Today we are happy to share some of the emerging trends coming out of this year’s ACU Measures exercise, providing insights into the changing landscape of university management in the Commonwealth.
ACU Measures is our annual online benchmarking exercise which helps universities to compare and contrast their practices and policies with their peers, supporting senior university management in decision-making and strategic planning. It covers four key areas of university management, including salaries and benefits, research management, gender, and institutional profile. Data on salaries stretches back to 2004, while data in the other three areas stretches back to 2014. Read more about ACU Measures here
The 2017 exercise includes data from 155 institutions across 28 countries – representing over 30% of ACU membership – with a particular increase in participation in the Gender and Salaries and benefits surveys, up by 34% and 11% on last year respectively.
Findings from this year’s data
Below is a selection of findings from across our membership, showcasing the varied profiles of our member institutions.
To benchmark on areas of particular interest to your institution, please visit measures.acu.ac.uk/.
Need help benchmarking your data on our self-service platform? Access our on-demand webinar here, or read our dedicated guide here.
Can my institution take part?
All member institutions can enjoy this service free of charge. Data is collected online every year between February and May, and is available for benchmarking year-round using the ACU Measures platform.
Note: Institutions who have already submitted data will be able to benchmark their data against other participating universities. Institutions who have not previously contributed data will only be able to view aggregated data.
If you would like to take part in this annual exercise, please contact [email protected] to set up an account and receive email updates.
Next steps for ACU Measures
To improve both the depth and breadth of benchmarking data available through ACU Measures, the ACU is currently exploring an extension of the current use of data sharing and collaboration agreements with professional associations and national bodies and agencies, and increased use open-access data sets.
While the service will facilitate the sharing of experiences and aid the dissemination of good practice by providing university leadership with information about performance in specific areas, privacy is hugely important to us and participating universities. The ACU assures that responses of individual institutions will always be kept private and anonymous, and that individual responses will only be available to users from that respective institution.
If you have any views or suggestions relating to data sharing or any other aspect of benchmarking, please contact us at [email protected]