Some hesitation here ……. it seems that there are two schools of thought. 1. You can only manage what you measure and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential for managing any business and universities are just a business. 2. Metrics cannot be sophisticated enough to manage a complex business like a university that is so dependent on a distributed organizational structure and the interaction between faculty, staff and students.
I sit somewhere between, we need to be very careful what we measure but we would be foolish not be measuring. So then the debate is what to measure?There any many companies out there with dashboards and business intelligence tools as well as our IR (institutional research) and business planning offices. All have spent a considerable amount of time looking at measures but I fear that they have looked at it more from the accounting side than the academic side. Looking at it simply my questions would be around whether we are achieving what we said we should be doing and what data should we collect and present that would be valuable. Make that information available to all so that they can manage their portfolios in the best possible way. My four questions:
- Are we achieving our enrolment and revenue targets?
- Are students achieving the outcomes they came for?
- Does our scholarly activity match our investment?
- Are we operating in a cost-efficient way?
Quick analysis. Number 1 is relatively easy. Number 2 is really hard. Number 3 is hard. Number 4 is complex and a rabbit hole. We spend almost all our time on 1 and 4.
First of all we need a unit of academic currency and that is the student credit hour (SCH). With all its drawbacks I simply cannot think of another. If we have a class of 30 taking 3 credits then we have 90 SCH. If there are no credits then “accounting” credits need to be assigned. We also need a factor to convert part time faculty to fractions of faculty FTE.
Some thoughts ….
Enrolment and revenue – size of entering class, headcount, FTE, revenue (gross and net after direct costs), SCH supplied, migration (leaving the program).
Student Outcomes – graduation rates, retention, DFW rates (grade D,F or withdrawn), WIL participation, student satisfaction surveys.
Scholarly Activity – research $, publications, SOTL, teaching innovations, presentations, proposal success rate, research impact measures.
Cost Efficiency – teaching capacity vs actuals, SCH per FTE, cost per SCH, class size.
I am sure there are more but even these metrics need to be drilled down by faculty, school and program. Admin, facility and support costs then can be added.