Educational institutions should not be without the diploma scorecard. This is one tool that enables effective performance management towards achieving goals and maintaining quality in the academe.
Performance management has long been held as vital in the success of any organization or enterprise. The same holds true even in the context of certification courses. Thus,
there is a need to evaluate performance management as duly as possible and the perfect way to do this is by employing the use of the diploma scorecard.
Constant monitoring is needed in this endeavor, particularly because this paves the way for the determination of the appropriate direction the organization needs to take on. With the scorecard, there would be expected results coming from forecasting activities, in-depth analysis, and interpretation of figures gathered; any sort of variation from the results expected would thereby be noticed right away. Thus, this would make it easier for the organization to come up with the necessary solutions to deal with the variation of results in a very timely manner.
The KPIs or key performance indicators to be used here would fall in several categories, which include Performance, Financial, Teaching and Learning, and Research and Global. Of course, there would be different KPIs that can be used, which would inevitably fall into any of the following categories mentioned above. The selection of KPIs here would depend on the nature of the goals and objectives that the organization wants to achieve. The important thing to remember here is that the KPIs themselves should be relevant to the purpose, goals, and objectives the organization is aiming for. Thus, there would be different KPIs used by the different organizations in the arena, simply because there would also be different goals and objectives to begin with.
However, there would also be certain similarities, particularly in the KPIs used. For instance, for the Financial aspect, the following KPIs just may be used: Operating Surplus, Income Growth, and Research Expenditures. For the Research and Global aspect, the population of students who receive scholarship funds and international alliances can be good here. Performance assessment, on the other hand, could include KPIs, such as student population growth and graduation rate. As for Teaching and Learning, student population participating in research activities and the student-faculty ratio would make good KPIs as well.
But do not think that the KPIs you develop for your scorecard would remain as they are over time. There would certainly be times when you need to reexamine and reevaluate the metrics you use. You just might be surprised to find some of them are already outdated, having served their purpose already. Other times, it would be the circumstances at hand that would prod the organization to revamp their scorecard, just to maintain progress. And amidst all these challenges, one of the most important one pertains to the quality of service provided by the institution itself. By keeping an eye on the KPIs and the data they give you, tackling this particular challenge would be made significantly easier.
Keeping tabs with the diploma scorecard can be tedious without a doubt. However, the rewards that you can reap from such a tedious activity are more than worth it. With every deviation – both positive and negative – your scorecard would definitely be one tool that can point this out in a very timely fashion.