Institutional Analytics: The Data Revolution in Higher Education
For example, in the past, if you wanted to build a dashboard, or you wanted information about something, you would have to work with our analytics group to build a dashboard using whatever tools we are using behind the scenes to build that. Microsoft, [for example], has announced some tools that are AI-based, that can ingest our data set, … apply some of the same powerful AI tools to that data so that I, as an end user, in Excel or PowerPoint or whatever Microsoft tool that I happen to be using, can run some of these more advanced queries against our data.
Now, again, this speaks to the importance of data governance, so that people know if it says FTE what that means … or what credit means or the [other] various terms there.
But I think that AI is really opening up a world of possibility for people to empower them to be able to do more.
What does it mean for the skill sets that I need to hire for going forward? I think that the whole evolution of AI is allowing us to operate almost at a higher level where the tools can do some of the foundational work that I had to hire programmers in the past or database administrators or others. Now, or at least in the near future, I won't necessarily have to hire a programmer with skills in a particular language. But I may need to hire someone who, you know, understands the architecture or the flow or the larger picture. And then they'll be able to use these tools to generate the specific code in a specific language set to do something. So I think it sort of changes the skill set. In some respects, I think it actually makes the case for higher education. Because we need bigger thinkers; we need strategic thinking; we need people that are able to operate in some respects, at a higher intellectual level, and AI can do some of the more foundational work going forward.
Then you have a whole area of AI and its impact on teaching and learning, which is another part of a conversation that I think is interesting, and very important, as higher ed institutions grapple with that.