New data and analytics capabilities are enabling institutional leaders to more confidently make complicated decisions about resources, investments, and strategic priorities for the future. Data Analytics for Operational and Financial Insights is issue #3 in the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
Financial pressures are intensifying for higher education institutions.
Federal grants and research funds are being cut, and traditional student enrollment trends are threatening tuition revenue declines in the years ahead. Added to these financial pressures, public perceptions of higher education have been souring for decades, and institutions are increasingly under scrutiny to demonstrate meaningful returns on the public's investment.
For many institutions, there are two dimensions to the work of enriching their data insights and decision-making. First, institutions are seeking to better understand and agree on where they need to invest. Institutions may have enrollment targets they want to hit among key student populations, or they may have state funding or accreditation requirements to consider. Improved data infrastructures and insights will be critical for evaluating institutional effectiveness in addressing these priority interests and needs.
Once an institution has agreed on where it should invest, more productive conversations can happen around lower-priority operational and programmatic areas that may not align with the institution's most pressing goals. In times of increasing financial constraints, institutional leaders will need to have difficult conversations about areas where they can no longer invest or where current levels of investment may need to be reduced.
New data and analytics capabilities in the form of ERPs, CRMs, and BI platforms (just to name a few) offer opportunities for campus-wide discussions about enrollment trends, student success, financial pain points, and potential opportunities for operational and budgetary efficiencies. Equipped with these more advanced capabilities, institutional leaders can more confidently make complicated decisions about resources, investments, and strategic priorities for the future.Footnote1
Ironically, these new data capabilities also require significant investments and strategic prioritization. Many institutions will have to dedicate significant time and staff resources to cleaning and organizing their data foundations. They will also need to consider investing in more advanced analytics and reporting systems and tools. Perhaps most importantly, and likely as a step that precedes all of this work, institutions will need to consider opportunities for shoring up data analytics staff roles and expertise, as well as opportunities to reskill or upskill existing staff.
Campus Spotlight: Investing in Staff Data Capabilities at Macalester College
At Macalester College, a liberal arts school in Minnesota, efforts to mature data capabilities at the institution were hindered by limited staff capacity and data expertise, as well as the significant time and effort required to collaborate with certain departments. Despite having established a data governance group and engaging in some initial student data mapping, CIO and Vice President for Information Technology Services Jennifer Haas said, "We just found that not every area at the institution has the same level of expertise for data within their functional group. It got to the point where we really stalled out."
The data governance group determined that the institution needed additional staff expertise to deepen its data strategy. So, the institution created a new data strategist role to help support these needs. Haas shared, "We realized that what we were missing is a data strategist expert at the institutional level that could both take over and take data governance to the next level where they're working shoulder to shoulder with a department and can get in deep and help them understand their data and ask them the right kinds of questions to do things with their data.
"This shows the changing nature of IT in a lot of ways where data has become so important in everything that we do, and we need to take a step back to make sure we've got the right people on the team that can help the institution understand how to engage with their data."
Ways to Get Started
Through our panelist interviews and community survey, technology leaders noted some ways institutions might effectively leverage data for operational and financial insights:
- Begin with understanding the data you have and the data you need by evaluating your institution's current levels of maturity in data collection, organization, and management. All data capabilities rest on the foundations you build at the outset, and shaky data foundations will result in shaky outcomes for institutional data-related practices and decisions. Resources such as the EDUCAUSE Analytics Institutional Self-Assessment can help you establish a baseline for your institution's current capabilities.
- CRMs, LMSs, ERPs, and other related data systems can give your institution a leg up with sophisticated analytics and reporting capabilities needed for precisely these kinds of business and operational decisions. Once you understand your data needs (see above), you will be in a good position to identify the best data solutions to support those needs. For example, the EDUCAUSE Demo Day on ERP Solutions is a good resource for those who are starting to think about their institution's solution requirements and potential partners.
Note
- Jenay Robert, Nicole Muscanell, and Kim Arnold, 2025 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report, Data and Analytics Edition (EDUCAUSE, 2025). Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.
Jennifer Haas is Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Information Technology Services at Macalester College.
Hemalatha Manickavinayaham is Associate Vice President of Planning and Digital Transformation at California State University, Sacramento.
David McMorries is Chief Information Security Officer at Oregon State University.
JT Singh is Senior Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
© 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.