Higher Education

Pandemic interview series: Leaders in higher ed

We spoke with leaders at both private and public institutions – to take a pulse on pandemic-inspired changes within higher education, where nearly 50% of respondents anticipate making difficult but transformational changes in their institutions in the next 12 months. This interview series highlights everything from evolving approaches to serving and engaging students to operating model transformation. Learn more about what the future holds.

Impact of COVID-19: Tune in to student sentiments

The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the second half of the 2019–2020 academic year and the beginning of the 2020–2021 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 September 2019 and February to September 2020 on public-facing digital and social media platforms. We analyzed more than 80 million posts from 27 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.

The power of data

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.

Why hackers want to get into universities

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.

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