ERIC Number: ED661566
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Sep
Pages: 64
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Classifying Courses at Scale: A Text as Data Approach to Characterizing Student Course-Taking Trends with Administrative Transcripts. EdWorkingPaper No. 24-1042
Annaliese Paulson; Kevin Stange; Allyson Flaster
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University
Students' postsecondary course-taking is of interest to researchers, yet has been difficult to study at large scale because administrative transcript data are rarely standardized across institutions or state systems. This paper uses machine learning and natural language processing to standardize college transcripts at scale. We demonstrate the approach's utility by showing how the disciplinary orientation of students' courses and majors align and diverge at 18 diverse four-year institutions in the College and Beyond II dataset. Our findings complicate narratives that student participation in the liberal arts is in great decline. Both professional and liberal arts majors enroll in a large amount of liberal arts coursework, and in three of the four core liberal arts disciplines, the share of course-taking in those fields is meaningfully higher than the share of majors in those fields. To advance the study of student postsecondary pathways, we release the classification models for public use. [Additional funding provided by the Michigan Institute of Data Science at the University of Michigan.]
Descriptors: Undergraduate Students, Course Selection (Students), Majors (Students), Sample Size, Academic Records, Classification, Liberal Arts, Professional Education, Educational Trends, Educational Indicators, Educational Change
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Brown University Box 1985, Providence, RI 02912. Tel: 401-863-7990; Fax: 401-863-1290; e-mail: AISR_Info@brown.edu; Web site: http://www.annenberginstitute.org
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R305B200011
Author Affiliations: N/A