Changes in campus demographics can help to make allocation decisions based on shifting needs and demands.
The Problem:
The data provided by the University on the number of majors by department is only provided as annual PDF reports. In order to complie multiple years of data and view change over time it was necessary to open multiple PDF files and transcribe the data into a spreadsheet or document.
The Solution:
In order make the data easier to use, the data in the PDF files was first converted into Excel files using PDF Converter. The Excel file was then uploaded into a MySQL database on a web server.
A simple web interface to the data was built using a combination of Perl and PHP. The web site for the student major data is available at:
http://depts.washington.edu/cdassess/majors/.
In addition to the simple web report, we are also able to extract data from the database for further analysis. The example below shows a section of a spreadsheet that was created out of the database to show the number of majors per year. The columns labeld '5 year change factor' and '1 year change factor,' are calculated in Excel to show the degree of change in departments and correct for large and small numbers (i.e. change from 5 to 6 vs. change from 77 to 96).
