Institutions of higher education are finding that forecasting enrollments is of critical importance in the current environment of steady and declining student populations. Accurate short-term enrollment forecasts provide valuable information to administrators for budgeting, planning, and (in the case of state supported institutions) negotiating with funding agencies. This research suggests that Box-Jenkins (ARIMA) models may be used to produce accurate short-range forecasts of seasonal enrollment data. One-step ahead (one academic quarter ahead) forecast errors of Full Time Equivalent Students (FTES) for the Virginia Community College System are on the order of 3.6% with errors increasing in magnitue to 5.6% for forecasts one year into the future. The methodology employed in this paper to forecast VCCS enrollments can be adapted easily and inexpensively to forecasting enrollments at other institutions.
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