Complete College America launches Center for Leadership, Institutional Metrics, and Best Practices (CLIMB) to advance data-driven decision-making and metrics for student success

INDIANAPOLIS (April 16, 2025) — Complete College America (CCA), a national nonprofit on a mission to raise postsecondary attainment in the United States, announced the launch of the Center for Leadership, Institutional Metrics, and Best Practices (CLIMB), a national capacity-building initiative aimed at helping colleges and universities leverage data-driven strategies to boost student success. CLIMB will provide institutions with the tools, frameworks, and support necessary to turn data into action, ensuring more students complete their degrees and achieve economic mobility.

“Data in higher education has been abundant, but underutilized,” said Dr. Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of Complete College America. “With this new initiative, we’re helping institutions build capacity to move from data collection to data action—ensuring that the metrics colleges and universities track lead to the best outcomes for students and real, measurable progress in increasing college completion.”

Since 2009, Complete College America has worked with state policymakers, systems of higher education, and institutions to scale evidence-based student success strategies proven to increase college completion. Over the past 15 years, almost every member of the CCA Alliance has improved on-time graduation rates for students at both four-year institutions (+6 percentage points) and two-year institutions (+6 percentage points). In the past five years alone, seven Alliance members more than doubled their on-time graduation rates for two-year students. However, despite nationwide increases in on-time completion, the improvements have not been enough to close persistent gaps in college completion or counter a broad-based trend toward fewer students enrolling in higher education.

To help close this gap, CLIMB is designed to help institutions address these challenges head-on by improving their ability to track, analyze, and act on student success data. It will also equip them with the tools and strategies needed to close gaps in student outcomes—and implement best practices through hands-on training, toolkits, and insights from leading institutions.

As part of the initiative, CCA will bring together colleges and universities to integrate performance metrics and continuous improvement into their strategic planning. CLIMB will equip institutions with tools to track key predictors of student success—such as credit accumulation, retention, and gateway course performance—while providing guidance on using data to drive effective student success initiatives and long-term outcomes.

“The last mile of data-driven decision-making is about ensuring that actionable insights reach those with the resources and influence to improve student outcomes,” said Charles Ansell, vice president for research, policy, and advocacy at Complete College America. “This effort is not only about identifying the right metrics, it’s about integrating them into daily operations and the way that higher education professionals and educators do their work. Our ultimate goal is to use data to build campus systems that are both accountable and responsive to student needs.”

CLIMB aims to engage institutions nationwide, particularly those serving historically underrepresented students. CCA will work directly with colleges, systems, and state agencies to establish a national model for institutional effectiveness, ensuring that student success reforms are informed by clear, measurable goals.

Institutions interested in participating in CLIMB can complete the following form to stay updated.

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About Complete College America: Complete College America (CCA) is a bold national advocate for dramatically increasing college completion rates and closing institutional performance gaps by working with states, systems, institutions, and partners to scale highly effective structural reforms and promote policies that improve student success.