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

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

#61

Post by avidphantasm »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #40
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…

> It's kind of like a very boring video game for adults that makes them feel like they're working, Absolutely love it. Let's distinguish a few things though. "Data science" seems like a pretty weird name. I mean, it's just "Science" right. Of course there's statistics, mathematics, signal processing, systems analysis, machine learning... all the good things that you and I are into. But how does this get huddled uncom…

Agree that the term data science is strange. Data engineer seems like a better name. Science implies rigorous hypothesis testing guided by a theories of how particular systems work. Not sure that applies to most “data science” work.

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

#62

Post by nobrains »

gchallen wrote: post #37

Working in a top-tier computer science department, I find our ability to answer basic questions about the health of our degree program fairly troubling. I think non-academics may be surprised by how much we don't know, and how little useful and continuous data analysis is taking place. For example: What is our retention rate? Meaning, what percentage of students who start our degree programs complete it. A fairly sta…

OK, then what?

Then you find out why retention is low.

Then you brainstorm ideas to increase retention.

Then you attempt to apply those ideas. It is at this point that the person responsible for applying those ideas says "been there done that".

Point is, most data dashboards are non actionable. The challenge is to create a good actionable dashboard (i.e. if values cross a certain threshold, then the user should take some action on it).

Once you create an excellent actionable dashboard, you realize it doesn't need a dashboard. It can be a notification.

So, while the data is important, the questions around it might just lead to the same work that was being done anyway.

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

#63

Post by wolverine876 »

> The study’s authors contend that universities have been slower than organizations in other economic sectors to create senior-level positions focused on data quality, strategy, governance and privacy matters.

Universities are not an economic sector; they aren't profit-making enterprises. They are knowledge- and education-making enterprises.

Do they need more employees who aren't creating knowledge and educating? My understanding is that universities have been greatly expanding such non-core functions.

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

#64

Post by lazyasciiart »

Dwolb wrote: post #9
tomrod wrote: post #4

This is the type of article that makes me wonder: "therefore, what?" Yes, absolutely, universities are awash in data they do little to anything with outside of hyperfocused laboratories. I wonder if having central data management groups would be an enabler or a bottleneck, however.

Therefore they can’t optimize anything. They have 0 visibility into any of the operations and therefore can’t derive any insights or install controls. They have no idea if: Some professors more effective teachers than others. Which days students buy more food. Whether taking a given prerequisite leads to better mastery of advanced material. If additional spend is correlated with better student outcomes. For people in…

> For people in tech businesses, it’s such a shocking thing to read it’s hard to fathom how any of the leadership at universities find this situation acceptable.

I’m in a tech business and it doesn’t sound shocking at all. The only things people really have data for is how many people are giving them how much money.

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

#65

Post by wolverine876 »

gchallen wrote: post #37

Working in a top-tier computer science department, I find our ability to answer basic questions about the health of our degree program fairly troubling. I think non-academics may be surprised by how much we don't know, and how little useful and continuous data analysis is taking place. For example: What is our retention rate? Meaning, what percentage of students who start our degree programs complete it. A fairly sta…

Hazarding an uninformed idea: If organizationally the department isn't geared toward this kind of analysis, what if you opened up the data, and let whoever wanted to work with it do their thing. Probably a perfect environment for crowd-sourcing, given the expertise and resources.

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

#66

Post by etempleton »

There are a couple of challenges at play:

1. Systems in higher Ed often do not talk and departments tend to be siloed and have drastically different goals and objectives.

2. There are a lot of privacy concerns as most of the data is students data.

In addition to this, I question what the end goal of the data analysis is? What is the value for a not-for-profit? The goal is going to be based on the department as a college doesn’t have the same profit motive. The individual departments typically don't have the resources to do deep data analysis.

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

#67

Post by wolverine876 »

xwolfi wrote: post #35
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…

I think it's simpler: imagine you're the NSA and decide to transcribe every phone call ever made to text: you'll spend gazillion in storage, connectivity and processing for the capture, and spend a gazillion squared on post-capture text analysis to find "something", like "who is communist in Atlanta", and not even be able to make it find the communists pre-emptively, before it's too late and they already donated $3 t…

I expect Facebook can easily identify most communists are in Atlanta.

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

#68

Post by josephg »

nobrains wrote: post #62
gchallen wrote: post #37

Working in a top-tier computer science department, I find our ability to answer basic questions about the health of our degree program fairly troubling. I think non-academics may be surprised by how much we don't know, and how little useful and continuous data analysis is taking place. For example: What is our retention rate? Meaning, what percentage of students who start our degree programs complete it. A fairly sta…

OK, then what? Then you find out why retention is low. Then you brainstorm ideas to increase retention. Then you attempt to apply those ideas. It is at this point that the person responsible for applying those ideas says "been there done that". Point is, most data dashboards are non actionable. The challenge is to create a good actionable dashboard (i.e. if values cross a certain threshold, then the user should take…

> The challenge is to create a good actionable dashboard

Huh? You don’t need a dashboard to make use of data. The best use of data in my mind is asking and answering questions.

Eg, maybe your program has a low number of graduating female engineers. Why? Maybe they’re dropping out along the way. Maybe female intake is low. With the data you can answer these questions.

The graduating rate of female CS students is low, but is it abnormally low compared to other schools? You investigate and - everyone has an equally low rate except one place where it’s 50/50. The data has led to a question - Why? What are they doing differently? And so on.

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

#69

Post by josephg »

wolverine876 wrote: post #65
gchallen wrote: post #37

Working in a top-tier computer science department, I find our ability to answer basic questions about the health of our degree program fairly troubling. I think non-academics may be surprised by how much we don't know, and how little useful and continuous data analysis is taking place. For example: What is our retention rate? Meaning, what percentage of students who start our degree programs complete it. A fairly sta…

Hazarding an uninformed idea: If organizationally the department isn't geared toward this kind of analysis, what if you opened up the data, and let whoever wanted to work with it do their thing. Probably a perfect environment for crowd-sourcing, given the expertise and resources.

The most interesting data is usually about people. This data usually shouldn’t be shared for obvious privacy reasons.

And anonymising data sources is a notoriously fraught task.

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

#70

Post by 1auralynn »

nobrains wrote: post #62
gchallen wrote: post #37

Working in a top-tier computer science department, I find our ability to answer basic questions about the health of our degree program fairly troubling. I think non-academics may be surprised by how much we don't know, and how little useful and continuous data analysis is taking place. For example: What is our retention rate? Meaning, what percentage of students who start our degree programs complete it. A fairly sta…

OK, then what? Then you find out why retention is low. Then you brainstorm ideas to increase retention. Then you attempt to apply those ideas. It is at this point that the person responsible for applying those ideas says "been there done that". Point is, most data dashboards are non actionable. The challenge is to create a good actionable dashboard (i.e. if values cross a certain threshold, then the user should take…

Many times you need the data/visuals to get funding to actually implement ideas.
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