Data Helps University of North Texas Increase Enrollment

According to a recent study fromForbesmagazine, total higher education enrollment has declined by almost 7.5 percent since 2019. With universities across the U.S. struggling to bring enrollment back up to pre-pandemic levels, the University of North Texas has turned to data analytics to buck those trends.

Using a system called UNT Insights — a data platform built with software from the data analytics company SAS — the university recently reported a 16 percent increase in enrollment since 2018, as well as a 5.5 percent jump in enrollment in 2022 alone, according to a news release.

The University of North Texas first recognized the need to harness data analytics for decision-making in 2015, according to Jason Simon, associate vice president for data analytics and institutional research at UNT. He said that once it had built a culture of trust in data governance and analytics, the university could use the SAS tool effectively for institutional planning to boost enrollment and student retention.

Simon said the university’s emphasis on data analytics has also helped speed up degree attainment for first-time higher ed students and undergraduate transfer students. For example, the university reported a drop from an average of 4.6 to 4.2 years to earn a degree and a three-year graduation rate jump from about 2 to 12 percent from 2012 to 2022.

What’s more, full-time undergraduate transfer students saw degree attainment times drop by almost half a year, in addition to an increase in two-year graduation rates from 14 percent in 2012 to 25 percent in 2022.

Another notable difference is the university’s Data, Analytics, and Institutional Research (DAIR) group, which manages the university’s data system, having to field fewer data requests as instructional, administrative and IT staff have become more comfortable mining data themselves. Previously the team processed between 1,400 and 1,600 manual requests.

Since implementing the system, he said, these requests have decreased by about 1,000 per year — representing hundreds of staff hours and about $52,000 in staff cost savings. He also said analytics has helped increase departmental efficiencies, reducing costs by more than $1 million.

“You’re seeing this [growing] gap emerge between institutions that are on the forefront, like the University of North Texas, where we have fully integrated an analytic perspective into our decision-making process, and others that are having to be reactive to what’s happening around them in terms of their enrollment.”

Before implementing the system, UNT officials reported that the university had “fundamental issues with data management and data governance” before the current model, which siloed data in various departments and made enterprise analytics more difficult and daunting, according to the news release.

Simon said the university has spent years improving data literacy and training staff across campus to leverage data. Now, more than 1,200 people on campus use the user-friendly SAS application.

“Every campus has a different culture, and so analytic leaders need to be able to look inward in their own institutions and in their own agencies and think about how their culture either helps or hinders their ability to be successful,” he said. “We’ve been able to leverage the tools and think about how we can apply them into the actual day-to-day lives of the faculty and staff who work here at the institution to make a real difference.”

This article is excerpted from a longer report in Government Technology, sister publication to Industry Insider — Texas.