Economics and Quantitative Analysis: Exploring Graduation and Retention Rates in Online Education

Economics and Quantitative Analysis 1
ECONOMICS AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
By Student Name
course
Lecturer’s Name
Institution
State
Date

Economics and Quantitative Analysis 2
Linear Regression Report
Purpose
Over the past 10 years the use of internet has spread rapidly across the globe. With the
emergence and spread of this tech ology a swift change is taking place of how things are
currently done world-wide (Craig 2015). The education sector has seen an emergence and
spread of institutions offering online studies. This brings with it the challenge of selecting
and identifying the best university to enrol in. In this report the focus will be in two variables;
the graduation rate (GR) and the retention rate (RR). The study aims at studying the
association between these two rates
Background
Higher studies is one aspect of individuals life that is given a lot of weight, prior to
joining an institution people do take time to figure out the right course and the institution that
best offers the course. In an era when most of the studying is done online it’s more complex
for an individual to evaluate an institution and select the right one (Morris 2018). To make
this choice a little bit easier two rates have emerged into the lime light that is the RR and the
GR. The GR measures the proportion of students that join an institution and are able to
complete their studies within 150% of the time needed to finalise a course. On the other hand,
the RR evaluates the percentage of freshmen who returns to the same instituin to continue
with their second year of studies (Anstine 2013). With this it is possible to determine if the
standards a college set during admission are an exact replica of what they offer.
Being that the RR and the GR are able to gives some insights in to the quality
standards of an institution they are an important aspect that economists can use to rank
universities and hence help students and parents with the selection issue. Moreover, the two
rates are direct and simple to understand and apply.
Method
The Online Educational Database is an organisation that has been developed to
independently create a reliable list of all the accredited colleges that offer online studies. This
body stores data regarding each college. The data is a sample of 29 colleges which have been
selected at random from the database (Sabbah 2011). It shows the RR and the GR for each
college. In this study the Microsoft excel has been applies to investigate the relationship

Economics and Quantitative Analysis 3
between the two rates. The analysis involves development of scatter plot, modelling simple
linear regression as well as drawing descriptive analysis from the data.
Results
a. Descriptive analysis
This is the numerical analysis of the data sample as presented by the table below
Descriptive Statistics
RR(%) GR(%)
Mean 57.4137931 Mean 41.75862069
Standard Error 4.315602704 Standard Error 1.832018976
Median 60 Median 39
Mode 51 Mode 36
Standard Deviation 23.24023181 Standard Deviation 9.865724115
Sample Variance 540.1083744 Sample Variance 97.33251232
Kurtosis 0.461757455 Kurtosis -0.882399313
Skewness -0.309920645 Skewness 0.176364432
Range 96 Range 36
Minimum 4 Minimum 25
Maximum 100 Maximum 61
Sum 1665 Sum 1211
Count 29 Count 29
Largest(1) 100 Largest(1) 61
Smallest(1) 4 Smallest(1) 25
b. Scatter plot
This is the visual presentation of the two variables the RR is the independent
variable (x) while the GR is the dependent variable (y). The diagram below
represents the scatter plot (Vice Further Maths Tutorials 2011).