Information for management in higher education

Universities are in the information business: to create, interpret, store and transmit knowledge comprises the greater part of their function. (I use the word ‘universities’ as shorthand for ‘universities and other institutions of higher education’, though what I say does apply most particularly to universities.) It would be a reasonable inference, then, that universities would be particularly scrupulous in using information for their own internal management. Observation suggests the contrary: relatively little information is used for decision‐taking, and without a high attention to accuracy.