Faculty and staff working at academic institutions need help optimizing their business operations and improving organizational health. While the federal government has provided $35 billion in grants and relief acts, steep fundraising declines and rising expenses have made it difficult to plan for long-term stability. But this issue goes beyond the financial realm and extends to a lack of data management and organization.
The educational services sector will continue to face challenges in 2023. The pandemic, paired with inflation and the looming recession, has led to declining enrollment and revenue rates. Between 2019 and 2022, The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that undergraduate student enrollment fell by over 1.2 million or almost 8% of total enrollment in the United States. Additionally, 16% of students enrolled in college programs in the fall of 2021 canceled all plans to attend.
In the age of digital transformation, academic organizations must become data-driven. But to do this, they must implement a master data management (MDM) solution that can turn endless heaps of records into insights. Think of your data as the building blocks of any company or institution. Your data foundation must be accurate, organized, and easy to explore and analyze. Continuity matters; it is crucial for a school to improve organizational health and scale.
Here are five ways master data management can improve organizational hygiene for universities, colleges, and other higher education organizations.
1. Gain a Holistic View of Students and Staff
All academic institutions need to easily track the lifecycles of their students and staff—but this can be challenging without a centralized data hub. Without a golden record, it is nearly impossible for organizations to manage students' physical, academic, and financial health from the application process to graduation. It also makes it difficult to support teachers and administrators who are directly involved in the learning and well-being of students day-to-day.
Master data management platforms allow organizations to see their students and staff holistically. This means creating a clean and consolidated data platform that removes duplicates and inaccuracies from team and student files. Educational leaders can better analyze dropout rates, manage health outbreaks, and intervene when community members need support if their data is accurate and organized. In addition, by better understanding student and staff needs, Master Data Management can also help foster strong relationships between students, staff, and alumni by improving outreach, marketing initiatives, and research practices.
2. Enhance the Online Learning Experience
Online learning models have increased in popularity since the coronavirus pandemic—so much so that revenue in the industry is projected to reach $57.42 billion in 2023 with an annual growth rate of 2.95%, resulting in a projected market value of $64.50 billion by 2027. The flexibility e-learning models have can inspire undergraduate and graduate students with part-time or full-time jobs to gain real-world experience in their desired fields simultaneously.
Master Data Management can enhance the online learning experience by enabling educational leaders to analyze and enrich accurate and quality data across all systems. This includes entire online course curriculums and real-time access to research portals. This flexibility and resource access will motivate learners to continue their educational pursuits. It will give academic institutions a comprehensive solution for dropout rates, revenue losses, and a lack of student engagement.
In short, data sharing and resources will become more trustworthy for all parties involved.
3. Optimize Fundraising and Donor Outreach
Organizations need to maintain real-time records of their fundraising efforts. This includes keeping track of past and present donors whose information can change over time. Although many educational institutions employ multiple legacy systems to store their donor and alumni data, these siloes can increase operational overhead costs and encourage data duplicates and inaccuracies.
For the best results, merge your financial data from legacy systems using a master data management solution. This will improve data quality and consistency across all departments and allow your team to enhance the alumni and donor experience. In real-time, you can better manage records for donations, professional development, e-learning, networking, and more. With this organization and accuracy comes the ability to personalize donor outreach initiatives and optimize fundraising tenfold.
4. Maintain Compliance with Data Regulation
Keeping your community’s data compliant and secure from cyberattacks is paramount. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the cost of cybercrime is expected to hit $8 trillion in 2023. As this number continues to rise, educational institutions should invest in a cloud-based MDM solution with robust tools to reduce fraud and compliance risks.
Of course, the migration process from legacy systems to a cloud-based MDM can create unique data governance requirements. Luckily, today’s tools have strong data governance capabilities and are flexible to comply with data privacy laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA. Organizations implementing MDM solutions will not have to worry about keeping up with these changes and protecting their personal and organizational data.
5. Manage Administrative Data with Accuracy
Administrators working for colleges and universities need an intuitive and user-friendly way to manage and create their reports.
For professionals in accounting, HR, admissions, finance, financial aid, and marketing, relying on separate Excel spreadsheets and word documents is no longer sustainable. Instead, teams across departments at educational institutions should integrate their data entry workflows with a Master Data Management initiative. MDM workflows and templates allow users to create and make changes to the documents that their departments own, but all team members can see and analyze their data in one place, giving each employee a comprehensive view of their organization’s health.
Master data management is a surefire way for higher education programs to support their students and staff for the long haul. Streamlining business operations requires a golden record of clean, consistent, and easily governable data. With the right platform, academic institutions can stay competitive and establish lifelong relationships with students, faculty members, and alumni.
Brett Hansen is the CGO of Semarchy, a data software company that enables organizations to leverage their data to create business value.