It is not a celebration, rather a reflection. As professional in both education and in the manufacturing industry, we noticed that the US education industry will not survive given its present practices. In order to make the society aware of the potential problems that the entire US citizens may have to face in the future, we then established the Association of American Education Analytics (AAEA) and to share the new mindset and paradigm to manage US higher education institutions (Institutional Research Intelligence). When AAEA reveals the problems facing by US Higher Ed and introduced the IRI concept to deal with them, many are skeptical. But several months later were indirectly confirmed by Harvard University’s VP and CFO, Dan Shore during his interview with Harvard Gazette. Mr. Shore stressed that the current way to manage US higher education is unsustainable. Therefore, a new mindset, approaches and paradigms are needed.
In March 2013 we launched AAEA website, since then the number of visitors per day have increased exponentially. We based our analyses on facts, historical data and maintained our independent analyses. We also introduced the ideas of data-driven decision making process in the industry which may not be widely known prior to AAEA’s existence. Strategic decisions need to be based on research and scientific approaches such as econometrics, statistics and mathematical programming to solve the existing and persisting problems that the industry is facing. All approaches that have been applied by the manufacturing industry such as ABC costing, LEAN, Maket Intelligence, Managerial Economics or Financial Management principles supported by Big Data and Data Scientist capabilities have to be deployed to control the rising colleges’ reckless spending and inefficiency. Declining enrollment, budget cut and decreasing alumni financial support are several examples of the public’s disapproval of what the US colleges have done in the past and are doing currently. Basically, there are five important changes which shape higher education institutions in the US:
1.Tighter revenue due to less donation money, budget cuts (reminder: Big files, may take awhile to upload) and declining student enrollment.
2. Inappropriate, inefficient pricing decision and reckless decision.
3. Over spending and over-investment.
4. Changes in consumer preference.
5. An entity such as SEC in the Stock Market is badly needed to deal with current Ineffective compliance and accountability from various players in the industry. A commission that can impose effective rules and regulations in the education industry needed to deter reckless behaviors. AAEA has proposed to have ESCC (Education Standard and Compliance Commission) to accomplish such task.
All of the five factors, among others have caused skyrocketed tuition hikes. Some colleges are still BAU and not even understand that they are facing the new landscape of competition. If they know, they think, things will be okay or some of them even denied that there is any problem whatsoever.
However, it only takes a year and a half to see what we have predicted based on our research and intensive studied became realities. Some colleges have to be closed, downsized or got merged as results of less available of resources and increasing consumers’ dissatisfaction across the country. For example the student protests at UC system campuses in the last few weeks. The next questions one might have are that what will be next, what options are available and what needs to be done? AAEA has come out with the IRI paradigm to help ease the challenges. The problem that most US higher education institution is facing can be seen as structural problems in nature. Therefore, the solution to deal with these issues has to be focused on having long-run effects as well. Everything needs to be turned up-side-down in order to make it in order again. However, it may take years for the messes have been piled up during an extended period of time. There is no magic medication. Everyone has to work together to take care of the problem. This is the team work, this is the country problem and it is not just one college issue. It is the whole country problem. Without support from every player in the industry, nothing can be done and students will continue to suffer.
Thank you for your guys’ support on the Association’s missions. Please click the following Link ===>SURVEY<===