There is a quiet frustration that runs through student affairs and services (SAS) offices around the world. It sounds something like this: “We know this work matters. We see it every day. We watch students figure out who they are, navigate crises, build communities, develop skills they didn't know they needed.” But when budget season comes, or accreditation season, or the provost or rector asks for evidence—we struggle to make the case.
That frustration is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that SAS has historically invested its energy in doing the work rather than documenting it. The good news is that in many cases the data to make our case is already there. What most divisions lack is not evidence, it is an organizing framework for collecting, connecting, and communicating that evidence in language institutional leaders recognize.
The Student Success Data Pyramid is that framework.
A Framework Built on What You Already Have
The Student Success Data Pyramid organizes SAS assessment into four levels, each building on the one below. The concept is simple: the volume of data decreases as you move up, but the complexity increases—and so does the institutional impact of what you are measuring.
Level I: Basic Data and Demographics
This is the foundation. How many students are using your programs and services? Who are they (by year, major, background, housing status, etc.)? Are historically underrepresented groups accessing services in proportion to their representation in the student body?
Most offices are already collecting this information in some form. The problem is that it lives in spreadsheets, attendance logs, and event registration systems that are never aggregated or analyzed. Level I asks you to systematize what you have. Start counting. Start tracking. Build the base.
Level II: Needs Assessment and Satisfaction
Once you know who you are serving, the next question is whether you are serving them well. Level II captures the student voice through surveys, focus groups, and feedback mechanisms. Are students getting what they need? Are they satisfied with the experience?
Satisfaction data tracked over time tells a particularly powerful story of continuous improvement, responsiveness to student needs, and a division that listens. Standardized instruments like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) allow you to benchmark your results against peer institutions, adding an external reference point that carries weight with accreditors and senior leadership alike.
Level III: Institutional Metrics
This is where student affairs begins to speak the language of the institution. Level III connects your work to the metrics that presidents, provosts, and boards of trustees use to measure institutional health: access, retention, sense of belonging, completion, and post-graduate success.
The fundamental question here is: do students who engage with SAS programs and services persist, perform, and graduate at higher rates than comparable students who do not? In most institutions where this question has been rigorously examined, the answer is yes. When you can demonstrate that answer with data—by tracking cohorts, controlling for background characteristics, pulling retention comparisons with institutional research—you transform SAS from a cost center into a contributor to the institution's most important strategic outcomes.
When student affairs can connect its work to retention, completion, and post-graduate success, it becomes part of the institutional success story, not a footnote to it.
Level IV: Student Learning Outcomes
The apex of the pyramid is the most complex and the most persuasive: the direct measurement of student learning and development. All people working in SAS globally are educators. The programs and experiences we create—leadership development, peer mentoring, residence life, intercultural dialogue, student organization advising—produce real, demonstrable learning.
At Level IV, we identify what students learn through their engagement with our programs, develop methodologies for measuring and reporting those outcomes, and build an evidence base that connects cocurricular experiences to general education goals: critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, intercultural competency, and civic engagement. This is the data that opens the door to genuine partnership with academic affairs, because it demonstrates that what happens outside the classroom is part of the educational mission rather than a supplement to it.
The Circle That Holds It All Together
Program review encircles the entire pyramid. Rather than a one-time compliance exercise, program review is envisioned here as a continuous, cyclical process in which departments use data from all four pyramid levels to evaluate their effectiveness, identify areas for improvement, and set goals for the next strategic cycle.
The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) provides a widely used framework for this kind of periodic departmental review. CAS has recently introduced an AI-assisted program review process that makes it more accessible for institutions globally, which could greatly assist institutions that may not have the staffing capacity for a traditional full-scale review. The result is a living system: data informs the review; the review informs how the division collects and uses data going forward.
Starting Where You Are
One of the most important features of the pyramid is that it is not prescriptive about pace. Different programs within the same division, office, or department can operate at different levels simultaneously. A recreation or sport program might have sophisticated Level I data on facility usage or students involved, but no learning outcomes. A leadership development program might have rich Level IV outcomes but incomplete demographic tracking. That is fine. Progress does not need to be uniform or sequential.
What the pyramid demands is intentionality. It asks every program and department to reflect on what they are measuring, why, and what they plan to do with the results. It asks the division or unit as a whole to build toward a comprehensive approach over time, one level at a time, one program or department at a time, with the full picture always visible on the horizon.
The Argument We Owe Our Students
There is a deeper reason to take this work seriously beyond institutional politics or budget cycles. The case for SAS is ultimately the case for a holistic conception of education, in which learning happens in residence halls and student organizations and counseling offices and leadership retreats, not only in classrooms. That is a powerful and true argument. But it requires evidence to sustain it.
When SAS staff can say, “here is what our students learn, here is how we know, and here is how it connects to the institution's most important goals”—that changes the conversation.
The Student Success Data Pyramid is not a complicated tool. It is a way of organizing what we already know and do into a form that the institution can see, value, and act on. That is not a small thing. It is, in fact, exactly the kind of work that belongs at the center of higher education, not at the margins.
Every institution is somewhere on the pyramid, and most are stronger than they realize. The work is figuring out where and building intentionally from there. If you'd like to think through where your division, department, or program stands, we'd be glad to have that conversation. Feel free to reach out at GSAConsultingGroup.com or perozzibrett@gmail.com.
About the Author
Brett Perozzi, Ph.D. is President & Senior Consultant at GSA Consulting Group, a small international consulting firm specializing in student affairs & services in higher education. A Fulbright Scholar and author of more than 50 publications, Brett is one of the most recognized experts in global student affairs. GSA offers program review, executive mentoring, and strategic planning services to individuals and institutions globally.