Tag: DataInformed

  • Building a Data-Informed Strategic Plan for 2026

    Building a Data-Informed Strategic Plan for 2026

    Using Data to Inform Your Institution’s Year-in-Review Process

    Strategic organizational development, when applied to higher education institutions, demands setting accountability standards across the student journey — from staffing and advising to course planning and graduation. In my previous post, I discussed the importance of performing an annual review to set the strategy for the coming year. Now, let’s take a look at the importance of using data to inform that strategy.

    At the start of the annual review process, teams should look at all the available data, starting at the beginning of a prospective student’s journey. Institutions should ask questions such as:

    • How are leads coming in?
    • How are prospects converting to admitted students who are registering for class?
    • Are there peak enrollment seasons to plan for?
    • Are students receiving sufficient support during classes?

    Institutions need to evaluate their transparency in the reporting on and ownership of every touchpoint. By ensuring that all available metrics are digested to inform their strategy, rather than only using data points that paint a picture that is different from reality, institutions are better able to avoid confirmation bias. 

    For planning that bears fruit, teams must be truthful about what changes are necessary, and data should always be used to identify issues and inform an institution’s direction.

    Tools to Support Institutional Goal Setting

    When it comes to considering their goals for the next year, an essential principle that institutions need to remember is that the efforts of the team executing a process and the student experience must go hand in hand. Success and satisfaction must be considered not only for the students but also for the staff, the faculty, and the communities they serve. 

    Feedback Analysis

    Universities should gather feedback on the student experience early and often. Examining feedback loops throughout the student journey — including in lead nurturing, enrollment, and course surveys — offers clues into where to focus an institution’s energy and resources in future plans.

    Interviews with team members from all functional areas in the organization help leaders align the institution’s operations with its growth goals. Open communication also can reduce the effects of departments functioning independently, becoming a catalyst for more collaboration across teams and better consistency in the institution’s messaging. 

    Real-Time Data Dashboards

    Executive dashboards need to be used consistently to track progress across marketing, enrollment, and academics. Points to analyze include audits of marketing campaign performance and student enrollment trends. Using this real-time data to inform the decision-making at assessment checkpoints ensures teams stay aligned on the institution’s long-term goals. 

    Organizational Development Frameworks

    Leaders can use postmortem frameworks and planning worksheets to translate data-driven insights into manageable plans and timelines. Tools such as Archer’s Readiness Assessment and Good, Better, Best framework can help institutions gain a better understanding of where they are and where they want to be in the near future.

    Applying Learnings to Daily Operations

    Conducting an annual review will start an institution on the path toward creating smarter, evidence-based strategies. Once the past year’s operations have been analyzed, leadership teams must compare the institution’s progress against its vision and locate where adjustments are needed — such as in student enrollment support, resource planning, or program design processes — to support the institution’s growth.

    Employing effective change management processes can ensure an institution’s plans are actionable instead of theoretical. Establishing effective change management policies can help the institution navigate the operational shifts and cultural adjustments that are needed to maintain and scale its programs while maintaining collaboration and communication among its different departments.

    Leadership and teams must be held accountable with targeted checkpoints and milestones throughout the year. With agreed-upon dates for delivery, leaders can identify where additional support is needed and what adjustments to make, if necessary. 

    The task of analyzing large volumes of institutional data and turning it into actionable strategies can be overwhelming. When an institution decides to engage with a partner to help it conduct a thorough review, it should look for a vendor that offers flexible contracts that allow teams to adapt instead of restrictive long-term agreements. This also applies to any third-party partnerships that an institution enters to fill its capacity gaps, such as with partners that provide course planning, digital systems development, or marketing and enrollment management services.

    Key Takeaways

    • Institutions should connect lessons from 2025 to their 2026 priorities to create a strategic road map that fosters high-quality growth in the following year and beyond. 
    • By leveraging data, collaboration, and iterative improvement strategies, institutions use proven organizational development techniques to stay competitive.
    • Scheduling routine check-ins across departments helps institutions maintain forward momentum and ensure all contributors and stakeholders are engaged and have what they need to reach their goals.

    Let Archer Support Your Data-Informed Strategic Review Process

    At Archer Education, we understand that deep discovery, organizational development, sufficient investment, best-in-class technology, and a laser focus on the student experience are essential for institutional growth.

    Are you ready to expand your student enrollments, deepen your online program offerings, and future-proof your team? Archer’s team of higher education experts can help your institution establish an annual review process that will set you on the path toward scalable, sustainable growth. 

    If you’d like to learn more, contact our team and explore our technology-enabled strategy, marketing, enrollment, and retention services today. 

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  • Five Data-Informed Steps for Optimizing College Student Retention

    Five Data-Informed Steps for Optimizing College Student Retention

    Where do you start as you are creating a student retention plan? The answer is with data. Simply put, data are the lifeblood of successful student recruitment and retention efforts. You cannot possibly hope to maximize enrollment yields and student completion rates without strong data analysis and planning. The following five steps illustrate how to achieve a robust, data-informed approach to retention.

    1. Make data the foundation for decision-making.

    It sounds simple, yet we know that many campuses do not rely on data to guide strategies. Often “conventional wisdom” or “that’s the way we’ve always done it” override any actual research or data. Those types of processes are very flawed for crafting enrollment strategies, especially given the rapid changes that are reshaping the higher education environment.

    2. Collect all the data that are relevant to student success.

    Data are the lifeblood to successful student recruitment and retention efforts

    In discussing student retention, first-to-second year persistence and overall completion/graduation rates are useful metrics. However, they are lagging indicators gathered only after it is too late to intervene with students and do not provide a complete picture of persistence patterns. There are many data elements that can help not only provide a more accurate assessment of retention at your campus, but also allow you to intervene with students in a more timely fashion such as:

    • Student motivation data. How do students feel about attending college? What are their attitudes toward studying? What family and/or social factors could interfere with their success? Motivational data can go a long way toward focusing your student retention initiatives, especially when gathered as students first enroll at your institution. (Learn more about the motivational assessment tools that are available to support your efforts).
    • Credit hours attempted versus credit hours earned. This ratio is very revealing as it demonstrates if students are succeeding in their educational plans before reaching the critical juncture of withdrawing. These data can be especially helpful during a student’s first and second semesters.
    • Student satisfaction and priorities assessment. When students are not satisfied, they become less likely to persist. Improving their satisfaction improves the quality of their life and learning. When satisfaction is viewed within the context of importance (priorities), the data allows you to better understand which satisfaction issues are more pressing and in need of immediate attention. (Take a look at the satisfaction-priorities surveys options).
    • Common characteristics in student retention. Do students who persist or withdraw share common characteristics? Are there indicators of student success or red flags for persistence that would help you quickly understand which students you should target? (Contact me if you would like to learn more about data analytics options for retention guidance).
    • Institutional barriers to student success. Similar to student characteristics, are there certain factors across campus that may hinder persistence and completion? Conducting an opportunity analysis with an outside perspective can help you identify places where you could make improvements.

    3. Understand what the data are telling you

    Once you have made a commitment to collect the data and have gathered what you need to inform your decisions, you may ask yourself, “Now what?” This is your turning point for using data to improve student retention. You have to know what the data say about student persistence. Are there patterns to observe? Do you know which students or cohorts to prioritize? Which resources are having the greatest impact on student success? This is admittedly one of the more difficult tasks in data-informed retention planning and one where experience can make a big difference. However, once you successfully analyze your data, your retention efforts have the potential to improve!

    4. Take action based on the data

    Here we close the loop with steps one and two. Now that you are informed by data, you can build retention initiatives on solid information. You will be able to focus your limited resources more strategically on the students who need the most help and/or are the most receptive to assistance. You will be able to direct your attention to improving areas that matter to students. You will be able to be proactive based on the knowledge of characteristics of successful (and less successful) students. The power of data comes when your institution takes action based on what it has learned about your students.

    5. Use what you know about retention to guide recruitment

    There is a tendency to look at student recruitment and retention as two unrelated silos. But one of the biggest factors in student retention is the shape of the incoming class. It is vital for campuses, when recruiting, to extend their concept of the funnel past the initial enrollment state and through the career of the student. By determining which students not only have the desired characteristics you want, but also the best chance to persist and success, your entire campus benefits.

    Are you curious about how institutional choice plays into student satisfaction (the idea that students have enrolled in the college they want to attend), along with importance factors in the decision to originally enroll and how satisfied students are with financial aid? (All of these are links between recruitment and retention efforts). If yes, I invite you to download the 2025 National College Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report.

    If you are looking for support with data collection, data analytics and/or understanding what opportunities exist for your campus in the area of student success, contact me to learn more.

    Thanks to my former colleague Tim Culver for the original development of this content.

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