Institutional Research
The department conducts institutional research focusing on a broad scope, namely, analytical intelligence (production of factual knowledge about UP, for example, admissions, enrolments, student to staff ratios, staff workload, etc.), issues intelligence (for example, graduate employability, student and staff satisfaction surveys, and student success studies) and contextual intelligence (understanding the external context within which UP is located and trends in that environment, for example, trends in state funding of higher education, policy shifts, and trends in matric results).
Institutional research involves analysis conducted within the institution in order to provide information, which supports planning, policy formulation and decision-making. In this regard, the department places a high priority on the processing of information into business intelligence by focusing on uniform data definitions, analyses and the interpretation of information.
Activities range from the monitoring of student applications and admissions to the provision of information for presentations by the executive and senior management. Institutional investigations, in support of strategic planning initiatives, play an important role and often involve participation by many academic and support service departments.
Market Research
The department, through its marketing research function, conducts a number of surveys in different areas every year. Such surveys assist UP to determine strategic imperatives that need short-term and long-term attention through various forms of planning.
The function also provides internal consulting services to other departments of the University who would want to undertake marketing research surveys. The function is also responsible for managing and administering the institutional marketing research register at UP.
Historical Types of Surveys include:
Institutional Analytics
The department provides statistical information and management information for various external and internal stakeholders within the university. The information provided to clients ranges from the provision of readily available statistics to entire projects that require the ordering of downloaded data verification, data analysis and writing of reports.
Management information plays a crucial role in the decision-making processes of the university. The department supports the executive management and senior managers of the university with management information concerning all aspects of students' activities such as applications, admissions and enrolments for study programmes, subject choices, success rates, attrition rates and graduations rates.
Business Intelligence
The data warehousing and business intelligence section sources and store data from various stakeholders within the university. All data collected from multiple sources is fed into a database (HEDA) so that a single query engine can be used to design and develop procedures, packages and ETL extractions. Aggregation rules are applied on database tables to allow faster processing.
A comprehensive management information system is maintained to present reports in various formats.
HEDA is a critically important resource for decision-support at UP. The University’s 2017 – 2021 Plan identifies “harnessing the power of data analytics” as a key institutional driver, and HEDA is a vital underpinning for this driver. The department’s main goal is to provide information that is accurate, reliable and valid; ensure that data is readily available, strategically distributed to those who need it, and easily understood. To this end, we will enhance the various reports on HEDA for monitoring of progress towards the realisation of institutional and faculty targets, application, admission and registration progress, and reports on student success and graduation rates.
The Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) function fulfils the University’s statutory requirements in terms of the provision of information on students to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) for subsidy purposes. HEMIS management information is provided to various internal and external stakeholders for strategic planning, the development of enrolment plans, financial planning and for the implementation of policy procedures.
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