In a relatively short period of time, IRI or education analytics has been regarded as the future paradigms and tools by US higher education institutions to survive the sea of uncertainty and competition.  These paradigms considered as the ultimate approaches to answer recent phenomenal structural changes that are happening in the industry.  The new mindsets and the need of education analytics are flourished as evidence from recent job postings.  The question that one may have is what kind of tools that an institution could apply such new mindsets in her or his organization?  We will focus on three available tools in this blog.  Short comparisons will be given below on either to invest in SPSS, Tableau or SAS?

1. Many of our readers and registered members asked which one of the tree tools mentioned above can be used to accomplish their IR/IE jobs more efficiently.  The Association answer, in general, it depends on what one tries to accomplish.  The most important reason why we such three tools in the market is because each tool has a unique feature that none of the other has SPSS has been used and very popular in the past because it is more user friendly.  For those who do not know how to write codes and less knowledge about statistical theories prefer this tool than others.  The danger of using such tool without knowing exactly how the programs work and the underlying statistical theory behind it is imminent.  SPSS will give you answers, but are they the right and correct answers?  Many institutions have posted the results of their students’ satisfaction survey or end of semester course survey based on Likert scale.  Sadly, these colleges take the statistical mean (average) on the Likert scale type of questions (Starting on page 8, as examples).  These mistakes were made because of the poor statistical knowledge of the researchers.  When using SPSS to upload the data, it automatically changes the respondents’ answers into numerical values.  However, the software also explains the variable in a different tab.  If the researcher do not know the concept (the type) of data, she or he will surely make this important mistake.  Committed such flaws are not unique and only can be found in higher education profession.  The most respected consultant in the industry was found to commit the same errors.  If these mistakes found in the consultant’s report, one only can imagine what kind of effects they have and how they might impact its clients.
2. Tableau is easy to use–just point and click.  Therefore, it is gaining popularity in more recent years, especially to help the IE tasks get completed.  This software produces different trend reports in graph format which are easy and pleasing the eyes of the readers.  As we may all know, administrators and college decisions makers alike love to see colorful reports.  Most of these campus decision makers are busy and may not have the statistical rigor to digest all the numbers.  Therefore, they love to see the graphs.  One needs to be aware that the stories behind the graphs still need to be interpreted correctly.  Some of them can be very difficult to digest and may tell many stories and different strategic implications.  One may not be able to conduct hypotheses tests to basically answer the fundamental questions that the administrators are looking for. The IRI Office can capitalize Tableau’s nice features in such a case.
3. SAS is the way to go in the future for statistical analyses as well as to generate different reports.  However, one needs to have proper training to write codes that produce the results.  Generating one graph could take the researcher to write 10 to 20 lines of codes.  However, once it is done, she or he can apply the same codes and with proper modifications one can generate other graphs as well.  If we look around, professionals with the SAS skills are more incline to work in non-education industry such as finance and banking, pharmaceutical companies or manufacturing.  Education industry may not be able to compete with other industries in term of compensation.  The person with SAS experience, however may not have previous experience working with higher ed data.  The one that has both experience and other elements of the IRI, also known as education analytics is the best fit to be employed.  However, they are not many around right now yet.

As we have mentioned, different tools may have different applications.  One thing that we do know, that recent dynamic changes have pushed and therefore added the intelligence dimension which has never existed before into the IR/IE profession.  This is another one clear reason why IRI or education analytics is the way to go in the future.