KPI Examples in Higher Education

KPI Basics:

A “KPI” is a Key Performance Indicator, or in other words something that we can track or measure.  An example of a KPI in higher education is Student-to-Faculty Ratio.  This is a number, that varies from year to year, that represents the number of faculty that work at the University compared to the number of students enrolled at the University.  Many say that this key ratio represents the quality of teaching in a University.  The idea is that students are better off if there are more faculty members working there.  Students will get more attention, there will be more choices in terms of classes, and there will be more opportunities for collaboration or advising with faculty.  Most, if not all, universities track this ratio, and therefore it also provides an easy method to compare universities to each other.  This type of KPI can be easily measured and tracked with data that the university already tracks within their administrative systems.  Some KPI’s can be tracked with external data, such as surveys.  In the US, we have the National Survey for Student Engagement, nsse.iub.edu, where this central organization distributes surveys to students, collects the information, and then provides assessments and feedback to the university.  KPI’s can be used to determine changes within the university or to compare with a group of peer universities.  

Who uses KPI’s?

I have seen KPI’s used in varying degrees by different universities.  Of course, most universities are required to track some KPI’s for external compliance purposes as well as internal management.  KPI tracking is often a part of a Performance Management initiative, where the university wants to standardize on a broad set of metrics across all areas of the organization.  In other words, they want to go from sporadic pockets of KPI tracking (perhaps in spreadsheets/offline systems), to formally establishing KPI’s, setting targets for each KPI, and benchmarking against peers – across all colleges/departments and using data directly based on administrative system sources.  Sometimes, the “drive to measurement” starts with a new Provost or President, who has effectively used KPI’s before. 

Any discussion of KPI’s should be tempered with some reality.  KPI’s cannot possibly encapsulate every different angle that is important to each constituent of a university.  Even if we equip a car with the latest gadgetry and on-board computers, we will still need a driver to decide where we are going and to get us there safely.  KPI’s and performance management systems can be effective tools, but they still require the right people to translate the results into the right course of actions. 

KPI Examples in Higher Education:

Here is a pretty good list of KPI’s that I have gathered from speaking and meeting with various universities.  Hopefully this will be useful for you, and I welcome your thoughts about KPI’s in Higher Education.  I have also posted these on a new wiki page, so you can navigate there and add more KPI’s.

I have structured the KPI’s so they fall under a perspective and then an objective.