How Colleges Use Data

What does a culture of evidence really look like in higher education?

The use of big data and the rapid acceleration of storage and analytics tools have led to a revolution of data use in higher education. Institutions have moved from relying largely on historical trends and descriptive data to the more widespread adoption of predictive and prescriptive analytics. Despite this rapid evolution of data technology and analytics tools, universities and colleges still face a number of obstacles in their data use. In How Colleges Use Data, Jonathan S. Gagliardi presents college and university leaders with an important resource to help cultivate, implement, and sustain a culture of evidence through the ethical and responsible use and adoption of data and analytics.

Gagliardi provides a broad context for data use among colleges, including key concepts and use cases related to data and analytics. He also addresses the different dimensions of data use and highlights the promise and perils of the widespread adoption of data and analytics, in addition to important elements of implementing and scaling a culture of evidence.

Demystifying data and analytics, the book helps faculty and administrators understand important topics, including:

How to define institutional aspirations using data
Equity and student success
Strategic finance and resource optimization
Academic quality and integrity
Data governance and utility
Implicit and explicit bias in data
Implementation and planning
How data will be used in the future

How Colleges Use Data helps college and university leaders understand what a culture of evidence in higher education truly looks like.