An Empirical Study of the Applications of Data Mining Techniques in Higher Education

Few years ago, the information flow in education field was relatively simple and the application of technology was limited. However, as we progress into a more integrated world where technology has become an integral part of the business processes, the process of transfer of information has become more complicated. Today, one of the biggest challenges that educational institutions face is the explosive growth of educational data and to use this data to improve the quality of managerial decisions. Data mining techniques are analytical tools that can be used to extract meaningful knowledge from large data sets. This paper addresses the applications of data mining in educational institution to extract useful information from the huge data sets and providing analytical tool to view and use this information for decision making processes by taking real life examples.