In the business world, it is common to think about return on investment (ROI). The term can refer to the amount of money an organization makes back or saves, or even efficiencies gained, compared to what they are paying to achieve those gains. ROI may not be as commonly associated with the world of higher education, but that may be changing.
Due to the increasing cost of tuition, students are starting to think about what they are getting out of their investment. A new set of federal regulations is also forcing colleges and universities to quantify ROI. Here’s what higher education institutions need to do in order to show the value of a degree from their institution, and how data and an analytics solution are of utmost importance in the process.
A new set of regulations
A year ago, the United States Department of Education announced a new plan aimed at forcing college career programs to prove they won’t graduate students with debt the students are unable to pay back. The gainful employment rule requires career programs to show that their graduates are earning more than the student debt they’ve built up, and if they can’t, the colleges will lose access to federal aid.
There is also a financial value transparency rule that requires all colleges to provide information to the Education Department. The information would be used to help prospective college students make informed decisions about where to go to school based on program costs and student debt burdens. In order to show compliance with these rules, schools need to go through vast amounts of data.
Data-gathering complications
The reporting deadline for these new rules has been pushed back twice already. Lawmakers argued for a delay because of the problems with the rollout of the new FAFSA. They said the FAFSA delays prevented schools from gathering the high-quality data they need in order to meet the new regulations.
Financial aid data is a big part of what schools need to collect, so the combined impact of the FAFSA issues along with gainful employment and financial value transparency rules does put added stress on financial aid offices. The data-gathering becomes even more complicated if a school doesn’t have the right data infrastructure in place.
Higher education institutions need a reliable analytics solution
Colleges and universities have an immense amount of data to work with, but depending on the layout of the school, all of that data can be held in different systems. When you consider how many schools have merged in recent years, even more systems could become involved. Many schools have begun the process of integrating platforms, but the process can be complicated. Boston University, for example, recently had to delay its tuition collection because of issues as it transitioned more than 10 million records into one system.
Schools need a solution that can handle millions of records from different systems without sacrificing the quality of the information. And the solution needs to be flexible enough to adjust as time goes by and regulations change. Today the necessary reports revolve around financial aid and student debt in certain programs to measure return on investment, but in the future the metrics might change. Schools need a solution that can scale to whatever the Education Department decides is important for students to consider when making their decisions.
There’s also the everyday decisions schools need to make for themselves. The right analytics solution can integrate the data from all schools and all departments to inform administrators about programs, student well-being, buildings and grounds, and every other aspect of the workings of a university.
Another issue schools need to consider when it comes to student data is security. The new regulations involve sharing information that might not have been shared that way previously. Schools need to take steps that the sensitive data they hold in their systems is being shared only with its intended audience.
Data plays so many important roles in the world of higher education. When it comes to ROI for students, it could be the difference in whether a prospective student chooses one school over another. For schools, that means the return on investment in data and a reliable analytics solution could be the difference in the overall health of your school.
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