So it's not just us: article reveals colleges slow to put data in the cloud.

An article in Campus Computing gives details of the most recent Campus Computing Survey.  While colleges have moved forward putting e-mail and other file sharing "in the cloud", overall, most have been reluctant to commit to student information systems or college learning management programs in the cloud.

Business Objects allows Datatel Users to run database queries and reports over the internet, while data remains stored on secure in-house servers.

ANOTHER great article on data mining - this one about monitoring student academic performance

Interesting... this is a big subject, one that needs following.  This article deals with using student data to flag student academic performance at Paul Smiths University.

Data mining and the college campus... or, We Shouldn't Go There

I thought I was pretty good at writing and composition, and banging out a decent argumentative essay. But I think I have gotten lazy in the past ten years.  It is not often one needs to write a good rhetorical essay in the office environment.  At most, I have had to write a product analysis or argument for purchasing software, or an e-mail requesting (nagging?) the recipient for information in order to do my job.  So when I say the English class I am currently taking at JWU is stretching my comfort-zone considerably, I am not exaggerating.  As it is my goal to tie in every class with my work and with the other classes to the maximum possible extent, when I get a class assignment for one, I look to the other, look to the job, and then open up the laptop and start mapping out what I'm going to do. 

So.  Here's my assignment:  write a letter to the editor of a paper or journal of my choice, responding to an Op-ed piece that appeared in the same publication.  I went online, went to the Chronicle for Higher Ed and found this article. Oh! Yay! An article about data mining, that elusive subject so dear to statisticians and researchers everywhere... I can fit my FIT class in this one! And oh, it ties back in to my job as an Insitutional Research Analyst! How great is that? I gave it a good read: In "Mining Student Data Could Save Lives", author Michael Morris argues that violence such as the Virginia Tech shootings could be prevented by passive surveillance of students campus e-mail and web searches.  Well.  My first reaction? What, is this guy crazy? I mean, the beginning of every really cheesy, or really good, sci-fi film USUALLY begins with harmless relinquishing of privacy by the unwitting public, who then become primitive zombies to the machine.  Oh, am I EVER ready to argue this one! When I wrote a brief to Professor Tamborelli, the letter practically jumped out of my head, ready to be written with original refutation of this dangerous idea.  But now, having read the article a second time and the accompanying comments, I realize that a.) I am not the only person who thinks the author did not do the appropriate research, b.) I am not the only person out there who can show evidence that this is a really bad idea and c.) I am essentially not qualified to refute, as what do I know about data mining? I mean, I haven't got there yet in my courses at JWU, and frankly, there is terminology used in statistics that is dauntingly out of reach for me and remains a pretty, shiny object flying undeterred over my head.  In other words, I would love to be up there arguing with the big boys and girls - the psychologists working on college campuses with hard evidence that you simply cannot predict behavior with a computer; the data guy who built complex data mining systems for a corporate entity that still created false-positives and knows that a system that would be required for such a project would be unwieldy.  So on what grounds do I base my argument?

Okay, well, first, as a student, I find it kind of appalling.  Aren't we, as students, supposed to be in this kind of magic protected bubble land where we can go out and research to our hearts' desire, and sort of, to some extent, be free to do so? Even if our research includes scary keywords such as "gun" or "bomb"?

As a citizen, it just goes against everything that the Privacy Act says.  Do I really want my school to know that I accessed a nail fungal photograph in order to show a classmate an example of an environmental hazard in science class? Out of context, what does that nail fungal photograph say once it is data attached to my name in my record? Who is the person who will be analyzing that data and what is their agenda? What if they were foot-averse and deeply offended by the photograph?

As a parent, it concerns me.  My daughter is a freshman at an art school.  They have to look at naked people, both in real life and on the internet.  I shudder to think what such data might "tell" about the mental state of my child, when taken out of context of her school work.

I'm not an expert, but the idea stinks.  The biggest concern is, okay, now you have the data, but what will you do with it? Sure, there are very kind people in data management.  And there are devious, political, angry, deluded, power-hungry and downright nefarious individuals who could be handling this data as well.  Could it prevent a tragedy? I am not so sure.  Let's say I had a scanner that could read everything my fellow students in my FIT class were doing on their computers over the course of the month.  I compile this data in to a database and rely then on key words (I am guessing) that might indicate a behavior change or "red flag" that might indicate this student needed help.  However, as a "blind" administrator, I might aggregate this data and flag a record for a student who searched on a string that raised an alert, coupled with a blog post that seemed, let's say, dark.  How could the combination of these two items, or three, or however many data markers I as an administrator might use, tell a complete story about an action that has a very low percentage of happening?  And even if you had an explicitly expressed thought or ideation of violence, that does not mean that violence is imminent.  So as an administrator, what action could I even take?

How to get all of these thoughts in to way, way fewer words, and all in the form of a letter to the editor, before Sunday night? We shall see... meantime, it is a subject that will continue to come up as our technology proves more capable of allowing for it, and as Universities strive to cover risk.

RI Education Board Undocumented immigrant policy stirs controversy

Illegal immigration is a hot topic, one I don't feel like I know enough about to get close enough within the 10 foot pole rule to say anything about.  But then this week, my English professor at JWU, Professor Janice Taraborelli, gave us an assignment to choose an "issue of the day" to write about.  Since I am attempting to connect all of my coursework for all of my classes to my career in Institutional Research, suddenly I find myself with an issue to write about staring me in the face.  This week, the Rhode Island Education Board voted on a policy change to allow undocumented immigrants (otherwise termed "illegal aliens") who have gone to a Rhode Island high school for at least three years to pay in-state (rather than out-of-state) tuition at any state college or university.

The controversy crosses both sides of the political divide.  There are hard-core conservatives for this measure and left leaning liberals against, contrary to what one might initially speculate.  There is a lot of misinformation floating around out there, and anger about how this policy was adopted outside of legislation, which, opponents claim, is illegal policy change due to the fact that state schools are subsidized by taxpayers.  Governor Lincoln Chafee, a supporter of this policy change, claims that the measure will help undocumented citizens have access to education.  The policy does not come without conditions; to qualify, students must have gone to high school in Rhode Island for at least three years, be accepted by the institution, and initiate the process of citizenship when they become eligible.  Also, these students would not be qualified to receive federal or state financial aid.  Proponents claim that this will help the state as it will encourage more people to come to college here, thus our tuition revenues will increase.  Opponents claim that for every illegal citizen who goes to one of Rhode Island's public institutions at a reduced cost takes the place of a legal citizen, who, if from out of state, would have had to pay more, thereby nullifying the claim that there would be additional tuition revenue.

I have a lot of research to do on this subject before I can write my argumentative essay.  I am not even sure what my thesis statement will be.  However, it will be interesting to me as a researcher what the results of this policy change may be.  Will future bond issues be impacted by this, when angry voters vote no on school improvements? To be sure, there is plenty of anger surrounding this issue.

Three things...

When asked what are the three questions I would like to answer or that will help me focus and learn more about my job, I think back to what attracted me to the job in the first place.  These are things I still have yet to "crack" but would like to master within the next few years.

1.  The Common Data Set - it doesn't make sense to me that we are asked all of these similar (but not exactly the same) questions by all of these surveys, reporting entities and other institutions, and yet we don't have a singular database to contain all of this information.  Well, we do, somewhat, in IPEDS, but answers to IPEDS surveys don't always translate to other data collections.  Attempts have been made to create a template for containing the common data set, but there is no singular template by which all of the requesting entities and data collectors ask for data.  It's craziness to someone like me.  I want to develop something.  I am not sure what that something is, yet.  I need to learn more about this beast.  Meantime, I peck away at the excel spreadsheet template shared with me via the Common Data Set website, which is little more than a collective of shared suggestion.

2.  Alternative methods of surveying students - this one is easy.  Students today are saying ENOUGH ALREADY with the surveys.  We ask them about their high school experience.  Volunteer work.  Extracurricular time.  What they think of our dining services.  What they think of our faculty and coursework and facilities.  Whether they think they are in a diverse community.  About their drinking, smoking, nocturnal and other habits.  Do they drink coffee? Do they prefer the library to the lab? What do they think of the film festival? They are surveyed out.  Even incentives don't work any more, and student survey responses are going down.  This is a problem.  If we are to depend on surveys to collect data from our students, we are going to have to find creative ways to get this information from them without them running screaming in the other direction.

3.  Fostering communication - There is generally not a lot of trust between faculty and administration on most college campuses.  It's just the nature of the beast.  One of my bosses is the Budget Director at RISD.  One time, she was talking about integrity, and presenting in front of faculty.  She takes great pride in her work and likes to think that the faculty trust her, even though some of the data she presents to them comes from "the dark side" (the administration) a body which is never completely trusted.  This results in my boss having to be on the defensive from the get-go.  However, she is extremely detail oriented and presents her data very clearly.  To me, there is nothing more irritating than a question at the end of a presentation that has already been answered within the presentation itself, due to the fact that the questioner was so busy coming up with the question that s/he wasn't paying attention to the presentation at all.  To avoid prolonged irritation and potential political upheaval, it is my intention in this job to facilitate communication between administration and faculty.  I know.  It's a daunting task.  But if we keep giving them numbers that are indisputable, and somehow engage them through communications (with vehicles such as blogs like this), perhaps we can be even better at we do, with their help.  We are the external and internal reporters, but they are the teachers on the front line.  They know the students, they know the reality.  I want to see more than just the numbers and percentages.

So those are my three goals.

What's the Big Secret? Some UK Institutions reluctant to participate in studies for fear of negative exposure

Photo courtesy Regents College London, via creative commons

In an interesting opinion piece by Jack Grove in Times Higher Education (THE) - a journal published in the UK - today, entitled "You can't have it, it's private" talks about researchers finding it difficult to get data from some private higher ed institutions.  The reason, academics say, is that institutions fear negative exposure the data might reveal.  It is interesting because here in the US, institutions are required to provide data to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (whether that information looks negative or not) and optionally may provide information to national publications or college guides for public relations purposes.  Being required to provided accurate data to NCES almost makes it impossible if not inadvisable to provide inaccurate or misleading data to ratings guides or journals, as it is easy enough to check data against what is provided to NCES.  However, an institution's wariness of the public's reception of such data is well founded, as often the rankings publications do not tell the whole story.  Just this Spring, US News and World Report released their 2011 college cost rankings, in which some private higher ed institutions were made to look like a terrible tuition deal, because taken out of context, costs were presented without deeper explanation.  In the report, for example, Bowdoin College rates as one of the most expensive colleges to attend, but the reality is, Bowdoin does not separate tuition from room and board, and so the costs were presented together under Tuition.  While that may be evident to those in the world of higher ed, a parent or potential student might not understand the complexities underlying the data.

Luckily, consumers have a handy tool to use here in the US when shopping for higher ed, and it's also a tool that helps researchers.  Because all US institutions are required to report to NCES through IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System), a portal was created for consumers called College Navigator.  This tool, one of the more positive results of the initiatives by Secretary Margaret Spellings's Commission on the Future of Higher Education allows the user to perform a college comparison and to drill down using indicators to help see explanations for the information shown.  For example, an institution might show a low student retention rate which, on the surface (especially when compared side by side in a rankings report), might indicate a lack of ability on the institutions' part to keep their students to stay, but the reality being perhaps that the institution has a low amount of first time full time freshman, and actually accepts more transfer students in to the institution who are further on in their studies, and stay until they graduate.  Consumers are able to better see this kind of caveat when presented through College Navigator.   It also allows Institutional Researchers to benchmark their own institutions against their peers. 

I'm pretty sure I will be posting more about the Rankings Game, as it seems to be a hot topic in higher ed, and especially with Institutional Researchers, as we are the folks behind the scenes preparing and providing the information.  Consumers are out there using these tools.  We need to make sure that our data is clear, transparent, and available.  Secrecy is old school.

The Census and Higher Ed

 

A blog article came out last week in the Chronicle entitled "What the Lost Decade of Wages Means for Colleges and Their Graduates" by Jeffrey Salingo, and it contained some sobering data about our economy and the reality for college graduates in this day and age.  With steadily rising tuition and fewer options once students graduate, the author questions the ability for colleges to operate in the black, and the ability for students to afford to attend.

How best can the IR and Budget office help to inform not only the Administration about trends in tuition rises, but also students about why their tuition goes up? Students are beginning to ask.  At RISD, our Student Alliance has asked the Finance office to come and speak, and the Budget Director has responded by creating an in-depth Powerpoint for them entitled "Show me the Money."  With pie charts showing exactly where tuition goes to pay for such things as facilities, debt service, academic programs and student services, students will be better informed.  It is a good tactic for the administrators to be able to be as transparent as possible with the students, who are in effect the consumers.  Having had a preview of this powerpoint this week, I was particularly impressed by the "What if" scenarios our Budget Director presents: What if we do not raise tuition? If we kept everything the same, would we be able to provide the same quality education and pay our bills as an institution? As a parent of a freshman at college, and back in school myself, I do feel the hit when colleges increase their tuition.  But seen in the light of transparency, it is much easier to understand.  Hopefully, the students will feel the same way.  How sustainable are annual tuition increases? Time will tell.