A School of Continuous Improvement poster audits the Capability Sprints' new Capacity Reconciliation Index against enrolment-classification logs and finds its climb tracks reclassified enrolments, not seats offered.
A poster from the School of Continuous Improvement finds the Capability Sprints' new Capacity Reconciliation Index rises almost entirely on reclassified enrolments, with seats offered unchanged
The Capability Sprints’ newest instrument was built to solve two problems with one number: an enrolment cap set for each Sprint, and a growth target set for the University as a whole. A new poster from the School of Continuous Improvement asks what a single index does when it has to satisfy both from the same headcount, and reports that satisfying both turns out to be mostly a matter of the label.
The audit paired eight intakes of enrolment-classification logs against Index scores across all five Sprints, tracking whether a commencing place was recorded as new or returning alongside how many seats each Sprint actually offered that intake. Seats offered held steady across the full window; the share of commencing places coded returning did not, climbing sharply in the two intakes after the Index’s introduction.
The University treats a composite index as fair game for the same scrutiny it turns on everything else it measures, whichever office the index happens to serve.
An index that has to satisfy two mandates from one number will always find the cheaper one to move first. Relabelling a seat is cheaper than opening one, so that is the lever the Index found.
— Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer in the School of Continuous Improvement
“We ask this question about every seminar and every review cycle in the School,” said Dr Bram Ntuli, Lecturer and Convenor of Improvement Grand Rounds. “It was only a matter of time before someone pointed it at an enrolment count instead.”
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.naqxev.