Technology

Image: Scenes from around campus

Enrollment Management

Data-Driven Enrollment Management Strategies
 
Successful colleges are able to generate healthy enrollments while maintaining high academic standards. The challenge: Students don’t want to attend a school with crowded classrooms and exhausted instructors, but colleges need strong enrollments and productive faculty, regardless of budget limitations, in order to stay in business. In order to  successfully address this challenge, data-driven, enrollment management strategies must be used.  An important tool for displaying enrollment data is the pivot table.

Pivot Tables

In order to meet enrollment management challenges, it is crucial to have access to relevant data and to have the ability to display, aggregate, and summarize this data. Pivot tables are a convenient spreadsheet tool for doing this.

Peralta enrollment pivot tables display data downloaded into MS Excel spreadsheets from PeopleSoft enrollment databases. The pivot tables summarize various enrollment factors, including

 

  • FTES – Full time equivalent students
  • FTEF – Full time equivalent faculty
  • Section count
  • Productivity – FTES/FTEF
  • Instructors
  • Enrollment count

 

pivot table segment

pivot table segment

Download a recent version of Peralta pivot tables in MS Excel format:  

peralta-pivot-tables-03-31-09

peralta-pivots-f05-s09-03-31-09

The Excel file contains 5 pivot tables on worksheets that display aggregated data as follows: 

 

  • By Campus
  • By Division
  • By Subject (Department)
  • By Catalog (Course)
  • Enrollment by Instructor

 

For a given pivot table, use the “filter” arrows to select a particular campus, division, subject, course, or instructor. You can also select term, component, or any factor displayed with an arrow key.

The pivot tables have flags that filter certain characteristics as follows:

  • FTES flag: Select from “All” classes, only classes where FTES >0, only classes where FTES = 0, or ZZ (non instructional) assignments
  • FTEF flag: Select from “All” classes, FTEF >0, FTEF = 0 (In the PeopleSoft database tables, some classes with multiple instructors show FTEF =0)
  • Faculty Type: Select from “All” classes, Contract instructors (CONT), Temporary instructors (TEMP)

Enrollment Analysis

Pivot tables, spreadsheets, graphs, and other data management tools are essential for enrollment planning. The pivot table segment above shows that in Fall 2008, the Laney math department had enrollment equivalent to 342 full time equivalent students (FTES is the currency of community colleges), with 18 full time equivalent faculty teaching 65 sections of various math courses, and with enrollment of about 38 students per section. This data summary provides valuable information that can be used for enrollment planning. This information, compared with similar data from other departments and other colleges, is helpful for college-wide strategic planning. Using the pivot tables to drill down to specific courses and instructors may reveal which courses are successful and which don’t attract enough students. A successful manager must have access to data like this in order to make good decisions.

 

 

data analysis provides surprising insights

careful analysis may provide unexpected insights

 
 

Questions? Contact Dr. Mike Orkin, Dean of Business, Math, and Sciences:

morkin@peralta.edu

 

iPhone self-portrait

iPhone self-portrait