Steppingblocks gives you access to a large, longitudinal dataset connecting education to workforce outcomes. But data without direction produces noise rather than insight. This article helps you figure out where to start, what questions to ask, and how to shape your exploration into something useful.
Start with your question, not the data.
It can be tempting to open the platform and start browsing, but the result is usually a lot of interesting numbers without a clear takeaway. Before you click anything, answer two questions:
What decision am I trying to support?
Accreditation documentation, curriculum redesign, enrollment marketing, state reporting, and advancement outreach all require different data points and different levels of precision.
Who needs to act on this information?
A Provost reading a one-pager needs different framing than an IR Director building a white paper, even if they are looking at the same underlying data.
Once you can answer both, your exploration has a destination!
Common starting points by use case:
Accreditation:
Steppingblocks data supports both programmatic and institutional accreditation. Institutional accreditation requires an examination of the institution as a whole whereas programmatic accreditation requires program-specific evidence: where graduates from a specific major or degree are working, what skills they are using, and how outcomes compare to employer expectations in that field. This is where filters by major, degree level, and graduation year become especially useful. Consider these questions:
Do you need institution-level aggregates or program-specific breakdowns?
How far back does your accreditor expect outcomes data to go?
Does the data need to track the same cohort over time?
Can you show employment rates, median wages, and field-of-work alignment for graduates of those programs?
Graduate Outcomes is the primary module for both use cases. Start by pulling graduates from your specific timeframe, then segment by program and look at outcomes that help support your narrative.
State Workforce Development:
Many institutions are asked to demonstrate their contribution to state or regional workforce development, especially when making the case to legislators or reporting within performance-based funding frameworks.
Ask yourself:
What geography am I trying to cover? Statewide? Regional labor market? County-level?
Am I measuring direct impact (your graduates working in-state) or broader economic contribution?
Which programs have the strongest in-state retention, and are those the programs that matter most for the state's workforce priorities?
Is this for an internal report, a legislative brief, or a public-facing website?
Enrollment Marketing and Student Recruitment
Prospective students and their families increasingly ask about outcomes before they commit to enrolling in an institution. If your admissions or marketing team needs outcome stories to support recruitment, ask yourself:
Which programs have the strongest salary and employment outcomes?
What industries and employers are our graduates landing in, and are those aspirational for the students we are recruiting?
Are there specific programs where outcomes data could differentiate us from competitors in the same market?
Start with the programs where you already believe the story is strong, validate it with the data, then build out to programs where you have less visibility.
Curriculum Review and Program Relevance
If your faculty or academic leadership is asking whether a program is still training students for jobs that exist, Steppingblocks data can help ground that conversation. Ask yourself:
What skills and job titles are graduates of this program actually landing in?
Has that distribution shifted over the past five years?
Are there employer categories or skill sets that are growing in demand but underrepresented in where our graduates are landing?
Alumni Engagement and Advancement
If you are working in Advancement or Alumni Relations and need to identify alumni for outreach, cultivation, or major-gift prospecting, ask yourself:
Am I trying to reach alumni in specific industries or employer categories?
Do I need to identify high earning alumni whose giving capacity may be underestimated in our current records?
Are there geographic clusters of alumni that would support a regional giving campaign or an employer partnership conversation?
Can I cross reference outcomes data with our existing alumni records to fill gaps in contact information or career history?