Dallas City Wire

The University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton has seen an increase in enrollment, to which a report on the Government Technology website said is attributed to the four-year school’s data analytics.

UNT was spared massive drops in enrollment that impacted other universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Citing Forbes Magazine, Government Technology reported that total higher education enrollment has fallen nearly 8% in the last three years. 

With the help of a program called UNT Insights, which included software data analytics company SAS, the school had registered a 16% spike in enrollment, with 2022 alone accounting for a 5% increase, per the report.

The feat had apparently been at least half a decade in the making.

Dr. Jason Simon, UNT’s associate vice president for data analytics and institutional research, said the institution in 2015 came to the realization about the benefits of data analytics.

“We put together a team of individuals from across campus to hold a mirror up to ourselves and assess where our strengths and our weaknesses were, and then begin a process of thinking about what needed to evolve in order to fundamentally reposition the institution,” Simon told Government Technology. “No tool or technology is ever going to be a direct correlation to institutional outcomes, but moving to a more advanced maturity level in terms of data availability, data application, data-informed decision-making and data-based policy does certainly help move the needle.”

An article on the University Business website reported that UNT leadership used to rely on results that were available to the school to examine future recruitment and enrollment trends. 

Since the implementation of UNT Insights, over 1,200 trained employees have been tasked with forecasting trends as part of the decision-making process, Simon said in the report.

“It takes effort and support from the top to achieve a higher level of analytic maturity,” he said. “There are some foundational hurdles that most institutions haven’t figured out how to get over yet.”