The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Tech Therapy" section interviews Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, about the value of analytics for higher education leaders. (We recommend moving the slider over and beginning to listen to the podcast at 15 minutes in unless you want to hear a couple of ads and some talk about iPads.)

The first story Hrabowski tells is about a discussion with a senior faculty member in engineering who, anecdotal information, was firm in his belief that everyone who started after a PhD in that program got one. Hrabowski notes that he had hard data that it was more like 50 percent, and was able to get data-informed decisions made. Why did the professor think everyone finished? Perhaps because the students who did not finish were not very visible to him as they slipped through the cracks. With the data, the school was able to better address retention issues.