On-Campus Data Utilization: Working on Institutional Research in Universities

Institutional research (IR) in universities refers to a wide range of activities such as collection and analysis of on-campus data, planning of measures for improvements, and implementations and verifications of the measures for the purpose of management improvement, student support, and higher-quality education. In Japan's universities, improvements with on-campus data utilization have been increasingly expected and there has been a big upsurge in IR for this. And universities are seeking approaches for specific practices. In response to such trends in Japan, Fujitsu is currently working on IR research and study, aiming to provide new services that can contribute to university business and management. Specifically, we carried out surveys on the needs for and expectations of IR, made hypotheses, and conducted trial experiments of data analysis. By using various statistical analysis methods, we also tested the trend analysis of the improvement in education quality and dropout prevention, for which data utilization will be especially needed in universities. Furthermore, research on dropout prediction was carried out, by which it is possible to predict which students may leave universities in the future from their current situation. Through the approaches above, we are currently defining the concept of Fujitsu's IR and examining the provision of services supporting IR practices in universities. In this paper, the IR trend research and study that we have tackled so far and Fujitsu's IR are described.