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Andrew Drinkwater

Getting Your Intakes Approved

If you work in Institutional Analysis, Institutional Research or similar, you know getting your five-year plan approved can often be more of a marathon than a sprint. There are consultations (and consultations, and consultations…), new directions, and almost always a surprise or two.

Tripling Your Tuition Revenue?

Poof – you’ve now tripled your revenue in only five years. All from growing student intakes by 10% and rates by 15% per year. I’m providing this tongue-in-cheek example as many people struggle with non-linear growth patterns, and overlooking those patterns at could result in erroneous conclusions.

Learning Together: Leveraging Paired Analysis to Make Your Enrolment Forecast Successful

Paired analysis is an excellent method to encourage stakeholders to work more collaboratively on an enrolment forecast. As an analyst, you can learn immensely from your colleagues working on the “business” side of the institution.

Having Multiple Professionals Build Your Enrolment Forecast

What happens when your primary enrolment forecaster gets sick? Or gets another job? Would your institution be left scrambling?

It's the most wonderful time of the year... for enrolment forecasters

It’s that time of year again. It’s when enrolment forecasters shift gears from “let’s figure out what the possibilities are” to “wow, the rubber is really hitting the road. We’ve got to have an enrolment plan in less than a month”.

Happy 5th Birthday, Plaid

We’ve learned a lot over these years, and we couldn’t have done it without partnering with leading post-secondary institutions and related organizations.

Two decades of data wrangling, and I’m still learning new things

Many institutions we work with struggle with the subscription models employed by many software vendors. Each time you onboard new staff, there is an added license cost that you didn’t plan for in your budget. But with FME, the cost of adding new staff to the platform is exactly zero.

Lessons from my (first!) live interview on the Ravit Show

When Ravit first approached me about being on the show, I was a bit nervous with the idea of presenting live to a global audience. But the more I thought about it, about the more I realized this is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been working towards.

On industry professionals giving back to students in a pandemic

This is a weird year to be a student: some haven’t been on campus since March, others have never met their classmates and instructors in anything other than a virtual setting. In this context, I think our role as industry professionals is more important than ever.

Tableau Changed My Life

Back in 2007, I downloaded a free trial of Tableau Software, a company no one I knew had heard of. Their mission was to help people see and understand their data. How many software tools have changed your life? Tableau changed mine.