ABSTRACT
Major universities are using their students' race, among other variables, to predict how likely they are to drop out of school. More than 500 universities across the country use Navigate's “risk” algorithms to evaluate their students. In addition to documents on how the models work, the Markup obtained aggregate student risk data from four large public universities. The rise of predictive analytics has coincided with significant cuts in government funding for public colleges and universities. In 2018, 41 states contributed less money to higher education—on average 13 percent less per student—than they did in 2008. The company's models are also trained on historic student data, anywhere from two to 10 or more years of student outcomes from each individual client school, another aspect of the software experts find problematic.
