"Collecting data is one thing, making it useful quite another. And that’s the key challenge for every business in this digital era." - Data Analysts: The New Masters of the Universe by Ceci Rodgers in BNET
For those of you 35 and older you likely remember a time when you could go months without being asked to complete a survey. Today it seems like you could answer surveys all day long: buy a product and share your postal code; start a web browser and answer a survey; sit down for dinner and get interrupted by a phone call to complete a survey. Why is this happening?
The increasing access to computers, especially personal computers, through the later half of the 20th century has given people and organizations greater and greater ability to collect information. The opening quote above highlights the next step in the evolution of data: analysis.
Opportunities exist for student affairs when it comes to data analysis, like using our expertise in relationship development to help our students learn analytical skills as I suggest in a recent blog post. In order to analyze though, data must exist. I gained a new appreciation for the importance of properly collecting and managing data after reading Harper's Team last summer. One point I took away from the book, and shared in blog post, was the value Stephen Harper's team placed on data collection.
At present few student affairs divisions have staff, such as researchers, dedicated to collecting, managing and analyzing data. It would seem that the time has come for more analysts or researchers to be employed by student affairs in order to take advantage of the wealth of data that can now be accessed.
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