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The Data Problem Higher Education Can’t Ignore
Higher education is becoming increasingly data-driven. Colleges and universities are being asked to demonstrate student outcomes, measure institutional effectiveness, improve retention, and show that the education they provide delivers meaningful value. But as institutions collect more information than ever, an important challenge is becoming increasingly clear: having data and being able to use data effectively are two very different things.
A recent Inside Higher Ed report brings that challenge into sharp focus.
According to data released by the U.S. Department of Education, approximately 42% of colleges and universities, about 1,930 institutions, have not fully submitted required student outcomes data under new federal accountability requirements. Of those institutions, 578, or roughly 30%, had not properly submitted any of seven required data files covering multiple academic years.
The immediate issue is federal compliance. The broader issue is much more significant for higher education leaders: Can institutions make informed decisions about student success when important data is fragmented, incomplete, or difficult to access?
That question extends well beyond federal reporting. It applies to nearly every part of the student experience, including advising, retention, belonging, student organizations, campus activities, and student engagement.
For student affairs leaders in particular, it raises an opportunity to rethink how engagement data is collected and used. Student participation is not simply an administrative metric. It can provide important insight into how students are experiencing college, where they are finding connection, and where institutions may have opportunities to intervene before disengagement becomes a larger student success issue.
More Data Doesn’t Always Mean Better Data
Colleges and universities have never had a shortage of information. Student information systems contain enrollment and demographic information. Learning management systems capture academic activity. Advising platforms track appointments and interventions. Admissions systems contain prospective student information, while financial aid systems document critical financial information.
Then there is the data generated outside the classroom.
Students attend campus events, participate in student organizations, volunteer, join leadership programs, engage with residence life, participate in orientation, attend workshops, and connect with campus resources. Every one of those interactions represents another piece of the student experience.
The problem is that these pieces frequently exist in separate systems.
A student’s academic information may be stored in one platform, while their involvement in student organizations is tracked in a spreadsheet. Event attendance may be collected through a separate registration system. Leadership participation may be recorded by an individual department. Another campus office may maintain its own list of students who participated in programs.
Individually, each data point can be useful. Collectively, however, they can become difficult to interpret.
This is one reason the current federal reporting issue matters. The Education Department’s data shows that institutions are facing challenges submitting required information, with officials pointing to factors including institutional capacity and confusion surrounding changing requirements and deadlines.
The lesson for higher education is not simply that institutions need to submit their federal reports on time. It is that data infrastructure matters.
The easier it is for institutions to capture accurate information at the point where an interaction occurs, the easier it becomes to understand what is happening across the student experience.
Student Engagement Is a Form of Student Success Data
Student engagement is sometimes treated as separate from student success. Retention belongs to enrollment management. Academic performance belongs to academic affairs. Advising belongs to student success. Engagement belongs to student affairs.
But students don’t experience college in organizational silos.
A student doesn’t think, “This is an academic experience” or “This is a student affairs experience.” They experience college as one interconnected journey.
That means engagement data can provide important context for understanding student success.
Consider a first-year student who arrives on campus and immediately begins attending events, joining organizations, participating in residence hall activities, and connecting with peers. Now consider another student who rarely attends events, has not joined an organization, and has limited interaction with campus communities outside the classroom.
Those patterns don’t tell an institution everything it needs to know about either student. But they do provide valuable context.
Engagement can be an indicator of connection. It can show whether students are finding communities that align with their interests. It can help institutions identify which programs are reaching students and which populations may be participating less frequently.
Most importantly, engagement data can help institutions move from simply asking “What happened?” to asking “What can we learn from what happened?”
The Missing Link Between Engagement and Institutional Insight
For many colleges and universities, student engagement data remains disconnected from broader institutional decision-making. A campus may know how many students attended an event. It may know how many organizations exist. It may know how many students registered for a program.
But those numbers don’t necessarily tell the full story.
What if an institution knew that a particular program was disproportionately attracting first-year students who had never participated in campus activities before?
What if it could identify that commuter students were consistently participating in certain types of programs but rarely attending others?
What if staff could see that some students were highly engaged during their first semester but gradually stopped participating?
What if student affairs professionals could identify patterns in engagement across a student’s college journey rather than viewing every event or organization interaction as an isolated activity?
Those insights can change how institutions approach student engagement.
Instead of simply counting attendance, institutions can begin thinking about engagement patterns. Instead of asking how many programs were offered, they can ask which programs are creating meaningful connections. Instead of reporting participation numbers at the end of a semester, they can use engagement information to inform decisions throughout the year.
That is the difference between activity tracking and engagement intelligence.
From Counting Participation to Understanding Engagement
Counting participation still matters.
If an institution invests time and resources into programming, leaders should understand whether students are participating. But participation numbers alone don’t provide enough context to guide strategic decisions.
Imagine two campus events each attract 200 students. On the surface, they appear equally successful. But one event may have attracted many of the same highly engaged students who attend everything on campus. The other may have brought in 100 students who had never previously participated in a campus activity. Those are two very different outcomes.
The second event may have created a significant opportunity for connection, even though both events produced the same attendance number. This is why higher education needs to move beyond simple engagement metrics and begin looking at the quality, consistency, and reach of participation: "Who is participating?"; "Who isn’t?"; "When do students become involved?"; "When does participation decline?"; "Which organizations or events are helping students discover community?"; "Are certain groups of students consistently underrepresented in campus engagement?"
These questions become much easier to explore when engagement data is captured consistently and made accessible to the people responsible for supporting students.
Why Manual Tracking Creates a Bigger Problem
For years, spreadsheets and disconnected tools have played an important role in student affairs. In many institutions, they remain essential.
The problem isn’t that spreadsheets are inherently bad. The problem is that they were never designed to provide a comprehensive view of a student’s engagement journey.
As institutions grow, so does the complexity of managing student organizations, events, attendance, participation, leadership experiences, and assessment. Information can become outdated quickly. Staff may maintain separate versions of the same information. Attendance records may not be consistently captured. Reporting can require significant manual work.
And when information is scattered across multiple systems, staff have to spend time assembling the story before they can analyze it.
That creates a significant opportunity cost.
Student affairs professionals should be spending their time understanding students, developing programs, supporting organizations, and creating stronger campus communities, not manually reconciling spreadsheets to determine who attended what.
Modern technology can help shift that balance.
The Case for a More Connected Student Engagement Platform
The next generation of student engagement technology should do more than provide a campus events calendar or organization directory. It should make engagement easier for students and more useful for institutions.
For students, that means having a simple, mobile-first way to discover opportunities, explore organizations, RSVP for events, participate in campus activities, and find communities that match their interests. For institutions, it means creating a more consistent and connected record of student participation. That connection matters because engagement happens continuously.
A student may discover an organization through an event, attend a meeting, participate in a leadership opportunity, and eventually become an organization leader. Each interaction is part of the same journey.
When those interactions remain disconnected, institutions see individual activities. When they are connected, institutions can begin to see student engagement journeys.
That distinction is increasingly important as institutions are asked to demonstrate the value of their programs and their impact on student outcomes.
Data Should Help Staff Make Better Decisions
The goal of collecting student engagement data should never be to create more reports. Higher education professionals already have enough reports. The goal should be to make better decisions.
A student affairs leader should be able to look at engagement information and understand where participation is growing, where it is declining, which programs are reaching new students, and where opportunities exist to strengthen connection.
A campus administrator should be able to understand how student engagement supports broader institutional priorities. An organization advisor should be able to see whether their organization is reaching students and whether participation is growing.
And students should benefit from the data indirectly through a campus experience that is easier to navigate, more personalized, and more connected.
The most valuable data is not data that sits in a dashboard. The most valuable data is data that changes what an institution does next.
The Current Reporting Challenge Is a Wake-Up Call
The federal student outcomes reporting issue should serve as a wake-up call for higher education. The Education Department has given institutions with missing data until January 15, 2027, to comply, while another annual submission covering the 2025–26 academic year is due October 1, 2026. The department has indicated that incomplete or inaccurate submissions could raise concerns about an institution’s administrative capacity to participate in federal student aid programs.
The stakes are therefore significant. But the underlying lesson is broader than compliance. Institutions need reliable systems for collecting, managing, connecting, and interpreting information. That infrastructure will increasingly shape their ability to demonstrate outcomes, respond to challenges, allocate resources, and improve the student experience.
The institutions that invest in stronger data practices today will be better positioned to respond to the accountability expectations of tomorrow.
Student Engagement Belongs in the Data Conversation
Student engagement has historically been one of the more difficult aspects of the college experience to quantify. It happens everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It happens when a student attends an event after seeing a notification on their phone. It happens when they discover an organization that introduces them to a new community. It happens when they volunteer, participate in a leadership program, attend a campus tradition, or simply find a group of people who make campus feel like home.
Those experiences matter.
And if institutions want a more complete understanding of student success, they need to understand those experiences too. Student engagement data won’t answer every question about retention or student outcomes. It shouldn’t be treated as a substitute for academic, financial, or demographic data.
But it can add an important dimension to the picture. It can help institutions understand the behaviors and experiences that happen between enrollment and graduation.
The Future Is Connected Data, Not More Data
Higher education does not necessarily need more data. It needs better-connected data.
The current federal reporting challenge demonstrates the risks that emerge when institutions struggle to consistently collect and submit required information. But it also presents an opportunity to think differently about data across the entire institution.
For student affairs leaders, that means recognizing student engagement as more than a collection of activities. For institutional leaders, it means recognizing engagement as a valuable source of insight into the student experience. For technology leaders, it means investing in platforms that make data easier to capture, connect, and act upon. And for students, it means creating a campus experience where discovering opportunities and building meaningful connections is easier than ever.
The key here is that institutions should move from simply managing activities to understanding the student experience. Because ultimately, the question isn’t whether colleges have enough data. The question is whether they can turn that data into action.
The institutions that can connect student engagement to broader student success strategies will be better positioned to understand their students, demonstrate institutional impact, and build campuses where more students find the connections they need to thrive.
Better data isn’t the destination. Better student outcomes are.
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