A lack of competition in the market tends to favor long-standing, entrenched products and services. Just a few years ago, taxis were the only way to get rides if you didn’t own a car or access to mass transit. Few people loved the experience of riding in a cab, but there simply was no other comparison until better services entered the market.
For enrollment managers, there have been few options to challenge orthodoxy in the predictive modeling space. This has led to prediction products that use outdated technology and institutional leaders without the option to compare products or demand results based on what really matters: out-of-sample model accuracy.
In an environment like this — where technology and know-how are so crucial — it’s more important than ever to ask the right questions. Here are eight good ones to ask your current predictive modeling provider.
Is your current provider:
- Giving you reports on model performance and accuracy and explaining what they mean?
- Utilizing methods beyond logistic regression for predicting yes/no outcomes?
- Using multiple types of data: institutional, contextual (publicly available demographic), and behavioral data (such as those provided by Capture Behavioral Engagement)?
- Using automatic feature selection to optimize model training?
- Dynamically scoring each prospect, every time new data becomes available?
- Re-training your model within the enrollment cycle?
- Publishing their accuracy statistics on their website?
If every answer is yes, then ask your provider one last question:
In the world of data mining and predictive analytics, accuracy is the only currency that matters and competition is the best way to find the most accurate, highest performing model.
Capture Higher Ed is willing to analyze your historical enrollment data and evaluate the accuracy of an Envision predictive model at no cost to you. Put us up against your current model and see how we fare.
Conventional predictive modeling can no longer keep pace with the demands of today’s enrollment managers. New ideas and technologies have never been more crucial … and have never been more important to the institutional financial health of universities across the country.
At Capture, we believe we have built the most advanced predictive engine in the higher education marketplace today, and we would love to prove it to you. Prepare to see enrollment predictions in a whole new way.
By Thom Golden, Ph.D., Vice President of Data Science; Brad Weiner, Ph.D., Director of Data Science; and Pete Barwis, Ph.D., Senior Data Scientist, Capture Higher Ed
