Larry Goodwin, president of The College of St. Scholastica writes, in Solving the "It's My Data' Mess, about the trials and tribulations of implementing a business intelligence platform for a small, private institution. The article is from University Business magazine. If it is reflective of the essays in the book linked-to below, then both are well worth a read for their perspective on the processes involved.

[P]utting the BI system into operation was not easy. The difficulty was not technological or quantitative; it was political: Who controls the fundamental data definitions? In the meetings of a large committee established to implement BI, it became obvious that people whose primary interests were tactical and departmental couldn’t agree on common definitions. Senior administration had to take hands-on control—our second lesson learned. ...

A BI system can be costly ($250,000 for us up front) and require significant staff training (intensive for key users for three to eight weeks; ongoing, more moderate, for a year). But the payback is generous and quick. Data reporting has increased ten-fold. Time spent retrieving information has been reduced 50 to 75 percent. Collections work that took a monthly half day now takes less than a minute. The controller saves over eight hours each semester on reconciling numbers. And so forth. Best of all, data is reliable and consistent, allowing for accurate and integrated planning, budgeting, and assessment.

It is excerpted from President to President: Views on Technology in Higher Education Volume II, published by Sungard Higher Ed and the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). That entire publication can be downloaded as a PDF at no cost here.

Robert J. Sternberg worked at private, elite institutions for 40 years. He's now the provost at Oklahoma State University and has a new appreciation of land-grant universities. In this essay from Inside Higher Ed, he shares seven reasons to value them, ending with questions:

Whereas some of us may think of land-grant institutions as needing to emulate the most elite institutions, perhaps these elite institutions would benefit as much or more from adopting some of the land-grant values. As our society becomes ever more socially and economically stratified and the middle class vanishes, with high correlations between educational opportunities and socioeconomic status, we have an obligation, as a society, to ask whether things are going where we want them to go. What kinds of leaders do we want to develop? Is it possible that the huge emphasis on memory and analytical skills reflected by tests such as the SAT and ACT, and embodied in college-admissions processes, are having effects opposite to what we as a society might hope for? Are we producing leaders who are analytically adept but who fail in a wise and emotionally connected way to engage deeply with the crises our society currently is facing? Do we want a society in which we care more about how narrowly smart people are than about how wise and ethical they are? Land-grant institutions in many ways reflect the ideals of the American dream. They have a unique role in helping to achieve that dream that is not being captured by magazine ratings based on narrow criteria that have led our society to a precipice.