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Yuba Community College District

Situation

A two-year public community college with more than 78 years of service, Yuba Community College District supports a student population of more than 10,000. Yuba College’s experienced and well-trained faculty manages more than 1,000
occupational, technical, and general education programs in more than 90 departments.

Challenge

In order to best serve the needs of its students, Yuba College continually improves its institutional effectiveness by measuring how well the college achieves its goals. In particular, Yuba College prides itself on its national reputation for a highly accurate assessment and placement system, the goal of which is to ensure students can function successfully in the courses they choose. In order to continually improve its effectiveness, Yuba Community College District must:

Solution

Using PASW Statistics data analysis software, Yuba College can determine and match student capabilities with curriculum, thus improving student retention and graduation rates. In addition, the college can more easily monitor and react to trends in the student population to improve operations.

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Results

For colleges today, the pressure is on to be accountable for their operations. For Yuba College, measuring this accountability meant turning to PASW Statistics software. Yuba College uses PASW Statistics to analyze its programs and the trends within its student population so that it can react to these trends and better meet the students’—and the college’s—needs.

Thanks to PASW Statistics, we are able to complete significantly faster analysis of our academic programs. Prior to PASW Statistics, we would have spent most of one term — that's several months — analyzing one program. Now we can do it in a week or less.

Dr. Ronald Gordon
Director of Research and Assessment
Yuba Community College District

Began creating new minimum standards for success in the nursing program

Take the highly respected Yuba College nursing program. Students began dropping out—or flunking out—of certain required classes, which caused them to drop out of the nursing program altogether. Yuba College wanted to do something about it. So Dr. Ronald Gordon, director of research and assessment for the Yuba Community College District, turned to PASW Statistics for insight.

Dr. Gordon examined historical data for students in the nursing program, analyzing the success rates in three specific classes in which students were having difficulties: the Fundamentals of Nursing, Medical/Surgical Nursing One, and Basic Pharmacology. By tracking students’ success in these classes relative to their success in certain pre-requisite classes and their scores on certain assessment tests, Dr. Gordon was able to better predict which students would succeed and which would fail.

By using PASW Statistics, Dr. Gordon uncovered some interesting facts. Even though algebra was a pre-requisite for one of the three courses, it really had no correlation with a student’s success in the course. Instead, a student’s grasp of basic arithmetic skills had a greater correlation with success.

The school is now in the process of creating new minimum pre-requisite standards for these nursing courses to reduce the attrition rate within the nursing program. “We’re trying to make sure that the students who get into these classes are prepared to succeed,” Dr. Gordon said.

Improved overall student retention and pass rate by five percent

Nursing is not the only program that benefits from Dr. Gordon’s PASW Statistics analysis. Overall, Yuba College prides itself on its ability to place students in classes where they can succeed, and PASW Statistics plays a key role in this achievement. The college has developed a placement accuracy model that relies heavily on surveys completed by both instructors and students.

“In a community college, basing placement solely on grades is inaccurate,” Dr. Gordon said. “You don’t know whether the student dropped out because they did not have the ability to succeed or whether, for instance, their work schedule interfered with classes.” So Dr. Gordon surveys the faculty, asking them to rate whether a particular student was accurately prepared for the class in which that student was enrolled. He also asks the students to rate the level of difficulty of the class.

Dr. Gordon then compares the survey results to historical student data such as test scores to develop a system that is 90 percent accurate in placing students at the classroom level at which they are most likely to succeed. Using this model, Dr. Gordon has improved both student retention and pass rates by about five percent.

Shortened time needed to analyze educational programs from months to less than a week

PASW Statistics enables Dr. Gordon’s team to analyze university programs much faster, thus allowing the team to increase the number of programs it analyzes. “Thanks to PASW Statistics, we are able to complete significantly faster analysis of our academic programs,” Dr. Gordon said. “Prior to using PASW Statistics, we would have spent most of one term—that’s several months—analyzing one program. Now we can do it in a week or less.”

Received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money from various sources

SPSS Inc. software was also useful in developing a proposal to receive additional grant money from various sources. Using PASW Statistics, Dr. Gordon illustrated—in easy-tofollow tables and graphs—exactly why the college needed funds and the outcome of each potential funding scenario. The result? Yuba College received hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional state funding.

Improved operations by monitoring changes in student population and enrollment

Dr. Gordon also uses PASW Statistics for his “Monday morning” reports, in which he and his team provide college officials with a full review of current enrollment data, including the number of students, the programs in which they are enrolled, and other student data that is compared to previous years. The college uses this information to take action, such as run additional advertisements to boost the enrollment level of a certain program, or to examine the effect of a change in policy.

PASW Statistics’ ability to support easy-to-understand graphics is critical. “Everyone really appreciates the visual aspect of PASW Statistics,” said Kathryn Bryant, research analyst for Yuba Community College District. “It makes analysis so simple.”