UK Universities Are Using Big Data & Machine Learning to Reduce Student Drop-Out Rates

Earlier this year, the UK parliament rushed through a bill that could see an increase of university student tuition fees to £9250. Controversially, the new legislation also allows universities to increase these fees year on year in line with inflation, if they choose to. At the same time, the 2016-17 academic year saw the number of students dropping out of their degrees increase for the second year running, now up to 6.2% from 6% last year. For any business, the prospect of retaining 6% of annual revenue from churned customers would be a no-brainer. When that 6% could translate into £6 million in tuition fees for places that can't be resold, the stakes are high.