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Higher Education Data Analytics

Building a Data Strategy for Higher Education

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Villanova University

Villanova University (Nova), established in 1842,  is a private Catholic high research activity (R2) doctoral institution serving approximately 11,000 undergraduate, graduate, and law students. 

Over time, dissatisfaction built among business users, college deans, and senior administrators around the lack of easy and timely access to data for decision-making. To solve this problem, the Provost created the Office of Decision Support and Data Integrity (ODSDI) charged with advancing a culture of data sharing, data stewardship and data-informed decision-making. Central to this work was the creation of a strong and sustainable data infrastructure and enhanced data governance along with building an operational framework that would maximize ROI for the university’s initiatives.

"HelioCampus set up the entire environment - the data lake, ETL layer, Tableau data visualization environment, student data models that included admissions, course registration, and the entire student lifecycle was all designed for us. This jumpstarted to our admissions, financial aid, course registrations, and student outcomes data was invaluable. If we had taken on that aspect of the project internally, it would have taken us years."
Trina Das
Assistant Vice Provost

How Villanova Uses the Data

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The Missing Holistic View

Villanova was lacking a holistic view of their institutional data due to their decentralized nature, which created a challenge for data tools and reporting methods to inform decision-making. The HelioCampus data enabled Villanova to have centralized data that combined data from different source systems to discover insights to aid in long-term strategies.

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A Partner with Higher Ed Experience

Once they determined what the University was lacking, they needed a partner who could ensure they were investing in the right solution. HelioCampus was the right partner to add value to their data platform and set up the right environment to centralize the data across the institution. Leadership is now equipped to make data-driven decisions that accurately reflect campuswide initiatives in tandem with student needs. 

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A Partnership Beyond Technology

With HelioCampus’s help, Villanova was able to move through its data transformation faster, more efficiently, and with fewer headaches. And the partnership went beyond building a data platform.

Learn More About the Results

Read the case study to learn how Villanova partnered with HelioCampus to build an institutional analytics platform and help Villanova create a campus wide data analytics strategy, developing four best practices for success along the way.

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