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Higher Ed Data Strategy: Frustrations and Aspirations
How campus leaders can achieve their data goals
Experts from EAB's Edify team recently surveyed more than 300 campus data leaders, users, and stewards about their hopes for data use on campus—and what’s getting in the way. In our analysis, we uncovered a handful of recurring frustrations institutions encountered with their data, as well as several common goals they shared.
Use the toggle to explore the most common frustrations and aspirations we heard, and click to see more about how these play out on campus.
Frustrations
Aspirations
What this might sound like:
“We’re spending so much time on compliance and ad hoc report requests that there isn’t time for strategy.”
“My staff is too bogged down with just pure data entry, updating and manipulating data, checking and rechecking. We’re not getting a good return on investment because of all this manual work required.”
What this might sound like:
“Sometimes the data is there, but it isn’t clear how to access it or what it includes.”
“There are things that we've been struggling to figure out how to solve that if we had access to data, we'd suddenly see what the solution should be. Absent that, we can't even really conceive of it, it's like you don't know what you don't know.”
What this might sound like:
“It is a chore to pull any data out of any of our systems. And when we do, we can’t trust the data. If two people pull a report, they will both get different numbers.”
“A lot of people jump to blame our ERP, but 95% of the issues people have in our ERP stem from the business processes that were set up to support it.”
What this might sound like:
“Offices will run reports on data maintained by another office, without knowing how the data is used and defined by the office maintaining the data.”
“We need data and staff to interpret the data. Void of data and staff that can interpret it means decisions get made without data.”
Achieve Your Data Goals:
10 Elements of Effective Data Management
Through our work with hundreds of higher ed institutions, we’ve discovered ten core features of effective data management that can help you move past frustration and achieve your goals.
Organizational Culture
1. Strategic Vision
Define your institution's goal for data use and set meausurable goals
2. Data Culture
Build a supportive and collaborative data infrastructure
3. Data Governance Structures
Create security protocols to govern data access and usage
4. Organizational Continuity Efforts
Develop systems and procedures to facilitate knowledge retention and mitigate the impact of turnover
5. Collaboration Framework
Implement technology and practices that allow staff to define and work toward common goals
Implementation Practices
6. Implementation Strategy
Decide how your institution will put its strategic vision into practice
7. Common Data Dictionary
Create shared definitions for each data field in your institution’s CRMs, LMS, SIS, and databases
8. Data Quality Assurance
Establish procedures and implement software to ensure that data remains standardized and trustworthy
9. Data Access Management
Grant staff access to relevant data and restrict access based on security protocols
10. Data Consumption
Measure and improve upon data usage and application across campus
