Under the dual background of the popularization of higher education and the big data of education,the research on aca- demic performance of college students is becoming more and more prominent by means of data mining and big data analysis. On the ba- sis of the relationship between data facts and data,the system of promoting students’academic development,academic management and academic support is constructed. Through historical review and analysis of the practical problems of the research on academic per- formance of college students,the future research of academic performance of university students shows an obvious turn: the research mode turns to integration,the research data turns to the combination of subjective and objective data,the research methods turn to the comprehensive application of statistics and educational data mining. The research on academic performance of college students needs to strengthen the four - dimensional research framework and problem identification,including school environment,social and demographic characteristics,personal characteristics and student input,and adopt the five - step research process: data understanding,data prepa- ration,exploratory data analysis,model establishment and evaluation,and model application.