Enhancement of Student Experience Management in Higher Education by Sentiment Analysis and Text Mining

Background Of The Case Study

In this article Arizona State University (ASU) is used as an example to illustrate how text mining can be utilized to manage and enhance student experience. ASU is the largest public research university in the United States under a single administration, with a 2016 student enrollment of 71,946 (ASU, 2017b). ASU is composed of six campuses spanning across the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (Tempe, West, Polytechnic, Downtown, Thunderbird, and Skysong Center). In 2017 the total endowment supporting ASU is $612.6 million (ASU, 2017c). However, while the student body keeps growing and the university is facing keen competitions, the administrator must find proper tools to respond to the challenges.

ASU was founded in 1885 as the Tempe Normal School by an act of the Thirteenth Territorial Legislature. Its name was changed to the Normal School of Arizona in 1901 and became Tempe State Teachers College in 1925. In 1945, the school was under control of the Arizona Board of Regents and was renamed Arizona State College. These changes resulted from expansions of the curriculum and degree offerings. By 1958 the school performed all the functions of a regular university. As a result, a statewide ballot led the school to adopt the current name Arizona State University. Although research endeavors preceded attainment of university status in 1958, the development of new academic programs and library holdings and the conferral of doctoral degrees in the 1960s led the Carnegie Foundation to grant ASU Research I status in 1994 (ASU, 2017e).

In 2002, Dr. Michael Crow became the university's 16th president. President Crow outlined his vision for transforming ASU into a “New American University,” an open and inclusive source of learning opportunities for all types of. Crow has stated that ASU is in a unique position to evolve together with the city into one of the great intellectual institutions in the world. In order to build a New American University, ASU has undergone some radical changes over the last 16 years. Like many universities, ASU has added new buildings, hired new faculty and brought in new students. More importantly, the core essence of New American University is open and inclusive. The preceding efforts might not yield the expected results if student experience is not well understood. Thus, under the leadership of Dr. Crow, the management style of ASU has become more data-driven, research-based, and student (customer)-oriented (ASU, 2017d). Over the last 16 years, ASU became one of the country’s fastest-growing research universities among those with $100 million+ in annual research expenditures. In terms of the overall growth rate of research spending ASU had outperformed Harvard, Yale, and Duke. While comparing with institutions without a medical school, ASU is ahead of Caltech, Carnegie Mellon and Princeton (ASU, 2017a).