Higher education

The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the second half of the 2019– 2020 academic year. How are students and families feeling about what’s ahead? What do they value? What do they fear?

Accenture compared posts from February to May 2019 and February to May 2020 on public-facing digital and social media platforms. We analyzed more than 68 million posts from 25 million unique authors representing a mix of large (more than 15,000 students) public and private nonprofit, four-year institutions across the U.S.

Call it social listening at a time of social distancing. Here’s what we learned – and what it means for higher ed. Learn more.

Universities collect data on students; much of it has not driven decision-making. Advanced analytics find the answers more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before. These questions cover all aspects of operations—from student-facing to back-office.

Advanced analytics mean we don’t have to guess at the drivers of student success. Machine learning quickly identify factors that determine a student may be at risk—and then make decisions and prioritize actions for university administrators to intervene.

Analytics are a powerful source of insights that support effective decision making and strategic development. Concerns about the quality of data are usually misplaced. You likely already have enough data to drive preliminary insights, quickly identifying opportunities for growth. Privacy concerns are understandable. But anonymized, aggregated data is all you need to start making ground breaking discoveries.

Universities face the familiar challenges of cybersecurity—phishing attacks, unsecured personal devices, a lack of security awareness to identify and access management—but need to contend with them in the context of a highly distributed technology environment. Open networks may not be properly monitored for unauthorized access, unsafe internet surfing habits and malware infections. Various faculties run their own IT and security departments making enforcement of streamlined security practices difficult. Most institutions lack formal governance structures to address security and compliance. It’s rare to find roles such as a Chief Information Security Officer or established compliance teams. Their absence makes it hard to implement and manage centralized IT security policies and standards. The nature of what institutions do and how they’re organized exposes them to some unique cybersecurity challenges.

Reduce the time to detect and respond and achieve more accurate outcomes leading to a more robust cyber resilience today. Learn more.