a cost-effective technology for tracking
student enrollment outcomes throughout the state.
What are the goals?
The first goal of ASSIST is to provide information to assess the effectiveness
of Arizona’s general education curriculum and transfer model. Arizona’s public
post-secondary institutions have adopted a general education curriculum that if
completed at the community college fulfills general education requirements at
the university. The transfer model identifies specific curricular pathways for
the student to follow. Second, ASSIST provides the community colleges and the
universities information for the federal graduation rate report. This
information is particularly important for the community colleges. They need to
know how many former students enroll and graduate from a public four-year
university.
Who sponsors ASSIST?
The statewide student data warehouse was one of the implementing recommendations
of the Transfer Articulation Task Force in 1996 and 1997. ASSIST became official
when the Arizona State Legislature appropriated resources to build the data
warehouse over three years starting July 1, 1998. The appropriation required
that the community colleges and universities match resources. The Academic
Program Articulation Steering Committee (APASC), a committee with
representatives from both the two-year and four-year post-secondary sectors, was
given oversight of ASSIST. Arizona State University, which has expertise in data
warehousing technology, signed a memorandum of understanding with APASC to be
the ASSIST project leader.
How is privacy
ensured?
Student records are submitted to ASSIST under a security agreement signed by
each university and community college guaranteeing a student’s privacy and
limiting the use of the information for assessment, aggregate reporting, and
policy formation purposes. Only researchers identified by participating
institutions are granted access to ASSIST, and their access is limited to former
students of their institution. Also, the researchers are required to execute an
affidavit of non-disclosure similar to the affidavit used by the National Center
for Education Statistics (NCES) when granting access to restricted data files.
ASSIST data are
submitted annually by participating institutions to ASU. The records are matched
and loaded into the data warehouse using an eight-step algorithm based on
combinations of last name, first name, birth date, and student ID. Students are
assigned a unique ASSIST ID. This identifier becomes the primary key in the data
warehouse. Personally identifiable characteristics such as name, birth date, and
student ID are removed from the database accessed by researchers to ensure
student privacy and compliance with federal law.
How do I gain access to
ASSIST?
Researchers desiring access to ASSIST must be an employee of a participating
institution and be approved by the institutional ASSIST Steering Committee
representative. The design of ASSIST makes it possible for institutions to
retrieve information using standard query language or SQL statements. It is the
responsibility of the researcher to purchase this software and connect to the
Internet. A series of standard reports are also available to institutions over
the web.
