Question

Downey College Footnote Tuition is the life blood of any four-year college and Downey College is no exception. Each year the Student Affairs Office initiates a campaign to get students to fill out their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application. As with any tuition aid program, there is a timeframe when you must apply. If you miss the application deadline, then you must wait until the following period. Downey College has lost several students during the enrollment process because the students did not complete their FAFSA application on time. Without the help of federal aid, the students were unable to take the courses they registered for. Hannah Hunt, vice president of Student Affairs, was eager to improve this process. Competing for student enrollment was a significant challenge and losing students because of FAFSA application errors was frustrating. Hunt decided to review the data from last year to determine how she could tackle the issue this year. Last year Hannah had her staff develop a check sheet on common errors concerning FAFSA applications. There were five major areas and an “other” area. She had them collect data by student status, that is, freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. The information is listed below.

ERROR	FRESHMAN 520 applications	SOPHOMORE 500 applications	JUNIOR 580 applications	SENIOR 530 applications	Total Errors	% of Total
Not filing by deadline	/////	////	//////	///
Wrong FSA ID	//	/	//	////
Wrong SSN	////	///	/
Did not sign FAFSA	/////	/////	//	///
Understating income	//////	////	//	/////
Filing wrong year’s FAFSA	//	//	/////	///
Other	/////	////	//	////

Discussion Questions

1. Hannah Hunt’s staff is very small; thus, she has limited resources available to tackle these issues. She can focus on either a specific error or on a specific class, for example, freshman. What do you recommend she do and why? Explain the benefit of your recommendation.

2. What is the sigma level of their FAFSA application program? Does the sigma level per class, for example, senior, change your recommendation on whether to focus on a specific error or a specific class? Is there any advantage in this perspective of the data? Explain your opinion to Hannah Hunt.

3. Hannah Hunt believes that filling out and submitting the FAFSA application is a no brainer. She believes that a Six Sigma level should be easy to obtain. Do you agree? Is this a realistic expectation? Explain your viewpoint.

Answer 1

The analysis of the above data chart pertaining to the FAFSA application errors is tabulated below:

ERROR	FRESHMAN 520 applications	SOPHOMORE 500 applications	JUNIOR 580 applications	SENIOR 530 applications	Total Errors	% of Total Errors	% of Total Students	Sigma Level per Error
Not filing by deadline	5	4	6	3	18	19.15%	0.85%	3.89
Wrong FSA ID	2	1	2	4	9	9.57%	0.42%	4.13
Wrong SSN	4	3	1	0	8	8.51%	0.38%	4.17
Did not sign FAFSA	5	5	2	3	15	15.96%	0.70%	3.96
Understating income	6	4	2	5	17	18.09%	0.80%	3.91
Filing wrong year’s FAFSA	2	2	5	3	12	12.77%	0.56%	4.03
Other	5	4	2	4	15	15.96%	0.70%	3.96
Total	29	23	20	22	94		4.41%	3.20
Total Students	520	500	580	530	2130
% Error per Student class	5.58%	4.60%	3.45%	4.15%
Sigma Level per Class	3.09	3.18	3.32	3.23

To know what is the type of error that leads to the maximum portion of erroneous FAFSA application, Hannah Hunt could review the percentage of total errors column and observe that not filling by deadline being the most contributing cause.

Initially, this method may seem correct by focusing error specific to tackle the issue. But given the limited resources to focus either on the type of errors or the cause, Hunt has to depend on the sigma levels of the application error specific to the class or the error type.

Lets calculate the sigma level of the FAFSA application program:

Process sigma level = $\sigma ^{^{-1}}$ (1-(% of Error)) + 1.5

We need to consider 1.5 sigma shift from the mean to consider the normality of the process.

Thus Process sigma level of FAFSA application program = $\sigma ^{^{-1}}$ (1-(94/2130)) + 1.5

Process sigma level of FAFSA application program = $\sigma ^{^{-1}}$ (1-4.41%) + 1.5

Process sigma level of FAFSA application program = 3.20

Process sigma level per class and that per error type is tabulated above.

Thus we see that Process sigma level per error type is higher than the overall sigma level of the application program. So it is showing better performance levels.

But we see that Process sigma level per class is lower than the overall sigma level of the application program. So it is showing lower performance levels since lower the sigma level, lower is the process capability and the process is faulty and prone to errors.

Thus Hannah Hunt need to focus on being student class specific to tackle the problem of faulty FAFSA application program.

Thus by analyzing the situation with process sigma levels, Hannah Hunt got a statistical perspective of focusing in the right direction to tackle the problem i.e being student class specific, given the limited resources to tackle the issue. This method thus gave a good advantage.

Hannah may believe that hat filling out and submitting the FAFSA application is a very easy task and that achieving six sigma level is very. But her current overall process sigma level is 3.20 with the DPMO (defect per million opportunities) being 44567 i.e 44567 erroneous instances in a million cases.

But the DPMO of six sigma process is as low as mere 3.4. So she has to undergo a very gigantic goliath task of bringing down the defect levels from 44567 to 3.4 throughout all student classes eradicating almost all the error types.

Her expectation doesn't sound realistic as it will require huge amounts efforts to drastically bring down the defect levels and the Downey College has limited amount of resources to tackle the issues both at student class as well as error types simultaneously. So it sounds unrealistic. But it is said, impossible is nothing. S she and her college has to put a lot efforts to achieve this feat.