Faculty and students on 200 campuses nationwide will have free access to advanced data management and analytics software via cloud computing beginning in the fall 2010 semester, after business software company SAS last week opened its OnDemand for Academics program to more higher-education customers at no charge.
The web-hosted analytics software has gained traction in higher education in recent years, and education technology experts said the free offer could expand the software’s presence at colleges where IT departments have seen deep cuts during the country’s economic downturn.
The OnDemand for Academics tool would join a growing list of campus technologies hosted on the internet—a strategy known as cloud computing—which allows access to the most up-to-date programs without using costly on-campus servers. This means students can access the online tool from anywhere they have an internet connection and won’t be forced to buy the software for their laptops or make a trip to the school computer lab to use the SAS analytics program, saving money for the university and time for IT staff—many of whom have a larger workload after budget cuts have trimmed staff numbers in recent years.
“Lab hours are somewhat restricted, and you only have so many copies in one lab on the campus,” said Richard Sundheim, an information systems professor at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minn., where IT faculty use the SAS analytics program. “A lot of students like to work after midnight. For them, being able to access SAS from their home computer over the internet and not having to go during lab hours is a big plus.”
SAS said the software is made for faculty hoping to teach their students how to make sense of massive amounts of data in a way that will prepare them for life in the professional world, where they won’t have preconceived college homework problems to solve during the work day.
SAS announced the free offer April 12 at its annual user conference in Seattle, where IT professionals from a variety of fields gathered to discuss the advantages of analyzing huge amounts of data and using the information to make key business decisions.
Alan Olinsky, professor of applied math at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., said making the OnDemand for Academics program more widely accessible would meet a growing demand in higher education for statistics-based courses and the advanced analytics required to understand reams of undigested information.
“When interviewers see SAS and data mining, it’s a very big plus on the [student’s] résumé,” Olinsky said in the April 12 SAS announcement. “There is so much data out there; we just don’t have enough people to analyze it. Statistics is becoming very popular, and SAS is an integral part of that.”
SAS officials said the analytics software will let college students measure business strategies against results, pinpoint areas for improvement, and design scorecards that keep track of complex data pulled into the SAS system.
“While students can access SAS at no cost, professors remain the gatekeepers,” said Ron Statt, product development manager for the SAS Education Practice. “We want to ensure that SAS is integrated into coursework in a thoughtful and effective manner, providing students [with] the most engaging experience [possible].”
OnDemand for Academics’ forecast server, currently available in a beta version, is designed to help college faculty members teach key analysis-based forecasting concepts to students with years of experience in the field, as well as statistical forecasting novices, according to SAS’s web site outlining the tool’s features.
IT officials at St. Cloud State University have lauded the easy point-and-click method behind SAS’s college analytics software. Sundheim, the information systems professor, said before the program was available on the web, he had to design lesson plans and homework assignments around the limited time students could spend at campus computer labs, which once served as the only place to use the SAS software.
Sundheim said making the software available through the cloud during the spring semester helped “all the students [know] the software very well—including those who wouldn’t have used it quite as frequently if it hadn’t been so convenient.”
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