HEDS welcomes all colleges and universities—privates and publics, both 2-year and 4-year—to join us in advancing liberal arts education, inclusive excellence, and student success.
Membership in the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium
What institutions are eligible for HEDS membership?
Any college or university that:
Is nonprofit and regionally accredited
Grants undergraduate degrees or certificates
Is committed to advancing liberal arts education, inclusive excellence, and student success
Membership in HEDS offers:
The directors of HEDS have been working for over twenty years on improving student success and liberal arts education. Lessons from their work inform the design of HEDS surveys, reports, workshops, programs, and the efforts of the HEDS staff to help member institutions use evidence to strengthen their learning and teaching environments.
HEDS is a learning community of colleagues who have a broad range of experiences and understand the challenges of using evidence for improvement at institutions. HEDS activities include:
- A listserv that allows you to reach out to your colleagues to discuss data, techniques, and other useful information for just-in-time answers and problem-solving.
- Regional workshops, webinars, student success initiatives, and collaborative research opportunities that focus on improving student experiences and success at colleges and universities.
HEDS also offers a range of services designed to help institutions improve. Among these services are several student success, educational impact, and campus climate surveys to help institutions assess their students’ goals and needs, the quality and impact of their programs, and the strengths and weaknesses of their campus climate.
HEDS creates interactive data files that allow you to easily form custom institutional comparisons. Some of these files, such as the baccalaureate origins of earned doctorates, include the entire universe of higher education institutions. Other interactive files, including retention, first destination data, starting faculty salaries, overall faculty compensation, and tuition discounting, include data from HEDS institutions that have opted to share that information. There is no charge for these files. A current list and description of these exchanges can be found here.
HEDS provides consultation in areas related to our mission, such as understanding and using survey results; program and grant evaluation; faculty and staff development on using evidence to improve student learning.
At HEDS, we recognize the financial realities that many colleges and universities face, and we strive to make our services affordable, with a low cost membership fee and discounted surveys and consulting services:
- HEDS 2024-2025 annual membership fee is $2,650.
- HEDS survey base cost for members:
- No Cost – HEDS New Student Survey, Returning Student Survey, Student Satisfaction Survey, and Graduating Student Survey.
- $575 – HEDS Sense of Community Survey, Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey, Sexual Assault Campus Climate Surveys, and Alumni Surveys.
- We do some site visits and consulting for members as our schedule allows. The consulting fee for members is only $2,800 plus expenses.
If you have questions about membership, please email or call us at 1-765-361-6585.
You can also learn more about what our members share and how they collaborate on our Membership Benefits page. If you need information about HEDS membership to take back to colleagues at your institution, download this shareable PDF below:
Ready to Join?
Joining is easy!
Just email or call Kelly McDorman at 1-765-361-6585 any time of the year and say, “We’d like to join HEDS.”
It’s as simple as that. After letting us know you want to join:
- We will send you an invoice.
- You will be asked to select someone at your institution to act as your HEDS primary contact.
- Once selected, your primary contact will be asked to review and sign our Statement of Understandings on how we share data.
That’s it! Your institution is now a member of HEDS Consortium. Let others at your institution know and then administer a survey, post a question to our listserv, or join a data exchange. We look forward to working with you!