Should Colleges Invest in Machine Learning? Comparing the Predictive Powers of Early Momentum Metrics and Machine Learning for Community College Credential Completion. CCRC Working Paper No. 118.

Among community college leaders and others interested in reforms to improve student success, there is growing interest in adopting machine learning (ML) techniques to predict credential completion. However, ML algorithms are often complex and are not readily accessible to practitioners for whom a simpler set of near-term measures may serve as sufficient predictors. This study compares the out-of-sample predictive power of early momentum metrics (EMMs)—13 near-term success measures suggested by the literature—with that of metrics from ML-based models that employ approximately 500 predictors for community college credential completion. Using transcript data from approximately 50,000 students at more than 30 community colleges in two states, I find that the EMMs that were modeled by logistic regression accurately predict completion for approximately 80% of students. This classification performance is comparable to that of the ML-based models. The EMMs even outperform the ML-based models in probability estimation. These findings suggest that EMMs are useful predictors for credential completion and that the marginal gain from using an ML-based model over EMMs is small for credential completion prediction when additional predictors do not have strong rationales to be included in an ML-based model, no matter how large the number of those predictors may be.