Meeting the Moment: Aligning Education with Economic Needs

The University of Louisiana System (UL System) has taken bold steps to increase transparency and answer critical questions about the value of higher education by leveraging Lightcast’s Alumni Pathways platform to track alumni career outcomes. With insight into students’ career success by program, scholarship status, and more, the UL system is able to show stakeholders how higher education leads to career success for students – and economic prosperity for Louisiana – across all nine of its campuses. 

In this article, President Rick Gallot and Dr. Claire Norris (VP for Advancement) of the UL System share key takeaways from their experience so far, and highlight how alumni data is enhancing key initiatives across the System.

Capturing Impact and Supporting Talent Development

As one of the largest higher education systems in the nation — and Louisiana's largest — the UL System comprises nine distinct institutions that collectively serve more than 83,000 students. Our campuses are geographically dispersed across Louisiana, and our alumni footprint spans nearly every region, fueling local economies, industries, and communities. It’s no surprise that in fiscal year 23-24, the UL System institutions collectively have added $13.6 billion in income to Louisiana’s economy. By implementing Alumni Pathways, we are capturing and showcasing the full scale of our impact more clearly than ever before.

Talent development and retention are top priorities for Louisiana’s state leadership. Recognizing this, the University of Louisiana System (UL System) embraced a data-driven approach to better illustrate its support and alignment with these goals. By implementing Lightcast’s Alumni Pathways tool across all nine of its campuses, the System is gaining new visibility into graduate outcomes—equipping leaders with the data they need to demonstrate higher education’s impact on social mobility, economic success, and the state’s talent pipeline.

The result? A new era of transparency, impact, and strategic decision-making that’s resonating with educators, state legislators, and the broader public alike.

Demonstrating Value and Influencing Policy

Our System invested in Alumni Pathways for every institution under its umbrella, creating a unified, statewide view of graduate outcomes. And that investment is already generating value.

The insights from the platform have fueled genuine excitement across our campuses and among state legislators. We've seen firsthand how the Alumni Pathways data has energized our leadership and policymakers. For the first time, we are able to quantify the return on investment (ROI) of higher education in Louisiana, addressing key concerns like “brain drain” with concrete evidence on alumni migration, retention, and talent retention and impact.

For example, Pathways data allowed the UL System to demonstrate that a majority of its Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS) scholarship recipients – 75% – remain in the state after graduating, contributing to the state’s economy through enhanced productivity and higher wages. 

Likewise, we are able to track migration and outcomes for Pell grant recipients, and plan to look at outcomes by GPA cohort as well to further quantify the relationship between academic achievement and career success.

This data is helping answer long-standing questions:

• Are graduates finding good jobs in-state, and in their area of study?

• Are scholarship and financial aid recipients staying and working in Louisiana?

• What do outcomes look like by academic major, or financial aid program?

Our leadership has shared this data with state legislators, presenting the results to finance and appropriations committees. These conversations are strengthening our case for public investment in higher education.

In the landscape we’re in, we must be prepared to talk about the value of higher education in new ways. Historically, we made broad statements about our impact on social mobility, but we didn’t always have the data to back them up. Now we do — and it’s changing the conversation.

A Strategic Tool for Recruitment, Marketing, and Corporate Engagement

Beyond internal and policy use, Alumni Pathways will help us strengthen our outward-facing strategies. By sharing clear, real-world outcomes — including those from fields like liberal arts that are sometimes overlooked — we can demonstrate the strong ROI, social mobility, and industry alignment with our programs.

We are learning to speak the language of students, families, and employers — not just the traditional language of higher education. This project empowers us to connect more meaningfully with the audiences we serve.

Creating a Culture of Data Literacy and Engagement

To ensure broad adoption of the new data, we engaged Lightcast to provide in-depth training for our institutional research (IR) teams, deans, communications staff, and leadership teams. This hands-on support has been critical in building confidence and fostering a shared understanding of the platform’s capabilities.

While some campuses are still early in the adoption process, we are continuing to push for deeper integration of Alumni Pathways into strategic planning, communications, and student success initiatives.

Looking Ahead: Using Data-Driven Clarity to Drive Strategic Impact

At UL System, our next steps include:

• Surveying campuses on how they’re using the data across departments

• Exploring ways to display and communicate findings in recruitment and outreach campaigns

• Tagging student records with GPA to further highlight connections between academic achievement and career success

• Leveraging comprehensive data analysis to strategically engage with industry partners to ensure alignment of our curriculum with emerging economic needs and prevailing workforce trends

We are also excited to explore how clarity around career pathways — when shared early with students — can influence enrollment, persistence, and long-term success. In fact, a student member of our Board of Supervisors recently suggested showing incoming students the salary progression associated with different degree pathways, based on real UL alumni data. We could not agree more. If that’s what students want to know, we are now in a position to deliver those answers — with data.

Building on the Past, Focused on the Future

This effort is part of a larger story: a state responding to workforce and economic challenges with action, not just words. By investing in data-informed decision-making, the University of Louisiana System is not just tracking graduate outcomes — we are shaping the future of talent development in Louisiana.

Whether it’s influencing policy, empowering student choices, or demonstrating the true value of higher education, we are proving that when you invest in data, everyone wins.

Special thanks to President Gallot and Dr. Claire Norris for sharing their reflections with us. Ready to explore alumni data for your institution? Contact us today to connect with a Lightcast specialist and get started.