The discussion Kris Olds and I started a couple of days ago (see here and here) about a global common data set seems to have generated quite a bit of discussion, so I thought I would flesh out two sets of thoughts regarding what a Global CDS would need to look like – today: content; tomorrow: governance.

Start with first principles on content: it needs to be common enough that most institutions around the world are able to produce it. That necessarily means that, to start at least, the data will be skewed towards things that are relatively easy to count, not necessarily things that matter.

What would qualify? Student data, for one thing – graduate and international student numbers are always interesting, but in terms of student-teacher ratios, not just numbers but total course hours should be calculated. Academic staff, for another – though, as per yesterday’s discussion, one would need to set out data for a number of different types of faculty (full-time, adjunct, etc.) to allow for different types of comparisons. Strictly defining these different categories and ensuring all institutions can distinguish properly between them will be paramount. And, of course, as with students the faculty data shouldn’t just be raw numbers – course hours, too, are important.

Financial data will be important, as well – income from various sources (especially research income) will need to be included, as will some expenditures like libraries. But because universities in different parts of the world have radically different abilities to control their own budgets this data will need to be complemented with information about various dimensions of university autonomy (the recent European Universities Association survey on autonomy is a good model).

Beyond that, it might get pretty thin. There just isn’t enough university-produced data in common across international boundaries to go much further. Within Europe, for instance, there might be some desire to bring indicators such as “regional joint research projects” which seemed to work in the U-Multirank project; similarly, North American schools might want NSSE or CLA data. Leaving room for optional indicators might be a smart way to go.

More speculatively, there might be ways to combine data from national student satisfaction surveys in places like Canada, Germany and Taiwan into a single global, super student-indicator; and there might also be interest in including various forms of bibliometric information (though this can easily be done outside a CDS as well) – but now we’re talking about things a long way down the road.

So how might someone create and manage such a possibly unwieldy global database project? Tune in tomorrow.