In this 4-question interview, Avinash tells us about higher ed analytics in 2020, a success story, a data analysis technique and what higher ed leaders really need to understand about analytics.
1) What’s next in 2020 for higher ed analytics?
It is no secret that organizations have been increasingly turning to advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve decision making across business processes.
I plan to focus in 2020 on how we can leverage AI-driven analytics in education to help spot critical trends to design effective classroom experience and drive digital transformation. This will also help ensure that the course content we deliver remains relevant and actionable.
2) Tell us about your biggest analytics success story!
According to the Department of Labor, more than 6.5 million jobs in the US remain unfilled because employers can’t find workers with the necessary skills. We recently developed a program feasibility framework tying the career outcome to the degree program to identify opportunities that may help bridge the workforce supply and demand (skills) mismatch.
The framework takes into account various key measures/metrics (Google keyword search trend, IPEDS, Career services, forecast models, Income to debt ratio, etc.) to come up with a scorecard to help academic team with the decision-making.
3) What’s the data analysis technique (or trick) you’ve found the most helpful?
Keep it simple! Solving a business problem using a difficult or complex methodology necessarily does not mean it is correct.
Given times we use excel forecasting modules to derive to similar outcomes vs building a sophisticated propensity model using SAS, R or python.
4) What are the top 3 points higher ed leaders should “get” about analytics?
- Primarily act as a data storyteller to help facilitate the process of using the output from the analytics for business-related decision-making. Focus on two metric the most at a given point in time and tie with the story (ROI).
- Put yourself in the decision maker’s shoes and think if the information presented is distracting enough with an “aha” moment to be actionable.
- Enormous amounts of student data are currently being collected by both traditional and non-traditional universities in the US starting from on-boarding a student. Differentiate the strategic insights from the “noise” from the realm of the enormous data to help optimize messaging.
A conference focusing on higher ed analytics?
The 2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference (#HEA20) is a must-attend event for higher ed marketing professionals and teams looking for inspiration, ideas and best practices to step up their analytics and measurement game in 2020
Read below what your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of the Higher Ed Analytics Conference said about their experience.