Business Intelligence in Higher Education
(2007 – 2008)
Organization
Seattle University: Office of Institutional Research, Seattle, WA
Advisor
Dr. Bob Duniway
Background
Dr. Duniway obtained and awarded me a grant from Microsoft to work on this project.
Task
Institutions of higher education (e.g. colleges and universities) are businesses that must pay their bills. One of the most common ways for these institutions to earn money is by filling classrooms with paying students. "Enrollment management" is an umbrella term for optimizing classroom usage, campus resources, scholarship percentages, and tuition levels. Many institutions use proprietary systems that were developed in-house for their own unique situations. We wanted to explore the possibility of designing a logical model that would be broadly applicable.
Approach
The Director of Institutional Research at Seattle University, Dr. Duniway, had gathered a wealth of data from multiple institutions and coalitions of higher education. We analyzed this data for universal and clustered commonalities, then designed a logical model that could be simplified or extended as necessary to accommodate numerous types of institutions of higher education.