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Program Analysis FAQs

Here are a list of some commonly asked questions we've received related to our Program Analysis reports.

Report FAQs

What does the report entail?

For credit programs:

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Overall Program Health Report
  3. Program Student Acquisition Report
  4. Program Conversion Report
  5. Program Completion & Retention Report
  6. Program Prospect Targeting Report
  7. Addendum: Definitions, Supplemental Information

For cohort certificate programs:

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Overall Program Health Report
  3. Program Student Acquisition Report
  4. Program Conversion Report
  5. Program Prospect Targeting Report
  6. Program Scheduling and Registration Prediction Model Report
  7. Addendum: Definitions, Supplemental Information

For open enrollment programs:

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Overall Program Health Report
  3. Program Scheduling Report
  4. Program Acquisition & Recruitment Report
  5. Program Retention & Loyalty Report
  6. Addendum: Definitions, Supplemental Information

What data does JMH look at?

The report comes with data and actionable recommendations in four parts.

  • Overall program health, measures profit potential, size, and revenue of the program.
  • Acquisition data is presented to tell how well your program gets new registrations, conversion rates, and includes a measure of the health of your information sessions.
  • Conversion data represents the step between generating leads and really creating students. In this report, we will compare registration and marketing data.
  • Completion & retention data analyzes the growth (or shrinkage) of your program overall, determines weak links in the completion process (high-risk drop outs), and discusses how to improve the overall completion rate.
  • Prospect targeting data is used to measure the efficiency of your direct mail initiatives, comparing where you send brochures, and where you are most likely to get the highest return on your mailing investments.

How long will this take?

The entire process will take up to four (4) weeks. We can expedite on request, as fast as two (2) weeks. The biggest bottleneck is really the data collection since this phase can take a few attempts.

How much data do you need?

For credit programs, we need two (2) years data more than the typical completion time for a student. So if your degree takes four (4) years to complete, we would need at least six (6) years worth of data; if a program is generally completed in two (2) years, we ask for four (4) years of data. We really can't reliably do an analysis with less data than this, but we're happy to look at more.

For cohort certificate programs, we will need at least three (3) years of data. To make this data reliable, we also hope to have six (6) successful program runs worth of data to include in the study. Again, more is better, so we'll take as much as you have!

For open enrollment programs, we prefer at least two (2) years worth of data. We can do less, but more is always better. That said, we probably don't ever need more than eight (8) years worth of data for these types of programs.

Will this help us run a tighter ship?

Even without detailed expense data, we gave give you very good approximations and recommendations for how you can trim the fat and make more off of your programs. (Of course, detailed expense data makes this process better.)

What types of specific changes might I make in my program that will help?

There are myriad possibilities. Here are a few examples:

  1. We may help you confirm your own good intuition about your programs, and provide the data backup you need to make changes that you may already have in mind.
  2. If you’re doing direct mail, we will tell you where to send the brochures, to whom to send them, and how many to send to lower the expense and still increase revenues.
  3. We can help you simplify your marketing message by targeting “entry” classes as well as the program as a whole. You’ll learn which classes you should highlight to increase new enrollments.
  4. We will identify courses that hurt completion rates, so that you might: Empower your admissions staff to focus their time and resources on higher need students in more challenging courses and change instructors for certain courses to improve completion/retention.

General FAQs

For whom have you done these analyses before?

Although this is a new product, it is simply the combination of several other products which we have already run for various clients, in particular with our program par. The collection is new, but its pieces are not.

What do we need to provide you? How do you address confidentiality issues?

We’ll send you spreadsheet data templates for your team to drop your registration data into. We can even help combine data if need-be. We will need two years more worth of data than the typical time it takes to complete the degree. You never need to send any sensitive or private information for any students, protecting their confidentiality.

But we already do this. Why should I care?

Kudos! We can send you a sample report to give you some new ideas about ways to look at data and actions to take based on the data. We would also love to get your feedback based on your experiences.