The Promotion of Graduate Programs through Clustering Prospective Students

The promotion of academic programs, particularly at graduate levels, emerges as a response to market changes. In general, graduate programs are not a first order necessity which makes necessary the right promotion of such programs guarantee the attraction of prospective students, which enroll in some of them, which is essential for the financial sustainability of universities. Notably, the last one is a crucial problem for private universities. In this paper, we analyze the prospective students that enroll in a private to design better promotion strategies by using on data gathered by online sources. Specifically, we use clustering techniques to define marketing strategies based on segments of students. We find that age and city are crucial to promoting graduate programs while marital status and sex does not impact the decision of students in the university that we analyze

Wellness Lessons From Transportation Companies, Research Report WP 11-01

The purpose of this report is to describe wellness programs and offer two suggestions for improving how they are delivered to commercial drivers and operators. It is not a large sample empirical study from which generalizations can be made. Rather, the Mineta Transportation Institute commissioned brief case studies of transportation companies to show what several organizations have done. Stress, nicotine use, sleep apnea, obesity and lack of information are significant barriers to wellness in commercial drivers/operators. Many wellness programs ask the individual driver/operator to lose weight; exercise more; and monitor blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol and other such indicators of health. However, little is done to change the environment or adopt structural interventions such as forbidding nicotine use, as is possible in 20 states. Other structural interventions include those possible at the levels of the company and community, including access to healthy food rather than the junk food drivers often can find on the road. At the societal level, more public transit that gets people walking and out of their cars, cities designed for people to walk and cycle in rather than drive from work to a sprawling suburb, and encouraging food manufacturers to make healthy food (rather than a toxic mix of sodium, fat and sugar to boost one’s craving for a particular food) are just a few measures that could improve the health and well being of the public. The Union Pacific Corporation (rail transportation), and Con-way Freight (trucking) are included because they were willing to share information and are large publicly traded companies. The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) is included because other transit authorities recommended it to the authors, as it has a long history in wellness as part of local government and it too chose to participate. Two issues are discussed: the first is the importance of using the mitigation of erectile dysfunction in the promotion of wellness programs to commercial drivers/operators and the second issue is to urge employers to consider banning tobacco use, both on and off the job, where legal

THE DISTRIBUTION PATTERN OF NEW STUDENTS ADMISSIONS USING THE K-MEANS CLUSTERING ALGORITHM

The characteristics of prospective new students who re-register can produce a distribution pattern of new student admissions according to the data obtained. The results of the distribution pattern can be used as material for decision making in determining the socialization and promotion of study programs at universities. To produce a pattern, it requires grouping based on data that has the same character. The k-means algorithm, which is an algorithm in data mining processing methods for clustering, is successful in classifying new student admissions by maximizing the similarity of characteristics between data in one cluster which is different from data in other clusters. This is evidenced by direct application based on data mining procedures to data on new student admissions for Engineering Faculty, Manado State University for 2018, 2019, and 2020 with 8 selected variables. After clustering using the RStudio application, Data 2018 generates 6 clusters, 2019 data generates 3 clusters, and 2020 data generates 4 clusters. There are some re-registration characteristics that are common to all three years, which can be read easily after clustering

Using Customer Knowledge Surveys to Explain Sales of Postgraduate Programs: A Machine Learning Approach

Universities collect information from each customer that contacts them through their websites and social media profiles. Customer knowledge surveys are the main information-gathering tool used to obtain this information about potential students. In this paper, we propose using the information gained via surveys along with enrolment databases, to group customers into homogeneous clusters in order to identify target customers who are more likely to enroll. The use of such a cluster strategy will increase the probability of converting contacts into customers and will allow the marketing and admission departments to focus on those customers with a greater probability of enrolling, thereby increasing efficiency. The specific characteristics of each cluster and those postgraduate programs that are more likely to be selected are identified. In addition, better insight into customers regarding their enrolment choices thanks to our cluster strategy, will allow universities to personalize their services resulting in greater satisfaction and, consequently, in increased future enrolment

Cultural geography: a survey of perceptions held by Cultural Geography Specialty Group members

As of the year 2000, the Cultural Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers had 465 members and ranked fourth overall in total membership within the association. Furthermore, cultural geographers had the second fastest growing specialty group between 1993 and 1998, after the Geographic Perspectives on Women specialty group. In spite of this demonstrated overwhelming appeal among geographers, to date, no one has systematically analyzed the subdiscipline of cultural geography to determine such things as its links to other aspects of the discipline, its major scholarly contributions, its most highly regarded publication outlets, its notable practitioners, and its most recognized departments. As the ranks of cultural geographers have swelled, the subdiscipline has become multifaceted. This article contextualizes and interprets the results of a survey sent to members of the 1998–1999 Cultural Geography Specialty Group. Outcomes include Louisiana State University and the University of Texas at Austin listed as offering the strongest cultural geography departments, Wilbur Zelinsky being deemed the subfield's most outstanding living practitioner, and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers named the journal that best meets cultural geographers’ needs

Hygiene factors contributing to alumni satisfaction in attending Rochester Institute of Technology\u27s Service and Hospitality Management Masters of Science degrees from 1988 to 1997

Prior to this study there have been no alumni satisfaction studies of the Department of Food, Hotel and Tourism Management Masters Degree Programs from Rochester Institute of Technology. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of satisfaction of alumni and the impact hygiene factors have on alumni satisfaction. The initial element of the procedures was to conduct research. This research was accomplished through a review of pertinent literature. The review of literature was followed by the establishment of goals and parameters for this study. A survey was mailed to all the graduates of the F.H.T.M. masters programs. The population was reduced to those with an address on record with alumni relations office. The Total Design Method was employed in this study. Narrative tables were created to represent the written responses of graduates. Through the use of S.P.S.S. categorical tables were maintained to display the number of responses per category of the narrative comments. Biographical and demographical data was then cross-tabulated with satisfaction data using S.P.S.S. Through the employment of these cross-tabulations recommendations and conclusions were drawn. The outcomes of this study demonstrate a high level of satisfaction. Employment status, work related to your major field of study, current income, promotions, time to receive first promotion, program format, and major field of study all appear to affect satisfaction. The top reasons for not attending R.I.T. again related to the curriculum, career, and value. Courses, curriculum and the interaction with students and faculty were mentioned most often by alumni reporting what benefited the greatest. The three most frequently mentioned recommended academic changes were regarding faculty, adding a course(s), and other academic issues. Housing, placement services and other nonacademic issues were the most demonstrated recommended nonacademic changes

Data Mining Applications in Higher Education and Academic Intelligence Management

Higher education institutions are nucleus of research and future development acting in a competitive environment, with the prerequisite mission to generate, accumulate and share knowledge. The chain of generating knowledge inside and among external organizations (such as companies, other universities, partners, community) is considered essential to reduce the limitations of internal resources and could be plainly improved with the use of data mining technologies. Data mining has proven to be in the recent years a pioneering field of research and investigation that faces a large variety of techniques applied in a multitude of areas, both in business and higher education, relating interdisciplinary studies and development and covering a large variety of practice. Universities require an important amount of significant knowledge mined from its past and current data sets using special methods and processes. The ways in which information and knowledge are represented and delivered to the university managers are in a continuous transformation due to the involvement of the information and communication technologies in all the academic processes. Higher education institutions have long been interested in predicting the paths of students and alumni (Luan, 2004), thus identifying which students will join particular course programs (Kalathur, 2006), and which students will require assistance in order to graduate. Another important preoccupation is the academic failure among students which has long fuelled a large number of debates. Researchers (Vandamme et al., 2007) attempted to classify students into different clusters with dissimilar risks in exam failure, but also to detect with realistic accuracy what and how much the students know, in order to deduce specific learning gaps (Piementel & Omar, 2005). The distance and on-line education, together with the intelligent tutoring systems and their capability to register its exchanges with students (Mostow et al., 2005) present various feasible information sources for the data mining processes. Studies based on collecting and interpreting the information from several courses could possibly assist teachers and students in the web-based learning setting (Myller et al., 2002). Scientists (Anjewierden et al., 2007) derived models for classifying chat messages using data mining techniques, in order to offer learners real-time adaptive feedback which could result in the improvement of learning environments. In scientific literature there are some studies which seek to classify students in order to predict their final grade based on features extracted from logged data ineducational web-based systems (Minaei-Bidgoli & Punch, 2003). A combination of multiple classifiers led to a significant improvement in classification performance through weighting the feature vectors. The author’s research directions through the data mining practices consist in finding feasible ways to offer the higher education institutions’ managers ample knowledge to prepare new hypothesis, in a short period of time, which was formerly rigid or unachievable, in view of large datasets and earlier methods. Therefore, the aim is to put forward a way to understand the students’ opinions, satisfactions and discontentment in the each element of the educational process, and to predict their preference in certain fields of study, the choice in continuing education, academic failure, and to offer accurate correlations between their knowledge and the requirements in the labor market. Some of the most interesting data mining processes in the educational field are illustrated in the present chapter, in which the author adds own ideas and applications in educational issues using specific data mining techniques. The organization of this chapter is as follows. Section 2 offers an insight of how data mining processes are being applied in the large spectrum of education, presenting recent applications and studies published in the scientific literature, significant to the development of this emerging science. In Section 3 the author introduces his work through a number of new proposed directions and applications conducted over data collected from the students of the Babes-Bolyai University, using specific data mining classification learning and clustering methods. Section 4 presents the integration of data mining processes and their particular role in higher education issues and management, for the conception of an Academic Intelligence Management. Interrelated future research and plans are discussed as a conclusion in Section 5.data mining,data clustering, higher education, decision trees, C4.5 algorithm, k-means, decision support, academic intelligence management

Education in occupational health psychology: Where have we been, where are we now and where are we going?

At the first full conference of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology (Lund, 1999), the decision was ratified to organise activities around three fora. These together represented the pillars on which the European Academy had been founded that same year: education, research and professional practice. Each forum was convened by a chair person and a small group of full members; it was agreed that a forum meeting would take place at each full conference and working groups would be established to move developments forward between conferences. The forum system has proven an effective means by which to channel the energies of individual members, and the institutions that they represent, towards advancements in all three areas of activity in occupational health psychology (OHP) in Europe. During the meeting of the education forum at the third full European Academy conference (Barcelona, 2001), the proposal was made for the establishment of a working party that would be tasked with the production of a strategy document on The Promotion of Education in Occupational Health Psychology in Europe. The proposal was ratified at the subsequent annual business meeting held during the same conference. The draft outline of the strategy document was published for consultation in the European Academy’s e-newsletter (Vol. 3.1, 2002) and the final document presented to the meeting of the education forum at the fourth full conference (Vienna, 2002). The strategy document constituted a seminal piece of literature in so far as it provided a foundation and structure capable of guiding pan-European developments in education in OHP – developments that would ensure the sustained growth of the discipline and assure it of a long-standing embedded place in both the scholarly and professional domains. To these ends, the strategy document presented six objectives as important for the sustained expansion and the promotion of education in the discipline in Europe. Namely, the development of: [1] A core syllabus for education in occupational health psychology [2] A mechanism for identifying, recognising and listing undergraduate and postgraduate modules and courses (programmes) in occupational health psychology [3] Structures to support the extension of the current provision of education in occupational health psychology [4] Ways of enhancing convergence of the current provision of education in occupational health psychology [5] Ways of encouraging regional cooperation between education providers across the regions of Europe [6] Ways of ensuring consistency with North American developments in education and promoting world wide co-operation in education Five years has elapsed since the presentation of these laudable objectives to the meeting of the education forum in Vienna in December 2002. In that time OHP has undergone considerable growth, particularly in Europe and North America. Expansion has been reflected in the evolution of existing, and emergence of new, representative bodies for the discipline on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. As such, it might be considered timely to pause to reflect on what has been achieved in respect of each of the objectives set out in the strategy document. The current chapter examines progress on the six objectives and considers what remains to be done. This exercise is entered into not merely in order to congratulate achievements in some areas and lament slow progress in others. Rather, on the one hand it serves to highlight areas where real progress has been made with a view to the presentation of these areas as ripe for further capitalisation. On the other hand it serves to direct the attention of stakeholders (all those with a vested interest in OHP) to those key parts of the jigsaw puzzle that is the development of a self-sustaining pan-European education framework which remain to be satisfactorily addressed

Demand for higher education programs: the impact of the Bologna process

The Bologna process aims at creating a European Higher Education Area where intercountry mobility of students and sta?, as well as workers holding a degree, is facilitated. While several aspects of the process deserve wide public support, the reduction of the length of the first cycle of studies to three years, in several continental European countries where it used to last for four or five years, is less consensual. The paper checks the extent of public confidence in the restructuring of higher education currently underway, by looking at its implications on the demand for academic programs. It exploits the fact that some programs have restructured under the Bologna process and others have not, in Portugal. Precise quantification of the demand for each academic program is facilitated by the rules of access to higher education, in a nation-wide competition, where candidates must list up to six preferences of institution and program. We use regression analysis applied to count data, estimating negative binomial models. Results indicate that the programs that restructured to follow the Bologna principles were subject to higher demand than comparable programs that did not restructure, as if Bologna were understood as a quality stamp. This positive impact was reinforced if the institution was a leader, i.e. the single one in the country that restructured the program. Still an additional increase in demand was experienced by large programs that restructured to offer an integrated master degree, thus conforming to Bologna principles while not reducing the program duration.education policy; European Higher Education Area; economic, social and cultural integration; count data.