This fall at EDUCAUSE, Invoke Learning is putting out a wanted poster for something higher education already owns: its data.
Higher education has never had more data. SIS. LMS. CRM. ERP. Admissions. Advising. Finance. HR. Advancement. Spreadsheets. Legacy systems. A Data Warehouse here. Another Spreadsheet Variation There.
Every system holds another piece of the institutional story. So why is it still so hard to answer seemingly simple questions? The problem isn't a lack of data. The problem is that your data is being held hostage.
Your SIS knows one part of the student story. Your LMS knows another. Your CRM knows what happened before enrollment. Finance understands the dollars. HR understands the people. Advancement knows what comes after graduation. And somewhere on campus, there's probably a spreadsheet everyone desperately hopes is correct.
You own this data. You generate it. You pay for the systems that collect it. Yet getting your own data out—and making it useful—can become an entire IT project.
APIs have limitations. Integrations require maintenance. Vendors control access. Historical records get overwritten. And every new question can mean another pipeline, another spreadsheet, or another dashboard.
Having data isn't the same as being able to use it.
That's the idea behind Invoke Learning's theme for EDUCAUSE 2026: Free Your Data.
We're bringing the Wild West to EDUCAUSE and putting some of higher education's most notorious Crimes Against Data on wanted posters:
Data Silos. Vendor Lock-In. Missing History. Integration Sprawl. Spreadsheet Chaos.
Because the future of institutional analytics isn't about collecting more data. It's about making the data you already have accessible, historical, connected, and ready to answer questions.
Before institutions can fully capitalize on analytics and AI, they need control of the data underneath them.
Get it out. Preserve it. Bring it together. Make it usable.
Then start asking better questions.
Get ready to be introduced to some of higher education's most notorious data outlaws as we make our way toward EDUCAUSE.
WANTED: Your Institutional Data.
REWARD: More answers. Better decisions. Greater impact.
It’s time to take back what’s already yours.