“The higher-ed analytics needle is moving slowly, but definitely in the right direction,” she said.
Only one in five schools used analytics to improve online advertising, while 17 percent used analytics data to track offline advertising.
Seventeen percent said they used analytics not to bolster the campus website, advertising efforts, or outreach campaigns to stakeholders, but simply to “make my boss happy.”
Google Analytics was the tracking mechanism of choice in higher education, with 97 percent using the search giant’s program, a 1 percent gain from 2011. Six in 10 schools used Facebook Insights, the social media site’s analytics program.
Keeping an eye on web video analytics is still a rarity in higher education, according to the survey. Four in 10 campuses said they used YouTube Insights in 2012, an 8 percent increase from last year.
The growing role of campus analytics was on display in April at the Business Analytics Online Education Conference, where IBM tapped a number of college administrators to share their experiences with predictive analytics, and how the trend is helping to improve campus operations.
“Predictive analytics plays a very big role in terms of enrollment,” said Jimmy Jung, assistant vice president for enrollment management at the College at Brockport, part of the State University of New York system.
Using historical data, retention and graduation rates, application counts, and demographic data, Brockport analysts are “able to predict earlier and react to an increasingly competitive environment,” which Jung said has resulted in an increase in campus applications.
Brockport staffers also have use predictive analytics to examine the impact that the campus’s current financial aid strategy has on enrollment, in order to objectively decide what is and is not working.
This is Brockport’s first year using predictive analytics to drive decisions, especially where recruitment and enrollment are concerned.
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