Universidad Latina and Analytikus: Predicting student dropout via AI

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica uses Foresight—a revolutionary platform from Analytikus driven by artificial intelligence—to predict risk factors that can lead to student dropouts and implement the appropriate measures. It´s based on Legacy´s retention model focused on the student's life cycle. The entire process runs on Azure Data Factory, Azure Machine Learning, Power BI, and Azure SQL, and thanks to Foresight, ULatina lowered its gross dropout rate from 34.3 percent to 28.9 percent in 2019—with 2022 dropout rates expected to be 27 percent or lower increasing student enrollment program ROI.

Customer Challenges

Founded more than 30 years ago, Universidad Latina de Costa Rica is the largest private university in the country, with more than 20,000 students enrolled in 90 programs across five schools and eight campuses. ULatina has more accredited programs than any other private institution in the country, is the first and only university in Central America with a 4 QS Star-rating from QS Quacquarelli Symonds, and is currently rated amongst the top 10 universities in LATAM for its educational excellence. To capitalize on its academic success, ULatina decided it needed Foresight to prevent student dropouts and risk factors.

Partner Solution

ULatina adopted the Foresight platform from Analytikus to analyze teacher and student behavior throughout the entire learning process, which ultimately led to above-average performance in student satisfaction and retention rates. Through its multi-variable behavioral analysis, Foresight proved itself to be a critical tool for ULatina in determining the likelihood of students dropping out and helping to implement the measures required to mitigate risk factors. In addition, Foresight is fully integrated with Azure Data Factory to ensure the execution of its predictive models.

Customer Benefits

Thanks to Foresight and Microsoft Azure, ULatina was able to decrease its gross dropout rate and implement an early intervention program aimed at boosting retention. Foresight also connects with the university's systems to generate a unique profile for each student. Further, it enables ULatina to visualize the results of its programs in user-friendly dashboards and identify the variables that most affect attrition while determining per-student dropout risk.

“Foresight helps prevent the possibility of student dropout and take actions that mitigate the risk of dropout. The university was concerned with analyzing the behaviors of the teaching-learning process for teachers and students, leading to better performance compared to the group average.”

Julio Galindo, Information Technology Director, Universidad Latina de Costa Rica