Researchers at the School of Continuous Improvement have released new findings on closed-loop management of weekly enrolment offers, examining how a single feedback controller copes when it answers to an admissions cap and a growth target updated on different cycles.
Drawing on fourteen months of weekly offer-rate telemetry across two admissions cycles, the team fitted a discrete-time controller to the University’s own offer pipeline and tracked how consistently it held both targets as the setpoints’ update cadence was varied. Stability held when the two cycles aligned, and loosened as they drifted apart.
“The findings help clarify how much coordination a control system can supply on its own, and how much still depends on the calendars set around it,” said Associate Professor Casimir Beng, Lead of the Adaptive Metrics Lab in the School of Continuous Improvement.
The University is proud to extend its evaluation-ecosystem agenda into the machinery of its own admissions pipeline.
The team is careful to note that a controller tuned for one pair of committee calendars may need retuning if either calendar changes.
“We look forward to seeing how the wider sector responds to a shared-clock approach,” said Dr Osei Vandermeer, a Research Fellow in the School of Continuous Improvement.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.t29aao.
Read the output: Two Setpoints, One Controller: Weekly Enrolment Offers Under a Cap and a Growth Target on Different Clocks (doi:10.5555/slop.t29aao)