Author(s)

A. Nazir & T. McDonald

Abstract

Higher Education institutions have grown through the years and have developed into large businesses. Even though industry has experienced a dramatic increase in the use of data warehousing techniques, tertiary institutions have been slow to follow suit. Reasons for this can be attributed mainly to the many reported failures and the costs involved there in. Several factors are forcing these institutions to embrace data warehousing technologies. This paper will report on the challenges involved in taking this step and will show that a successful data warehouse can be developed, regardless of the obstacles involved. Keywords: higher education, data warehousing, student data mart, star schema, developing countries. 1 Introduction Industry in developed countries is experiencing a dramatic increase in the use of Data Warehousing (DW) techniques. This can, however, in most cases only be achieved at huge cost. According to the Western Michigan University [1] the primary consideration in the development of a DW is cost. Wierschem et al. [2] indicates that a DW requires millions of dollars to develop, plus significant hardware and personnel investment. Hammond [3] quotes a Meta Group survey that the average cost for an enterprise warehouse is $3 million. This can be a major obstacle in developing countries. Wagner et al. [4] stated that the budgets of developing countries are not even sufficient to pay for the Knowledge Management (KM) enabling IT architecture.

Keywords

higher education, data warehousing, student data mart, star schema, developing countries.