Report Card: Collecting and Reporting Institutional Data

"Collecting data is crucial, but so is an efficient system for putting that data to use."

Elizabeth Millard, reporting in this article on issues and circumstances at several institutions, writes that creating "accurate, consistent reports is affecting every institution."

[A] database is only as good as the reports that can be drawn from it. After all, there's utility in compiling information like the age of all professors, but there's even more in using that data to predict retirement so that new hiring drives can be started early.

As databases get more complex and departments begin building their own as well as relying on centralized databases, reporting functions also become more multilayered, with challenges all their own. Some colleges and universities are attempting to equip departments with their own database applications to take the pressure off IT, while others prefer to hire more reporting specialists to do technology support and respond to requests.

Either way, the issue of how to create accurate, consistent reports is affecting every institution of higher ed and driving the need for stronger reporting and more oversight of the reporting process.