The time it takes a student to graduate with a university degree is mitigated
by a variety of factors such as their background, the academic performance at
university, and their integration into the social communities of the university
they attend. Different universities have different populations, student
services, instruction styles, and degree programs, however, they all collect
institutional data. This study presents data for 160,933 students attending a
large American research university. The data includes performance, enrollment,
demographics, and preparation features. Discrete time hazard models for the
time-to-graduation are presented in the context of Tinto's Theory of Drop Out.
Additionally, a novel machine learning method: gradient boosted trees, is
applied and compared to the typical maximum likelihood method. We demonstrate
that enrollment factors (such as changing a major) lead to greater increases in
model predictive performance of when a student graduates than performance
factors (such as grades) or preparation (such as high school GPA).Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure
