Big data is now being used in higher education to help universities to improve students all around college experience. The focus so far with data has really been on retention and graduation. As a recent college graduate I can easily remember how stressful it was scheduling classes, I wanted to make sure I was taking classes I would enjoy as well as classes that would still count for my major and graduation. I have so many friends that ended up having to do a fifth year because they took classes they thought counted for their major but didn’t. This is the reason a lot of people end up dropping out of college because they end up getting too far behind.
Ever since Arizona State University started using predictive-analytics almost a decade ago, the graduation rate has gone up 20 percent. One tool that Arizona State and many other universities are using to help retention rates is a program called College Scheduler. This is like Match.com for students. When students use College Scheduler the first thing they do is fill out personal information on the dashboard and then the program gives options for classes that work with your personal and academic schedule. It is now super easy for students to build their class schedule around obligations that they already have and that they know count towards their major. Aside from this making it a lot easier and less stressful for students, it has been proven to raise the rates of the amount of students who graduate. I just graduated last year, and I think that this would have been an excellent tool for my university to have accessible to students. Especially for students who have to work part time in order to pay to go to college. Not only does the system give you the options of what classes to take when, it goes a step further to suggests classes that you would most likely be interested in based on your personal information.
Some students may still want to meet with their advisors every semester to make sure that they stay on track, it all depends on the person. Personally I never met with my advisor for scheduling but my major was psychology so there were a lot of classes that worked towards my major and not too many required classes, however a student who is a nursing major may have a lot of required courses they must take in order to graduate on time. Universities could use data in so many different aspects to take some of the extra stress off students and faculty.
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