Broward College harnesses the power of Azure Machine Learning and responsible AI to increase student retention rate

Meeting the needs of every student  

Each of the 55,854 students at Broward College, a public college in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, comes to the school with a dream: an educational goal, a career ambition, a hope for the future. Nearly half of the student population are first-generation college students, and 53% are eligible for federal Pell Grants; from full-time degree programs to part-time certificates, students are pursuing programs that will help them get new jobs, advance in their current roles, and unlock new career opportunities. 

“We take great pride in being able to accept every student regardless of the challenges they face, but that means we also have to take responsibility for meeting the needs of those students,” says Gregory Adam Haile, J.D. President of Broward College. “We shape our institution so that we can meet the needs of anyone walking through our doors.” 

But many students face obstacles along their path, and every student has a unique set of circumstances and challenges. When Broward College set a goal to decrease student attrition rate—the rate at which students withdraw or leave prior to completing their course plan—they turned to data to uncover new solutions. 

Imagining more data-driven student support 

For Haile, equal opportunity for education is a personal pursuit: Growing up in a low-income neighborhood, he didn’t hear the word “college” until middle school, when a classmate spoke of his own college ambitions. Increasing the retention rate for students is one way to help break the cycle. “When we’re talking about retention and completion, we’re talking about transforming lives in ways that will persist decades beyond their graduations,” says Haile. “The question I ask myself every day is: How do we make it impossible for everyone not to see the same educational opportunities?” 

Broward College saw that Microsoft shared its mission of providing opportunities and success for all. “We started having conversations about the mission of Microsoft, our shared goal of making a difference in the world of education, and what we could achieve together,” says Haile. 

Building on an existing relationship with the Microsoft Data Scientist Program, Broward College implemented Azure Machine Learning (AzureML) to create AI models to better understand student attrition.  With these AI models, Broward’s data team was able to reveal hidden insights in its structured and unstructured student data. 

Identifying key predictors of student attrition 

Using Azure Machine Learning, Broward College was able to identify five key predictors of student attrition: cumulative credit hours earned, cumulative GPA, high school degree and/or GED status, and course modality (in-person, blended, or online learning). The five key predictors of student attrition are now being used to design data-driven student support strategies across the campus, and will also inform changes in course design, including scheduling and learning modality. 

Using machine learning to generate actionable insights has enabled Broward College to respond to students’ needs more quickly. The technology allows the team to process data in minutes that would previously take days to complete—and to isolate complicating or potentially misleading factors, like the impact of the pandemic on student retention. “We can move from descriptive to predictive and prescriptive—not what happened but ‘what will happen?’ and ‘how are we going to address that?’”, says Dr. Erica Pereira Amorim, Chief Data Officer at Broward College. “I can use the data to better serve our students and communities.” 

For example, a student at the threshold of cumulative credit hours earned may be encouraged to add another class to their schedule through Broward College’s “Take One More” campaign, because they know that the student will have a higher chance of success when they reach a certain milestone of credit hours earned. By creating tailored, proactive interventions, Broward College can support each student in ways that best fit their needs—before the student is at risk of leaving their education pathway. 

“Our students don’t come to quit, they come to finish—but they just don’t always know what’s in the journey ahead of them,” says Dr. Mildred Coyne, Senior Vice President of Workforce Education and Innovation at Broward College. “We can use this technology to predict and help them succeed.” 

Increasing equity and reducing bias

Dr. Amorim describes Broward College’s Institutional Research Department as the “connective tissue” that assists the institution. 

Despite dealing with an immense amount of data in her day-to-day work, Dr. Amorim understands that the numbers represent a more meaningful, human story. “Behind each number is a person, a life, a family,” she says. “My career goal is to support institutions in designing and implementing more effective and evidence-based solutions to help improve people’s lives.”

This student-first mindset aligned with the Microsoft responsible AI principles of equity, fairness, transparency, and inclusivity. Because many Broward College students are new to the college environment, they often aren’t sure how to ask for help, or what support is available for them. 

“Our students often come in thinking that the higher education environment isn’t welcoming or is biased against them. We’ve got to make sure we defeat that, but we also must recognize that there might be biases on how we personally interpret the data,” says Haile. “Machine learning gives us the opportunity to de-bias the data and better serve our students.”

Solving campus-wide research questions  

Broward College has an ambitious research and analytics agenda; tackling student attrition is just the beginning. 

The Institutional Research Department’s campus-wide reporting and assessment runs on Microsoft Power BI, which helps the department to connect information across disparate sources, visualize reports clearly, and make smarter, more data-driven decisions. With external partners that span the Broward County region, the strong data analytics foundation of Power BI is essential for the department’s data projects on- and off-campus. Innovation is at the heart of the department’s culture, and the team plans to further integrate machine learning into data and reporting efforts across its research and reporting in the future. 

From helping more students complete financial aid applications to predicting future enrollment numbers, the college plans to use data and AI to work towards solutions for the most pressing and persistent problems in higher education. 

“We’ll be able to apply AI and machine learning across different research questions,” says Dr. Coyne. “AI and machine learning will help us answer questions that have been plaguing the higher education field.” 

Empowering economic mobility across the community 

Developing insights and solutions for student success will help the education field broadly—but more importantly, it will allow Broward College to advance in its mission to transform students’ lives. 

Armed with these new data capabilities, Broward College can not only understand which students are struggling, but initiate specific actions that correlate to student success, like adjusting class times to fit busy schedules or ensuring access to adequate transportation to campus. And through these more focused, intentional interventions, Broward College faculty and staff can help more students get to graduation day. 

And the institution understands that more positive educational outcomes lead to better job opportunities, an increased likelihood of education for the next generation of students, and other long-term impacts for the Broward community. Enhancing student support in-school has economic, technological, and social impacts that reach far beyond the Broward College campus. 

“We’re talking to our cities, our county, our business leaders, and multi-national companies like Microsoft, and saying, ‘What does it look like to work together to uplift our communities?’” says Haile. “How do we give people the capacity to lift themselves out of any challenge that they’re facing and manifest any vision or dreams that they have for themselves?” 

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