OBSERVATIONS ON PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKING
Benchmarking is a tricky business, particularly around choices of:
- Peer institutions: benchmark set
- Metrics and data sources
- Level of analysis/aggregation, e.g., institution/college/department
We focused on:
- 20 leading public universities (“Peer 20”)
- Academic reputation, at the department level (NRC rankings)
- Academic reputation, at college/department level (USNWR rankings)
- Federal research funding (where appropriate), at the college/department
level (NSF federal funding database)
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Our experience suggests deep, detailed analysis pays dividends
- Integrated data is often misleading
- Different metrics, mixes of benchmarks, etc., produce different (and
sometimes opposite) conclusions
- Need to be careful about drawing conclusions & insights
quickly
Notes: