Dive Brief:
- Faculty members at Rutgers are pushing back against an expensive data system to which the university has purchased access to track faculty productivity in the form of journal articles, citations, books, research grants, and awards because they have found consistent inaccuracies.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the database, maintained by Academic Analytics, tracks the work of more than 270,000 faculty members nationwide, giving administrators a chance to see their faculty's productivity and compare them to national benchmarks.
- Arts and Sciences faculty at Rutgers are set to vote today on a resolution that asks the university to limit its use of the data, arguing skewed collection that tends to miss nontraditional scholarship will negatively impact the way professors decide to do their work.
Dive Insight:
The concern for faculty is that the Academic Analytics data will impact tenure and promotion decision-making. The scholarship of faculty that primarily publish in smaller journals seems to be routinely missed by the tool and the focus on publishing and grant awards could provide a disincentive to engaging in service or perfecting teaching techniques. While some deans have already said faculty don't have to worry about such use of the data, they are pushing for a formal agreement, as Rutgers' four-year, $492,500 contract with Academic Analytics indicates it is using the data for something.
Ivy Tech, Indiana's community college system, has begun using data analytics to track faculty performance and identify outliers. It makes sense to use big data at many levels of the operation. Administrators must understand the limitations of that data when it comes to decision-making.