Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

wknelson — Sun, 11 Sep 2016 04:45:13 GMT

We hear plenty about the benefits of academic dashboards but the high cost of many offerings leave small institutions struggling to find a solution. The campus I am associated with was no different. In looking for a method to deploy dashboards and with the understanding of current budgetary constraints we looked at what we already had. Microsoft Office with SharePoint was used across campus and offered the tools needed. With that in mind we decided the most economical route would be to use Excel Power Pivot in SharePoint. Reports created were informative, but access in SharePoint was limited to on-campus or VPN. This presented an extra step for users and limited the usefulness of the reports. With the release of Power BI and the ability to use the same data models developed in Excel Power Pivot, it offered a robust solution that allowed dashboards on a small budget.

A dashboard in Power BI is based on tiles. These represent specific KPIs or key graphs presented in an intuitive fashion as hyperlinked visuals. Our example illustrated has 34 tiles - each linked to an underlying page.

Following are some examples of the underlying reports.

Acceptance Rate and Yield (Registered students divided by Accepted students)

Select by year, school, campus, degree, faith, and race/ethnicity

Student to Instructor Ratios

Selection is available down to the department level. Animated graph traces a ten year average of students per class. Box plots provide additional metrics.

Graduation and Completion Rates

Both graduation rate (on time completion) and overall completion (all time) are available for every program on campus

Enrollment Demographics

A wide variety of student demographics and trends are available. You can select by school, campus, academic level, and term

Power BI can also be used for basic reports such as faculty listings and lookups:

Listing by name, grouped by school and department – adding filters such as year selection limits listings to that year. You can select by school, employer and pay status.

Additionally, creating a page to search faculty by last initial narrows search and selected faculty displays respective school, department, when they started, and end date of appointment.

While these reports are secure and private, a public facing dashboard is available.

By leveraging the data models created in Excel Power Pivot, through Power BI, we have been able to create dashboards that are informative, visually appealing, and at very low cost.

The author is the Associate Director of the Office of Educational Effectiveness and the Institutional Researcher at Loma Linda University, a non-profit health sciences university with an annual enrollment of about 5,000 students. The campus is located in Loma Linda, CA. Comments and suggestions are welcome and can be sent to wknelson@llu.edu.

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Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

Mtie2016 — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:58:50 GMT

Hello, It is a great design. Would you please share the pbix file?

I appreciate your understanding and collaboration

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

dkoda — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:57:32 GMT

Very nice design. I would be interested in how you set it all up.

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

JiOeL — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:52:28 GMT

This is great, Would you please share the pbix file?

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

DonaLeb — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 06:42:03 GMT

Hello! Can you please share the pbix file with me: yasmine@zblocks.io

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

Laylaqa — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 09:13:00 GMT

Hello,

Excellent job! It seems like many people encounter budget issues and have to find ways to work with what's available. I was curious about how you were able to get past the access restriction for SharePoint. I'm currently facing the same problem. Additionally, what tool did you use to share the dashboard?

I have another question about how you manage to keep the dashboard up-to-date. Is it done manually or linked to your local DB system?

Thank you.

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

harrisll — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 13:18:21 GMT

Hello! Can you please share the pbix file with me. harrisll@lewisu.edu

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

HanaY60 — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 09:57:26 GMT

Hello, could you please share the pbix file with me? hanayuki60@gmail.com. thanks a lot.

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

daveneejames12 — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 14:28:53 GMT

Hi could I get the pbix file? jamesd@swau.edu

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

moon87 — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 13:09:53 GMT

Hello, It is a great design. Would you please share the pbix file?

mr.limbay@mail.ru

I appreciate your understanding and collaboration

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

Mobyforce1 — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:24:26 GMT

This looks amazing. Would you mind sharing?
corey.downer@nccvt.k12.de.us

THanks in advance.

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

wnhang2026 — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:24:55 GMT

hi,

could you please share the .pbix file . this is so nice. Thanks

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

wnhang2026 — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:25:30 GMT

winnih@pitzer.edu

Re: Leveraging Power BI on a Small University Campus

wknelson — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:25:35 GMT

Thanks for all the interest in this report! I've had several requests to share the file, so I've prepared a version for download.

A few notes:

The file uses anonymized sample data — no real student records are included
Data structure mirrors the original so all visuals, filters, and DAX are fully functional
To connect your own data, go to Home → Transform Data → Data Source Settings and point it to your Excel source

Happy to answer questions in the thread. Hope it's useful!

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