Are We Actually Ready for Shared Analytics Standards? A Question Worth Asking at ARUCC | PCCAT
Ten years ago, we launched Plaid Analytics at the Association
Andrew Drinkwater
The Hidden Risk of Institutional Knowledge
At many universities, critical data doesn’t live in systems. It lives in people.
When the only person who understands a dataset leaves the institution, the impact is rarely immediate, but it is almost always significant.
Web Summit Vancouver Day 1: Creative Data, Disposable Software, and the Scale of What’s Coming
Some tools only need to exist briefly. Some applications are valuable precisely because they are lightweight, experimental, disposable, or solve a temporary problem.
But many universities still assume every software decision means years of implementation, governance, and permanence.
Reporting with Confidence: Data Lineage for Outcomes & Performance Funding (Webinar Recap)
Get the slides and watch the recording from the April 2, 2026 webinar here. Announcing next webinar on May 6, 2026: Reporting with Confidence - Data Lineage for Outcomes and Performance Funding
More data, more questions: Reconciling Reporting Differences
Higher education has built a lot of machinery to produce metrics. Enrolment, retention, graduation rates, outcomes, etc. If someone asks for a number, there is (almost) always a way to get it.
But when follow-up questions come the process slows down. The answers exist, but they're scattered.
Strategic Enrollment Management and Marketing Conference Recap: What We Heard (and What It Means)
It took me a bit longer to SEMM conference this
Modern Data Governance is Live (Webinar Recap) & May Webinar
Get the slides and watch the recording from the April 2, 2026 webinar here. Announcing next webinar on May 6, 2026: Reporting with Confidence - Data Lineage for Outcomes and Performance Funding
When the Report Becomes the System of Record
At many universities, the most authoritative source of institutional data is not the student information system, the data warehouse, or even the institutional research office.
It’s a dashboard. Or a spreadsheet. Or sometimes, a PDF circulated to a committee.
Data Governance as Risk Management, Not Documentation
One of the most common failure modes in data governance initiatives is an overemphasis on documentation. Institutions build large data glossaries, establish committees, and catalogue new definitions. But over time it becomes clear that while documentation exists the underlying problems remain.
Shadow Systems: The Data Infrastructure Nobody Wants to Talk About
Shadow systems are rarely documented centrally. As a result, it may not be obvious who owns a dataset, business definitions may diverge across units, and institutional data may be duplicated across dozens of small environments. When this happens, governance becomes reactive rather than proactive.