The Use of Metrics in HigherEd

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to go right now. " - Prof Chesney

As the distinctions and attendant value of business intellegence system diffuse through the semi-permeable membrane that is HigherEd, decision support systems are seen as essential IT initiatives. The dashboard concept seems to live in a state of grace, bobbing the surface of the sea of priority lists and hard decisions. Retention is the holy grail of HigherEd and is readily quantifiable. Any line of business application that expects to be considered in this market will need robust data reporting, especially ad hoc reporting capabilities.

What’s missing is the understanding of business process engineering as a necessary precursor to the use of decision driving data. The commercial market has been party to the evolution of these business practices. Programs such as Sigma6 and TQM were developed as responses to the perceived challenges of Pacific Rim manufacturing competition in the latter part of the 20th century. HigherEd expects to use metrics without the rigor of analysis and process. Too often, the quote attributed to Disraeli with regards to statistics and its implications on the politics of data seems to apply to the use of metrics in HigherEd.