Question

Academic drops have been a concern for university administration due to the negative impact they have on graduation rates and consequently the image of the university.

The Management Department has collected the data for 10 semesters with the following results:

Academic drops from the last 20 to 10 semesters have been:

10, 7, 8, 9, 8, 6, 10, 12, 8, 10.

Has the Management Department seen a significant change in the number of academic drops over the last 5 years?

                     

              b.    The 10 most recent semesters of sample data are: 5, 6, 8, 4, 2, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2.

              

              c.    Based on your evaluation of these data should the Management Department change their program to lower academic drops?

Answer 1

1.

t-Test: Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variances
	Drop (20-15)	Drops (15-10)
Mean	8.4	9.2
Variance	1.3	5.2
Observations	5	5
Hypothesized Mean Difference	0
df	6
t Stat	-0.701646415
P(T<=t) two-tail	0.509186478
t Critical two-tail	2.446911851

H0: Difference Between the no. of students dropping out in the last 5 years and in 5 years prior to that is 0.

H1: Difference Between the no. of students dropping out in the last 5 years and in 5 years prior to that is not 0.

Assumption: Population is normally distributed

Since p-value = 0.509186478 > 0.05 i.e Ho can't be rejected and thus it can be said that Difference Between the no. of students dropping out in the last 5 years and in 5 years prior to that has not changed much.

3.

t-Test: Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variances
	Drop (20-10)	Drops (10-0)
Mean	8.8	4.1
Variance	3.066667	3.433333
Observations	10	10
Hypothesized Mean Difference	0
df	18
t Stat	5.829633
P(T<=t) two-tail	1.6E-05
t Critical two-tail	2.100922

H0: Difference Between the no. of students dropping out in the last 10 years and in 10 years prior to that is 0.

H1: Difference Between the no. of students dropping out in the last 10 years and in 10 years prior to that is not 0.

Assumption: Population is normally distributed

Since p-value = 1.6E-05 < 0.05 i.e Ho can be rejected and thus it can be said that Difference Between the no. of students dropping out in the last 10 years and in 10 years prior to that has changed and since mean of students dropping in last 10 semesters is less thus Management Department should not change their program to lower academic drops as they are coming down in the present conditions too.