There are a few initiatives that higher education institutions set out to accomplish to keep their organization running.
They are striving for high graduation rates, high student attendance, affordable tuition, high faculty retention rate, and high usage of technology in the classrooms.
These are all metrics that you could monitor with key performance indicators (KPIs). Monitoring KPIs can lead to your organization increasing your numbers and achieving big wins.
However, to make your metrics successful, you should focus on just 1-2 KPIs that matter most to you.
Below we have 5 higher education metrics you should be monitoring. Within those, we have some leading indicators ideas to track.
Leading indicators can help you achieve your overall goal and must be tailored to your institution for them to work, so take the ideas below as inspiration.
Graduation Rate
Measuring your institution’s graduation rate is a metric you can boast about.
Some leading indicators that can help measure the graduation rate are:
Attendance
Attendance rates have a direct correlation to graduation. Students with low attendance are coupled with failing grades that prolong graduation or cause them to drop out.
Grades
Failing grades lead to students graduating late, having scholarships revoked or have them drop out.
Tuition Costs
Tuition costs can measure future graduation rates. If students can’t get the funding to continue their education, they may not make it to graduation.
Student Attendance Percentage
Measuring attendance rates in students can give you insight about infrastructure problems and graduation rates.
Some leading indicators that can help measure attendance are:
Grades
Student grades can have a direct effect on attendance. Students can stop showing up when they feel that they are behind or don’t get the subject.
Student to Faculty Ratio
Having a high student to teacher ratio can drive attendance down when students are not getting the proper attention needed to learn.
Transportation
Students can have difficulties showing up if transportation needs are not being met.
Tuition Costs of Students
Measuring the tuition costs of students is very important to prospective students. They want to know how much their education is going to be and what they need to prepare for.
Some leading indicators that can measure the tuition costs of students are:
Percentage of Students with Financial Aid
A commitment to student aid can help more students get access to higher education.
Number of Grants Given
Increasing the number of available grants can lower students’ overall tuition costs.
Number of Scholarships Awarded
Helping students with scholarship endeavors will help them lower their costs.
Faculty and Staff Retention Rate
Measuring faculty and staff retention rate can give you insights on the career satisfaction of the people that run your institution.
Some leading indicators that can help you predict and measure the faculty and staff retention rate are:
Staff Attendance Rate
Monitoring attendance rates can help you get to the bottom of the underlying problems that may be making staff not show up to work.
Number of Training Sessions Per Year
To increase career satisfaction, measure the number of training sessions you provide staff every year to keep their knowledge refreshed.
Raises and Salaries
Some people leave jobs if they’re not getting compensation appropriately in the competitive market.
Percentage of Classrooms Using Technology
Measuring the percentage of classrooms using technology can help you get an oversight of how advanced your institution is. Letting technology enter your classrooms will take the learning experience to the next level.
Here are some leading indicators to measure technology usage:
Percentage of Teachers Using Technology
Technology in classrooms starts with the teachers. Once teachers know how to operate different tech, they will be able to see opportunities to use it in their teaching methods. This will bring technology into the classrooms.
Tech Department Ticket Response
Technology usage will plummet if staff and students are not getting their issues resolved. Many people will give up on a piece of technology if it doesn’t “work for them.” You can help this by monitoring the IT ticket resolution rate.
How DashboardFox Can Help
DashboardFox can help higher education organizations by reducing the overall cost of technology and reducing the number of technical resources needed to operate business intelligence solutions.
For those reasons we find many education organizations using either SAP Crystal Reports or Microsoft Power BI. Both are on the lower side of cost for BI solution, which is attractive to budget-driven organizations. But they both also consume a high level of technical resources to keep the architecture maintained and the reports created and updated.
DashboardFox represents an affordable alternative to both Microsoft Power BI and Crystal Reports (as well as SSRS and other popular BI tools).
DashboardFox provides a one-time fee versus an annually recurring subscription pricing model. DashboardFox also provides a concurrent user license where regardless of user role, you can share access to as many users as you need (even an unlimited or guest viewers). So DashboardFox can potentially save a lot on the cost of the BI software itself.
But more importantly, DashboardFox is a self-service BI tool that was designed with business users in mind, not technical ones. While there are still technical resources needed to handle aspects of database connectivity and security, the report and dashboard building, scheduling, and slicing and dicing of data can all be driven by non-technical staff.
Make Your Higher Education Metrics Great
Tracking key performance indicators the right way will help you achieve your overall goals. For higher education institutions, we covered some of the big metrics that you would want to monitor.
If you would like to discuss how DashboardFox can be the secure dashboard and reporting solution to help streamline the communication of those metrics, please contact us so we can discuss your requirements in more detail.