Higher education institutions should be data literacy and decision-making exemplars for the rest of the world, embodying best practices in thoughtful analysis and sound judgment. Decision-Maker Data Skills and Literacy is issue #10 in the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
A fundamental goal of higher education is to train and equip students to process, interpret, and act on information. Critical thinking, reasoning, analysis, and informed decision-making are central to that goal—and, for many, represent the hallmarks of a successful educational journey. Likewise, the value of institutional data is strengthened when the people who use it—campus leaders, faculty, and staff—are equipped to interpret it and apply it effectively.
With an abundance of data and advanced analytics capabilities at their disposal, higher education institutions should be data literacy and decision-making exemplars for the rest of the world, embodying best practices in thoughtful analysis and sound judgment.
"We do this in our teaching as faculty members, and we absolutely do this in our research, so why would we not do this in the operations of our own institutions?" asks Adam Finkelstein, associate director of learning environments at McGill University.
Indeed, many institutions struggle with the same challenges facing the rest of the world in understanding and using data. Institutional data are fragmented and incomplete—siloed and scattered across systems. Institutional leaders and teams are stymied by barriers to data access and analysis and led astray by decisions based more on assumptions or intuition than on facts. Smaller institutions in particular report limited data and analytics support for staff, including access to training, policies and guidelines, and communities of practice.Footnote1
Again, emerging AI capabilities can help provide quicker access to data and insights, which can be especially valuable for institutions lacking internal resources and support. And opportunities abound for institutions to combine efforts to support common needs, as demonstrated by Harvard University's Strategic Data Project and its recently established Minority Serving Institution (MSI) Data Community of Practice.
Of course, data-informed decision-making relies on more than user literacy. The data must be accurate and trustworthy, accessible to the stakeholders who need it, and supported by reliable analytics and reporting tools. But sound data governance and analytics structures can only get an institution so far. Ultimately, how individual leaders engage with these data will determine their effectiveness in positively impacting their work.
Campus Spotlight: Using Dashboards to Combat Anecdotes at McGill University
At McGill University in Quebec, Canada, anecdotes about the lack of availability of small classrooms were treated as facts. Associate Director of Learning Environments Adam Finkelstein explained, "The anecdote that our registrar and faculty members passed around the university was that there were never small rooms available on campus. Small rooms were impossible to find, and they were always booked."
Through a larger project to organize and steward classroom data, Finkelstein's team sought to better understand and communicate classroom availability and usage with key stakeholders and decision-makers. "We found out about 50 percent of our small classrooms were free all the time. It's just that nobody knew where they were, how to get to them, or how to book them. So, it's a great example of anecdotal information running wild, with everybody thinking one thing when the data actually show something completely different.
"We spent the last couple of years building learning space dashboards that have almost everything you could possibly want to know about all of our physical classroom spaces across our campus. So, when a faculty member wants to know, 'Where can I find a room that has that?' they can find out. When the registrar wants to know, 'What's the utilization of these spaces compared to other spaces that are nearby?' they can find out. When the AV people want to know, 'What are our rooms that are in danger of failing?' they can find out. When we want to look at the quality of our spaces, we can examine the Learning Space Rating System (LSRS) scores across our classroom fleet."
Ways to Get Started
Through our panelist interviews and community survey, technology leaders recommended a few ways institutions might support decision-maker data skills and literacy:
- Better understand the current level of data literacy and data-informed decision-making maturity at your institution. Use surveys, interviews, dashboard utilization, other behavioral data, and even informal conversations to understand stakeholders' current attitudes about using data and their needs and frustrations around accessing and interpreting data. Then, use those insights to design solutions that address those needs and frustrations.
- Establish more scalable and easily accessible data literacy training efforts for leadership and staff. Communities of practice and data champions embedded within individual departments or teams can help create peer-based spaces for learning about and engaging with data without overburdening technology and institutional research teams or intimidating potential data users who may not know where to start.
- Articulate in plain language the questions you need data to answer at your institution, and make data engagement and insights as seamless and turnkey as possible. Dashboards and other reporting tools that combine data visualizations and clear summaries of insights can help engage data users across a range of literacy levels and provide simple entry points for exploring institutional data and addressing decision-makers' most pressing data needs and opportunities.
Note
- Nicole Muscanell, 2024 EDUCAUSE Analytics Landscape Study, (EDUCAUSE, September 2024). Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.
Penny Evans-Plants is Chief Information Officer at Berry College.
Adam Finkelstein is Associate Director of Learning Environments at McGill University.
Matthew Flower is Assistant Director and Head of Digital Architecture/Information Security at University of Wolverhampton and UCISA Trustee.
Jessie Minton is Vice Chancellor for Technology and Chief Information Officer at Washington University in St. Louis.
Helen Norris is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Chapman University.
© 2025 EDUCAUSE and the 2025–2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.