Chalk and Compass’s new report, A Compass for Creative Value: How Art and Design Colleges Can Use Data to Understand Institutional Health, Demonstrate Impact, and Make Better Decisions, responds to the recent IHEP’s recent How to Measure What Matters: A Practical Guide to Assessing Postsecondary Value by offering a practical framework for showing the value of creative education without flattening it into a single earnings number.

The report explores what conventional data sees, what it misses, and how art and design colleges can build a fuller picture across three essential layers.

Inside, you’ll find a six-step process, a twelve-measure program health dashboard, illustrative examples, and a readiness checklist for institutions preparing for a more data-demanding era as well as accompanying worksheets.

This is independent nonprofit research created specifically for art and design higher education because our institutions deserve tools built around the careers our graduates actually lead and the value creative education truly creates.