Academic Affairs is Hiring
The UT System Office of Academic Affairs, an office we work with very closely and collaborate with frequently, has a posting for a communications coordinator.
Purpose of Position Coordinates and directs the collection, production, presentation, and communication efforts of the department, including qualitative and quantitative analysis, and provides research and analysis on various topics. Manages projects from inception to delivery.
Essential Functions Translates complex information and analyses in a clear and non-technical manner for a wide variety of audiences. Researches and analyzes trends, with a focus on academic metrics. Collaborates with UT System colleagues and institutional colleagues to collect data, communicate common definitions of data elements, and to relay policy analysis. Writes and/or edits reports, papers, presentations, and correspondence, often for public review or for consideration by state officials, independently or as part of a team, ensuring clear and cohesive writing and messaging, and adherence to UT System and other relevant style guidelines. Manages production (design, layout)–including the development of standard templates–of reports, white papers, and presentations for this office. Collaborates with other offices, providing print and online production advice and assistance as requested. Serves as advisor on various UT groups and committees, providing advice, feedback, and guidance. Provides assistance to the Executive Vice Chancellor for report writing and other communication efforts.
We’re Hiring
We are looking for a institutional research analyst to join our busy office.
Requires: Bachelor’s degree. Three years work experience in institutional research, planning, statistics, student services, social sciences or a related field. Experience with large national and/or state databases, statistical software databases (such as SAS), and MS Excel functions and graphing.
Interested or know someone that might be? Check out the position description.
In the works this week…
On the dashboard side, we have Abheek Sen, a SAS consultant here to help us automate some more complex graphing processes that now require analysts to spit out reams of data to excel and for me to then create the necessary 200 graphs (no joke!). The real problem comes of course, when someone wants to make a change down the road. It’s enough to make an English major want to cry at her desk.
I’ll hopefully have more updates on our work with Abheek later this week.
Also, Phase 2 is wrapping up and we should have a solid release date set soon. As always, readers of this blog will be the first to know.
I know Jennifer has been patching hotfixes on the servers like a madwoman because I get emails from her around 9 or 10 pm.
Finally, Sandy and Stephanie H. are in North Carolina. First, they are going to be taking a public speaking course at the SAS Institute. Then, they are recording a webinar which will include a presentation and demo of Phase 1 of the dashboard. We are excited to have these to share with stakeholders and those that are interested in this project. Finally, they will be traveling to the University of North Carolina for some meetings. The topic: the dashboard, of course!
New Materials for Tuition-Setting
On April 12, there will be a special called meeting of The University of Texas System Board of Regents in Austin to discuss tuition-setting. Earlier this year, we posted a research brief with tuition and revenue analyses. In addition to the trends and comparative data in that brief, data on administrative cost and space usage trends has been made available to offer some assessment of institutional efficiency.
Faster is Really Slower in the End
Now. Yesterday. As soon as possible. As fast as you can. Before lunch. Before you leave.
Well, I might just be here until midnight. And I haven’t had a lunch in weeks.
Every project and every request seems to have deadlines like these. So you eat at your desk, work late, work weekends, do whatever it takes to meet the deadlines. Pull the data fast. Build the graphs fast. Do the write-up fast. Proof fast. But a full-fledged review? Who has time for that?
And the stuff goes out. And comes right back. Because something’s wrong or missing or poorly explained or poorly laid out. Because the people who know the data best didn’t have time (or enough time) to look at it.
And it’s important stuff. If you hold someone accountable for performance, the yardstick for measuring that performance had better be correctly calibrated.
So you re-pull and re-build and re-write and re-proof. If you’re lucky, you get a little extra time for re-view. And, in the end, you spend more time re-doing than it would have taken to do it right the first time.
I think it’s because we have so much that is instantly available to us now. We have forgotten that not everything is at our fingertips, that some things require time. And technology. Technology is the best. Technology is the worst. We can automate. We can analyze millions of pieces of data in seconds. We can build charts and documents and presentations in minutes. And it’s fast and easy. But just because it’s right, doesn’t mean it’s right. Right?
And that’s why a little time for a fulsome review is crucial. Because some human, somewhere, entered 6.9 when they meant 69. Because your excel spreadsheet formulas were off by one cell.
We don’t have enough time as it is. We certainly don’t have time to do things more than once.
Fall 2011 Enrollment added to Dashboard
The Dashboard now has Fall 2011 enrollment data available. data.utsystem.edu
Tuition & Revenue Analyses
UPDATE: A correction on 2/3/2012 to the peer set of UT El Paso resulted in change to Fig. 2 (p. 3) and the information in the UTEP Benchmarking Comparison on pp. 36-40. Download the corrected pages.
The UT System Board of Regents will meet to consider tuition proposals from all campuses in March. As background for that discussion, our office, working with other System offices and the campuses, have created a set of detailed institutional analyses that provide information about the main sources of operating revenue, how these revenue sources have trended per student over the last 9 years, and how they compare to national benchmarks and inflation.
Institutional Revenue and Prices Analyses
Using data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the UT System Annual Financial Report, the UT System Designated Tuition Report, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Charts 1-3 look at current and past trends for
- fall tuition & fee price for full-time resident undergraduates,
- revenue from tuition & fees per FTE,
- state appropriations per FTE, and
- the combination (operational revenue) per FTE.
These charts focus on the UT institution.
Benchmarking Comparisons
Charts A-E look at the same data but use IPEDS data so that benchmarks to each campus’s approved peer set can be provided. The data in this section should not be compared to the data from other sections as difference in reporting definitions and reporting periods mean that the data do not match.
Items of Note
- For four UT institutions, total operational funding per FTE student did not keep pace with inflation from 2001-02 to 2010-11. (Fig. 1, p. 3)
- Compared to the average of the current approved peers, almost all of the institutions have an overall operational funding gap per FTE. (Fig. 2, p. 3)
- For UT Permian Basin and UT Tyler, per FTE data are unreliable and misleading because of the diseconomies of scale due to their small size. The data is provided for context but the low FTE counts should be considered when making comparisons. UTPB has the lowest enrollment among the UT academic institutions (2,700 FTE). UTPB also has the lowest FTE enrollment of its peers by about 1,000 students. UT Tyler has the second-lowest enrollment among the UT academic institutions (4,900 FTE). UTT also has the second lowest FTE enrollment among its peers–all but one peer have at least 2,000 more FTE than Tyler.
- When looking at increases in tuition, it is important to note that initial larger increases in the years following tuition deregulation have moderated in more recent years. (Fig. 3B, p. 4)
- Guaranteed tuition programs at UT Dallas (and UT El Paso) protect students from increases for four years. This often means savings in the total cost of earning a degree. There are other innovative tuition programs at the UT campuses designed to encourage timely graduation and reduce costs to students. (p. 6)
I hope to provide additional information as it becomes available.
