Big Data and Simulation to Analyze Higher Education Sustainable Development

Higher education institutions already accumulated enormous volumes of big data associated with student success, enrolment, professors, educational programs, educational computer systems, economics, etc., that potentially can be used for sustainable development analysis. However, their practical applications in higher education institutions are remained relatively rare because of complexity in the subject domain and lack of a methodological base to reuse some effective previously created models. This paper introduces an approach to incorporate big data into higher education sustainability analysis and reduce the complexity of the subject domain infrastructure by using a set of formalized systems. Within this approach, a simulation umbrella is used as a united methodological base to combine big data and sustainability analysis implementation. To illustrate how the proposed approach works, a simulation case-study associated with a USA young fast-growing higher education institution included in the paper.