U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#41

Post by yucky » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:37 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #29

It seems like a somewhat weird mismatch — the described benefits are things like curriculum improvements and hiring better instructors, which I think most people (including most professors, I think, despite the fact that they’d be on the receiving end of this) would be in favor of. But including security cameras in the list of tools seems… odd? What would they tell you? Classroom attendance I guess. But all that tell…

    > In general universities should be pretty inefficient I think. They are places where young people go to learn and try things out. Including student employees. If a university has no waste, that indicates that it hasn’t given enough possibly-unqualified undergrads enough resources to accidentally misuse.

The problem is all the extra money (yes, pretty much all of it) has gone to building up the administrations, not into resources that actually help students. And the students certainly haven't turned out smarter as a result.

Universities have turned into a jobs program for people looking to work in education administration.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#42

Post by lukev » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

jerglingu wrote: post #39

lukev wrote: post #12

I have no doubt the problem is worse in academia, but to be quite honest nobody is really doing a good job at curating, governing and unifying data across large organizations (at least without extreme expense.) Just look at the treadmill of architectures designed to "solve" this problem: integrated databases to "data warehouses" to "linked data" to "data lakes" to "data fabric" to "data mesh." Organizations that succ…

Observation/mini rant: unfortunately the data industry is both very susceptible to fads and hype, and does not have widespread standardization or a generally-accepted set of best practices. The subset of data "influencers" whose discourse occurs mostly through Twitter and Substack have especially heavy sway in what is the current Data Big Thing. These people introduce new buzzwords and ride them to the mainstream, or…

I do see what you are saying, though I think a lot of what they say makes somewhat more sense if you are familiar with their consulting "bubbles" and the language used within them.

But the problem exists even on a concrete technical level. Look at how many different "big data" products are out there. The Apache project alone has probably 15 different tools that largely overlap.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#43

Post by MengerSponge » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

Oh, so we need a Vice-provost of Data. That's what is keeping universities, otherwise homogenous and well structured, from aligning on data infrastructure and strategy.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#44

Post by Jibbedeyeah » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #8

There's a troubling tone behind this article. It's a prophecy that demands to be fulfilled. Starting with the premise "Data is useful", it proceeds to pick at all the ways we've failed to make it useful... and we're damned well going to make it useful if it kills us! Maybe, just maybe (for those that dabble in the sceptical, explanatory game we call science) it might be that "bare data" has little use within certain…

One man's troubling tone is another man's dystopic reality.

I read a comment on here months ago about someone who enabled a hotel chain to process the data coming from the motion activated lights in every hotel. The chain was able to track workers with this data and cracked down on people taking too long of breaks.

And now a personal anecdote. The business I used to work at had an ID badge door you had to use to enter the smoking area. I was told by someone I trusted that when layoffs came, a member of management asked for a list of the people that used that door. The people on that list were prioritized for termination.

"Universities are literally awash in data. From administrative data offering information about students, faculty and staff, to research data on professors’ scholarly activities and even telemetric signals"

Why are professors' telemetric signals even being discussed? Are publicly listed office hours not enough? My dogs got chipped without their consent. Do professors deserve more dignity than my dogs?

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#45

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #8

There's a troubling tone behind this article. It's a prophecy that demands to be fulfilled. Starting with the premise "Data is useful", it proceeds to pick at all the ways we've failed to make it useful... and we're damned well going to make it useful if it kills us! Maybe, just maybe (for those that dabble in the sceptical, explanatory game we call science) it might be that "bare data" has little use within certain…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#46

Post by seydor » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #28

As a data scientist, I think most data is useless, but there is an addictive, video game-like quality to throwing lifeless spreadsheets into a machine and having colorful visualizations come out. It's kind of like a very boring video game for adults that makes them feel like they're working, when they're actually just enjoying colorful abstract shapes and colors. To be honest, this is probably a sizable piece of why…

Sounds like finance and advertising

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#47

Post by eruci » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

Then give the data away for free to those who might do something useful with it.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#48

Post by a9h74j » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:54 PM UTC

McSinyx wrote: post #33

jimlongton wrote: post #3

I can't access the original study however taking data, explicitly naming security cameras for example, to "use it or merge it with data from external parties such as publishers or public or private sector organizations" will surely not seriously degrade student and staff privacy, right? The rush to "exploit" data reminds me of the dot com hype. It's one thing to use available data to make more informed decisions abou…

> degrade student and staff privacy That's the primary value to be captured right there! Their privacy is highly valued, monetarily: > authors contend that universities have been slower than organizations in other _economic_ sectors Education in the US is just pure business.

Make of it what you will, I just saw on the project censored website that protecting student data is seen by some as a major priority. The article seems more PII and cybersecurity focussed, rather than recognizing the threat of intentional monetization.

https://www.projectcensored.org/ferpa-and-higher-ed-should-p...

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#49

Post by ordersofmag » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

wjnc wrote: post #25

Obviously I’m 20 years past university and nearer being the paying parent, but why oh why should university “capture the value of data”. They should offer affordable education (if you believe in the value of tertiary education) and affordable signaling of abilities (if you don’t). A recent post by John Cochrane [1] somewhat pointed out the absurdity in US education, Stanford specifically. Stanford itself mentions 157…

A big chunk of that 15,000 are professionals engaged in research activities (mostly funded by grants and other external funds) e.g. the 1600 folks involved in running the Stanford Linear Accelerator, and activities like fundraising and finances. They mostly are NOT folks 'administering' the faculty in any way. So the comparison with your kid's school is not meaningful. Not to say there are perhaps more administrators than might be ideal. But these numbers aren't helpful in understanding whether that's true.

Also, it's worth noting that Stanford is in fact free for folks under the median household income in the U.S. (roughly speaking) which seems pretty 'affordable'. Of course the economics of one of these large-endowment, research intensive institutions is pretty much unrelated to their teaching function. But that just highlights the weakness of using gross, whole-institution numbers of people/dollars for any sort of comparison. Big universities serve lots of ends (not just teaching undergrads) and so the teasing apart the economic picture (and whether it's efficient at meeting it's many goals) is complicated.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#50

Post by shagie » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #28

As a data scientist, I think most data is useless, but there is an addictive, video game-like quality to throwing lifeless spreadsheets into a machine and having colorful visualizations come out. It's kind of like a very boring video game for adults that makes them feel like they're working, when they're actually just enjoying colorful abstract shapes and colors. To be honest, this is probably a sizable piece of why…

> but there is an addictive, video game-like quality

Have you looked at the Financial Modeling World Cup? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlnCUAKLENyFC8wftR-oNw

Its tagline is: "Excel Esports. Yes, It's a thing"