Enrollment Prediction Models Using Data Mining

Following World War II, a great need for higher education institutions arose in the United States, and the higher education leaders built institutions on “build it and they will come” basis. After the World War II, enrollment in the public as well as the private institutions soared (Greenberg, 2004); however, this changed by 1990s, due to a significant drop in enrollment, universities were in a marketplace with “hypercompetition,” and institutions faced the unfamiliar problem of receiving less applicants than they were used to receive (Klein, 2001). Today higher education institutions are facing the problem of student retention, which is related to graduation rates; colleges with higher freshmen retention rate tend to have higher graduation rates within four years. The average national retention rate is close to 55% and in some colleges fewer than 20% of incoming student cohort graduate (Druzdzel and Glymour, 1994), and approximately 50% of students entering in an engineering program leave before graduation (Scalise et al., 2000). Tinto (1982) reported national dropout rates and BA degree completions rates for the past 100 years to be constant at 45 and 52 percent respectively with the exception of the World War II period (see Figure 1 for the completion rates from 1880 to 1980). Tillman and Burns at Valdosta State University (VSU) projected lost revenues per 10 students, who do not persist their first semester, to be $326,811. Although gap between private institutions and public institutions in terms of first-year students returning to second year is closing, the retention rates have been constant for a long period for both types of institutions(ACT, 2007). National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE) reported the U.S. average retention rate for the year 2002 to be 73.6% (NCPPHE, 2007). This problem is not only limited to the U.S. institutions, but also for the institutions in many countries such as U.K and Belgium. The U.K. national average freshmen retention for the year 1996 was 75% (Lau, 2003), and Vandamme (2007) found that 60% of the first generation first-year students in Belgium fail or dropout.