Speculative reform jumps the gun on notions of data-driven reform, requiring administrators to anticipate and act to ensure problems (and the data that would show them) do not materialize. Speculative reforms are incapable of delivering the outcomes they promise, as they are fueled by a fear of the future that their reforms do not extinguish. In…

Student privacy is a critical area of higher education that deserves greater focus, particularly as student data digitalization increases. Many colleges and universities use data literacy as a way to prepare students, sometimes from different disciplines, to work with others' data postgraduation. Data literacy can be an avenue for helping all…

Traditional student information systems were designed primarily to collect and manage records of course enrollment and credit hours earned, as well as other data elements needed to monitor each student's progress to graduation. Now, institutions want to monitor and improve the quality and equity of students' learning experiences in courses and the…

Multiple studies show that outcomes, whether they be better degree completion rates or successful short-term workforce training, are negatively affected by inadequate funding (Kahlenberg, 2015). To bolster their case for underfunding, researchers and college advocacy groups produce studies that rely on an important federal dataset--the Integrated…

Complete College America (CCA) is partnered with the National Student Clearinghouse in promoting the latter's Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP), a data and reporting tool for tracking student success metrics. The PDP is offered at nominal cost, built for democratized data access, and encompasses transfer data native to Clearinghouse products,…

Historically, it has been difficult for students and their families to compare how different colleges and programs improve students' chances of landing a desirable job and earning a good salary. The U.S. Department of Education's 2015 release of student earning data was a major step toward remedying this problem. The data offered by the College…

Meaningful change towards antiracist practices take time. There are no quick fixes. Quick workshops on implicit bias and microaggressions rarely lead to lasting changes in teaching practices. Equity QUantified In Participation (EQUIP) learning communities organize faculty members to work together to promote antiracist teaching. Equity analytics…

Digital transformation (Dx) refers to a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution's business model, strategic directions, and value proposition. Dx initiatives on many campuses are anchored in student success goals. As a result of this…

A "Cone of Uncertainty" has become ubiquitous in hurricane forecasting, encompassing the likeliest possible path that a storm might take as it approaches landfall. These forecasts are crucial because they help government agencies at all levels prepare even in these far-from-certain future conditions. Although individual institutions have…

In recent decades, education leaders and researchers have increasingly sought to disaggregate key higher education outcome data--graduation rates, attainment, employment, and income--by race and ethnicity in order to uncover and narrow equity gaps. The same is true, recently, for affordability, especially as it relates to the differential impact…

In this article, the authors report on a tested workload intervention, faculty work activity dashboards, to enhance transparency and reduce ambiguity. This intervention is part of the Faculty Workload and Rewards Project (FWRP), a National Science Foundation-funded, action-research project designed to improve equity in how faculty workload is…

Curriculum maps have long served as useful guides in the careful design of a curriculum's pedagogical aims and where they are to be achieved, however such a map cannot indicate how students are actually moving through the curriculum. This article discusses traffic models. When employed in the study of courses drawn from multiple departments,…

Over the last two years, more data was created than in the entire previous history of humankind (IBM, 2016; Marr, 2016). Roughly 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every person on earth by the turn of the decade (Evans, 2011; Gantz & Reinsel, 2012; Marr, 2016). Data are created continuously and at a rate that is…

In recent years the fight for equity in higher education has intensified. Institutional leaders, advocates, and policymakers alike are seeking scalable solutions that rapidly close equity gaps among this nation's most underserved populations. Too many hardworking students still struggle to afford a college education, and historically underserved…

With national graduation rates that range from 32% among open enrollment institutions to 66% among private not-for-profits, higher education institutions have a moral imperative to improve the success of their students. Interventions to support today's students must consider the student holistically, be just-in-time, and come from a…