Dive Brief:
- A group of higher ed professors, educational technical vendors and consultants has released findings on how to more carefully manage and utilize data mined by common systems and predictive analytics.
- The report calls for schools to emphasize data usage in four tiers: scholarly research, admissions and student support, alternative credentials, and catalogs of information on student activities and credentialing for non-academic skills.
- The paper suggests all parties must be cognizant and interactive about how the data is collected, used and shared throughout the campus community.
Dive Insight:
While most of the work around this committee's research discusses the ethics and standards of data storage, the bigger concern for colleges and universities is the security effort. How can campuses preserve student data from being hacked, or from other students accessing information through common system loopholes or access points?
These are the issues that students are most concerned about, along with the security of health and treatment records. Some companies have advocated for more efficient onboarding technology to aid in this process, but ultimately, it is up to the president and CIO to determine how much data security now means to faculty and students.