How is higher education embracing the transformation era?

We are drowning in a sea of data: It’s ubiquitous, it’s pervasive—and it’s transforming the way the world functions. To provide some perspective, keep in mind that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created within the last two years. Businesses and the commercial sector are wrestling with how to handle this plethora of information and now tertiary education must reckon with it as well.

It is fair to say that tertiary education has entered a new age because of this data: the transformation era. Simply put, the transformation era is a new world marked by dizzying amounts of digital information, increasing at an astounding clip. Yet the transformation era is about more than just the accumulation of data; it’s also about how you use that data, and how you access it.

What makes the transformation era so important and why does it matter for tertiary education? Properly harnessing that information and utilising it to your advantage can increase efficiency, boost student success and improve operations—and the right technology is the key to making that happen.

Tertiary institutions are enormously complex, with data siloed across the campus. Connecting that data, accessing it and—most importantly—using it effectively can be challenging. Institutions run multiple systems, oftentimes from multiple vendors. Due to this level of complexity, anything other than point-to-point integration was always considered impossible. These complex connections are brittle, incredibly expensive to maintain, and they make solution upgrades a nightmare.

Writing in University Business in November 2016, Scott Bass, the provost at American University in Washington D.C., noted that his campus “Uses more than 36 databases for different student-related administrative and learning management functions… Yet there is little to no integration among these discrete data elements.” He then asks a critical question: “Do these systems facilitate effective support for a student who has complex issues and who experiences multiple touch-points throughout a given academic year?”

The simple answer? No. The lack of integrated data has made the student experience more difficult and institutional operations quite cumbersome.

Institutions require a language by which all applications can communicate with each other and dramatically improve the overall experience in the process. As we step forward into the transformation era, new technologies are finally emerging to help institutions integrate all of that data.

However, there’s more to the story. A vital part of this data wrangling is not just collecting it—but analysing it to help drive informed decision-making. When you connect the institution and put everyone on the same page, you lay the foundation for intelligent decisions.

When it comes to data analytics, the real value isn’t in any one particular application; it’s about the value realised when data housed in a variety of applications works together to provide a comprehensive, real-time view of all of the information needed to answer critical questions. This helps you make data-informed decisions at the right time.

The final piece of the transformation era puzzle is cloud technology. For tertiary education, the cloud was a non-starter for many years. The problem? The cloud vendors built their technology for the business world and simply didn’t account for the unique nature and highly-specialised needs of tertiary education.

It wasn’t the institutions that were slow to migrate to the cloud, it was the technology industry that was slow to adapt. That’s no longer the case: institutions now have better, more pliable pathways to the cloud—whether through a hybrid, on-premises, hosted or SaaS approach.

Now, institutions responsible for massive amounts of highly sensitive personal information have the levels of security they need. Institutions can scale up during periods of peak activity and scale down to conserve resources at other times on the academic calendar. All the while, users can enjoy consistent access to the latest features and functionality available today.

The transformation era is changing the business of tertiary education for the better. Putting everything together is the key: When the SIS, enterprise applications and CRM systems are integrated and feed next-generation analytics, institutions have the ingredients to do some incredible things—and vastly improve the student experience.

Seamless integration is critically important because today’s students—and tomorrow’s—expect it. Students are becoming increasingly accustomed to a mobile, social, on-demand world. Why wouldn’t they want to register for classes, connect with instructors, buy books, or track their progress toward completion in the same ways they were purchasing music or keeping up with friends and family?

Thanks to advances in technology, institutions can finally build a centralised system of information and make the student the center of gravity around which that system revolves. Students can now turn to their devices as personal assistants, with mobile apps that know where students are and deliver timely updates. They can now easily schedule time with a professor, advisor, or student aid representative, or view their grades the moment they’re posted.

In the end, the real purpose of the transformation era is about much more than integrating data. It’s about using technology to empower students.