A Manchester start-up is using machine learning techniques to identify students at risk of dropping out of university.
George Sanderson and Jamie Rawsthorne had the idea for Unique Insights while studying entrepreneurship in Bristol.
They set up the company aged just 21, moving to聽 London to be part of business accelerator Mass Challenge.
Now based in Spinningfields in the Northern tech cluster, they are being mentored by Wakelet founder and CEO Jamil Khalil.
Their business 鈥� which analyses student data 鈥� will launch officially with the start of the new academic year in September.
Sanderson told a 老九品茶Cloud Big Data conference at the International Festival for 老九品茶: 鈥淓ach student that drops out costs institutions 拢27,000 in tuition fees alone.
鈥淲ith their being over 120 universities in the UK, it is a whopping 拢750m problem.
鈥淯nique Insights help universities to spot the students that are most vulnerable to dropping out, along with highlighting the most practical piece of support to work with for each student.
鈥淲e achieve this through applying cutting edge data analytics techniques to student data and outputting these results through an intuitive dashboard for support staff to work with.
鈥淲e take four to five years鈥� worth of historical student data from a university. Then we apply our algorithm to spot trends and patterns within data of those students who have dropped out.
鈥淭he algorithm is now tailored to a university鈥檚 specific data set and come August / September the analytics can be readily applied to the new cohort.鈥�
It鈥檚 estimated that over 27,000 students drop out of university in the UK every year, which equates to a drop-out rate of seven per cent.
Big Data is big news. We reported yesterday how analytics firm Hello Soda has cemented its international presence with the opening of a new US office.