Predicting who will graduate from a university is a
difficult challenge, especially for US public
universities whose missions serve diverse populations
under relaxed admission criteria. Building predictive
models for entering freshmen poses many problems:
some students receive financial aid, others do not;
some enter with SAT scores, others with ACT scores;
some students stop out and then return. And, with the
advent of the modern data warehouse, a dizzying array
of data exists, which might, or might not, help build
predictive models. This doctoral study examines the
work required to build...