Higher education institutional leaders are increasingly focused on how evidence can guide decisions, strengthen alignment, and support meaningful and measurable student success across campus.
For Ajay Nair, Ph.D., President of Arcadia University, building a shared understanding of institutional data is central to that effort:
“Having a single source of data that the community agrees upon is powerful because it democratizes information, builds confidence, trust, and transparency, and helps the organization row in the same direction at every level of shared governance.”
In conversations across the field, several priorities consistently surface as institutions refine how evidence supports planning, improvement, and institutional decision-making.
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1. Disaggregating Data to Surface Meaningful Insight
Many institutions are finding that aggregate data alone rarely provides the insight needed to guide meaningful improvement.
In discussing this challenge, Bridget Miller, Ed.D., Assistant Vice President for Institutional Research and Effectiveness at Arcadia University, shared an example from a recent program review.
Dr. Miller highlighted how one program initially appeared to be performing well—participation was strong and most students were succeeding. Yet some students were still transitioning out before completion, and the reason was not immediately clear.
“The director couldn’t find any patterns in the data for why students were transitioning out and realized through one of the dashboards that the students that were transitioning out were, by and large, those who hadn’t taken a particular course that was part of the sequence,” Dr. Miller said.
Further analysis showed that students who had not taken that course by the end of their second year were unlikely to complete the program—an insight that helped the department strengthen connections between courses in the sequence.
“We have a lot of situations like that where an insight has produced difference in actions and so that produces those different outcomes,” Dr. Miller noted.
Stories like this illustrate why institutions are increasingly looking beyond aggregate reporting to better understand patterns within their data. Disaggregated data allows institutions to examine outcomes across multiple dimensions, including:
- Student populations
- Program pathways
- Course modalities
- Support interventions
- Institutional units
Yet producing disaggregated reports alone is rarely enough. Institutions are increasingly focused on how those insights inform decisions and actions across the institution.
For many institutions, the goal is not simply greater data visibility, but the ability to translate insight into action—using evidence to guide improvements that strengthen student outcomes and institutional progress.
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2. Managing Assessment Plans and Reporting Cycles
A second area of focus involves managing assessment cycles and reporting processes across the institution.
At many institutions, assessment documentation is collected through a range of tools. Faculty and staff often submit information through Word documents, spreadsheets, or email attachments, leaving institutional effectiveness teams responsible for bringing together results across departments and formats.
José G. Carrillo, Ed.D., MPH, Associate Dean of Institutional Effectiveness at Imperial Valley College, described how simplifying that process can significantly improve program review and reporting:
“The ability to generate a complete program review report was a game changer. In the past we had many moving pieces but no simple way to bring everything together.”
Beyond collecting documentation, institutions are increasingly focused on building more structured assessment processes that support collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.
Effective assessment management processes often include:
- Assessment plans and documentation
- Results submission and supporting evidence
- Review and feedback processes
- Approval tracking and visibility
- Access to prior assessment cycles
- Sharing effective practices across departments
Rather than serving solely as a reporting exercise, assessment management is increasingly viewed as part of an ongoing improvement process—one that helps institutions better understand outcomes, identify opportunities for growth, and support more informed decision-making.
READ THE CASE STUDY: Improving Student Success through Integrated Planning
3. Aligning Outcomes Across the Institution
A recurring challenge and opportunity in institutional effectiveness involves maintaining alignment across outcomes at different levels of the institution.
Most colleges and universities maintain outcomes at multiple levels, including:
- Course-level learning outcomes
- Program outcomes
- Institutional learning outcomes
- Strategic priorities
While each level serves an important role in demonstrating institutional effectiveness, maintaining alignment across them can be challenging—particularly when processes are distributed across departments and systems.
Without clear connections between these layers, institutions may struggle to demonstrate how learning outcomes contribute to broader institutional goals.
At California State University, Long Beach, this emphasis on alignment is built directly into the institution’s assessment framework. In a recent webinar, Sharlene Sayegh, Ph.D., Director of Institutional Assessment and WSCUC Accreditation Liaison Officer, described how the university approaches this challenge:
“Our templates facilitate critical thinking about alignment from the micro to the macro, from the program level all the way up to our mission, vision, and strategic priorities.”
This kind of alignment also plays an important role during accreditation reviews, where institutions are often asked to demonstrate how assessment efforts contribute to institution-wide planning and strategic priorities.
WATCH THE VIDEO: Advancing Campus-Wide Alignment
4. Connecting Assessment to Institutional Strategy
Beyond aligning outcomes across the institution, many campuses are also working to ensure that assessment insights inform broader strategic decision-making.
Assessment, strategic planning, program review, and budgeting are closely related efforts, yet they often operate through separate processes and systems. Increasingly, institutions are examining how greater visibility across these activities can help leaders better understand how initiatives, resources, and outcomes connect.
This often involves bringing together information from multiple areas of institutional practice, including:
- Assessment findings
- Program review insights
- Strategic planning initiatives
- Institutional effectiveness reporting
When these elements are viewed together, institutions gain a clearer picture of how assessment activities and institutional priorities reinforce one another.
In a recent interview, William F. Brown, DBA, Vice President of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at New Mexico Junior College, described how this question frequently arises as institutions work to connect evidence with strategy:
“How do we know?”
For Brown and many institutional effectiveness leaders, that question sits at the center of the work. Institutions are increasingly seeking clearer ways to demonstrate how initiatives align with strategic priorities, how resources support meaningful impact, and how progress becomes visible across the institution.
Strengthening Institutional Effectiveness
For many institutional effectiveness leaders, the goal is not simply to collect evidence, but to understand how different efforts across campus connect to a broader institutional mission. As Dr. Sayegh described:
“It helps us think through how we are connecting institutional outcomes and strategic priorities beyond our individual units to who we are as an institution.”
This kind of alignment is becoming increasingly central to institutional effectiveness—helping ensure that assessment insights, planning initiatives, and strategic priorities support meaningful and sustained improvement.
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