The term “Millennial” seems to have become firmly ensconced in our vocabularies over the last few years. The ramifications of this new generation have been explored abundantly in the e-commerce, entertainment and consumer technology worlds. However, the same effort hasn’t gone into understanding the implications of millennial behavior patterns at Higher Ed institutions and Universities.
As a new generation of students trickle into colleges in the US and across the world, university leaders and administrators are faced with unique challenges they haven’t encountered before. For instance – attention spans are drastically shrinking, learning is no longer only confined to classrooms and there is an emergence of alternate career options that don’t necessarily require a college degree.
Consequently, drop-out rates are rising alarmingly and the path to graduation has become increasingly rocky. It is estimated that more than 9,00,000 students in the US drop out of Universities and Higher Ed institutions every year. Also, only 28% students at a college who start a four-year course manage to graduate on time.
In addition, universities are now competing fiercely amongst each other to attract the right students with the highest probability of success. This involves two crucial steps – the first is defining the ideal student profile that aligns closely with the university’s charter. The second is to evaluate the various platforms available to get through to the intended audience while cutting through the clutter.
Defining the ideal student profile requires a university to extract all the historical data residing across different systems, identify hidden patterns and make prudent co-relations that defy anomalies more often than not. As a result, having a robust analytics solution that is able to connect the dots without overwhelming its users with technical complexity is imperative.
Once the ideal profile has been developed, there are a variety of communication vehicles to choose from. However, considering the ubiquity of smartphones and the necessity of personalized messaging, the digital medium has emerged as the overwhelming favorite. In fact, Universities are now spending a fortune advertising online and in 2017 the University of Phoenix emerged as Google’s single biggest paid search client with a staggering $27 million spent over just 6 months. Capella University was the next biggest spender parting with $13.5 million during the same period.
Calculating the ROI across different digital mediums, comparing results and linking the advertising dollars spent to enrollments and brand equity again necessitates the use of advanced analytics that can make sense of data across several platforms.
While attracting the right students remains a top priority for educational institutions, it is also equally important to provide a rich, engaging and personalized learning experience to its existing students. 54% students drop out of college due to their inability to strike the right balance between work and college while many others drop out as they find existing courses to be irrelevant to their career aspirations. This is a clear sign that universities need a mechanism to proactively identify red flags, reimagine course delivery and optimize their operations to facilitate a smooth path towards graduation for their students.
While addressing these challenges is a top priority for most universities, it requires an ecosystem to astutely glean pertinent insights from the ocean of data available at Universities. Analytics might seem like an obvious answer but data preparation, collaboration and seamless integration from multiple institutional systems has proven to be a major challenge at most Universities.
If you are a University leader or the Head of an Academic institution, a majority of your time and effort is spent on the strategic goals you’ve set for yourself. However, without the right insights you might be spending your time focusing on the wrong problems to solve.
With the enormous amount of data generated at universities today, you need a single embedded analytics platform that can provide you with accurate, real-time intelligent analytics that will quantifiably improve the way you make critical decisions.
So, whether you are defining student traits that lead to success, choosing the optimal way of delivering courses or identifying alumni members with the highest probability to donate, you need a universal view to extract intelligent insights that ensure repeatable success.
And the good news is, we at Happiest Minds have made this possible with UniVu – a 360-degree University Analytics Solution that is primed to deliver student and university success. Univu was specifically developed keeping in mind –
- Data at educational institutions resides in silos, only exasperated by the implementation of best-of-breed systems that are a part of digital transformation initiatives.
- The need for data across student systems, academic systems, learning systems and Institution wide ERP, CRM and Financial aid to be integrated for context and meaning.
- The importance of seamlessly blending internal data with external data from social media, job sites and employment reports to develop a sound plan of action.
- Advanced analytics should be available on-command in a vocabulary that is business friendly simplifying the technological complexity underneath.
- Educational institutions should leverage recent advances in ML/AI models, conversational interfaces and voice commands to support evidence based decision making.
So, if you are a University leader looking for an embedded analytics platform that can help you make better decisions, the buck stops with UniVu. Intrigued? Have a look!
Vish is Senior Director and Head of EduTech at Happiest Minds is closely invested in the intersection between education and technology. Having worked in the education industry for two decades, Vish has a deep understanding of how digital technologies can be used as a key enabler in facilitating better learning experiences.
At Happiest Minds, Vish works with some of the largest EdTech and publishing companies across K12, Higher Education, Professional and corporate learning segments in helping them leverage digital tech to deliver better learning outcomes.
