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PDFCustomer Success | Broward College: Proactive decision making with SAS®With annual enrollment of 60,000, Broward College finds that it needs an efficient and proactive way to gain information about programs for current and future students. In addition to addressing administrative reporting, Broward uses SAS® for enrollment management. With SAS, the eight-campus system not only successfully markets the college; it also ensures the success of its Achieving the Dream efforts, which makes higher education a reality for underserved populations.  Check out this video to learn more about Broward College and its successes with SAS. View Video (Runtime: 4 mins., 2 secs.)You have questions; our customers have answers. Check out this video Q&A.  Patti BarneyVice President, Information Technology View Video (Requires Windows Media Player 6.4.7 or higher or RealPlayer 6 or higher) Centered around the city of Fort Lauderdale just north of Miami, Broward College is located in one of the most densely populated areas of the country and therefore competes with a variety of other higher-education institutions. "Like other institutions, our enrollment was changing, so we wanted to figure out why some areas were declining and why some weren't growing as much as we thought they should," explains Wendy Clink, Director of Enterprise Business Intelligence. "After a number of years of going up, our enrollment started going down. We compete against a lot of higher-education institutions in Broward County, so we needed to see who we were losing our edge with." Was it high-school students, transfer students, international students or continuing education students? And were the programs the college offered contributing to decline? These were the challenges that Broward knew SAS could help them overcome. With SAS, Broward gained:
"Before we implemented SAS, we used a different product that only provided reports," Clink says. "It didn't give us the analytics we needed to look at our data in different ways to figure out what was going on with our students. But now, human resources, our deans, our administrative assistants, the college president, all of the vice presidents and the provosts have desktop access to the intelligence they need." Answers in minutes, not weeks "We could get the answers we needed that way, but it would take one or two weeks," Clink says. "With SAS, we get the information we need in minutes. And we don't have to involve the mainframe people, so they're free to work on other projects."
Using SAS, the college looks at data beyond grades to find out why some students are more successful than others. Factors such as holding down several jobs while going to school, dealing with stressful family issues, speaking English as a second language or being academically challenged can all pose obstacles for students, Barney says. Reporting advances 'Achieving the Dream' Broward's Achieving the Dream program consists of 136 students whose successes are tracked by drawing conclusions from intelligence drawn from a variety of systems, such as student information, financial aid, course management, faculty reports, human resources and budgeting. The insights that Broward gleans from this effort helps the college know when to intervene, if needed, to make sure students stay on track, receive their degrees and ultimately move on to four-year institutions or enter the work force. At Broward, the Achieving the Dream students boast a 92 percent retention rate, says Matthew Seeman, Information Analyst. "Four out of the seven learning communities had 100 percent retention," he adds. "Out of 136 students, only seven withdrew." "The strategies we have in place are working, according to the results we're seeing with SAS," he adds. "We've made a lot of progress by having SAS at Broward College."
The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Patti Barney Vice President for Information Technology Broward CollegeChallenge:
Broward College needed access to validated data about programs for current students, marketing to potential students or reporting for grants like Achieving the Dream – in short, the college needed to be able to make confident decisions within minutes. Solution:
SAS provided access to needed reports for human resources, the college president, deans, vice presidents and administrative assistants. They now have access to data and reports at their fingertips in order to make accurate, data driven decisions. Benefits:
Reports that once took weeks now take minutes to produce, thus allowing the school to take a proactive stance toward managing enrollment, retention and programs intended to help students succeed. By doing so, enrollment has increased to 5.5 percent compared to being down 1 percent in previous years. “The strategies we have in place are working, according to the results we're seeing with SAS.” Matthew Seeman Information Analyst Read more:
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So far, Broward has discovered that students who enroll and complete a college success class – one that helps them prepare for college – tend to be the most successful, says Patti Barney, Vice President for Information Technology. "We are learning a lot about retention rates and SAS is showing us that students who make it through their first semester and specifically their college-prep classes, tend to do well going forward," Barney says.
