The identification of an institution's strategic mandate dictates what should ultimately be measured to assess performance. Certain key strategic areas such as student outcomes, educational processes and institutional services, must be identified. Colleges need to decide what is important and then set about targeting those areas with the results of performance assessment. In many ways, what the indicators say is much less important than what is being done with the information. Measurements that do not lead to meaningful action are of no real value and are wasteful of valuable institutional resources.
Measurement is an essential performance tool for improving colleges.
Choosing the right tool is important, but how skillfully the tool is used determines its overall effectiveness to institutional stakeholders. In post-secondary education, especially in provincial college systems, there may be a number of general indicators that can be used to develop college performance. Among them are the number of training contracts and dollars awarded to an institution, the time it takes for a student to complete a program of study, the percentage of students changing their program or course, and students' overall satisfaction with their educational experience. But for performance indicators to be useful they must be clearly linked to a college's strategic goals, values and directions. Whatever institutional measures are used to describe and to assess performance, they must have identifiable characteristics in order to be valued by staff and those critical observers of educational accountability.