Title: On Predicting the Graduation Time of Bachelor's Degree Students in China's Open Universities
Abstract: Open Education in China has been developing swiftly since 1999.However,the resource allocation including funds and staffing have not increased with the number of students.This can be attributed to the inaccurate forecast of the number of undergraduate students.A better model for forecasting the undergraduate scale of Open Education in five to ten years is needed to guide decision making on development planning,fund input decision and staffing.As we know,undergraduate scale is decided by several variables and time of their graduation is one of controllable variables.This study uses the Open Education(Bachelor Programs)of China Open Universities as the sample,adopts data analysis and mining methods such as data querying,difference tests,correlation analysis,cluster analysis,etc.,and tries to discover students' graduation rate and the semester distributing characteristics of graduation rate from three dimensions of university-grade,program and age-gender.The research results show that there are some regular patterns in the graduation time.First,the graduation time happens in the 5th,6th,7th and 8th semester more frequently;the max graduation time span of a group of undergraduates(grouped from the dimension of university-grade)is 13 semesters;the distributing characteristics of graduation rates in semesters with different graduation rates of the different groups of undergraduates are similar.Second,the programs of Humanities and Social Sciences(excluding English programs)are shorter in the graduation time span and higher in their graduation rates.Third,the graduation rate decreases as the students' age increases;and the relation between graduation rate and student's age is negatively correlated.The distributing characteristics of the semesters with different graduation rates of the different age groups(older than 20)are similar.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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