In 2009, the board of regents responsible for all public higher education funding in a large Midwestern state hired a consultant to develop a series

In 2009, the board of regents responsible for all public higher education funding in a large Midwestern state hired a consultant to develop a series of enrolment forecasting models, one for each college. These models used historical data and exponential smoothing to forecast the following year’s enrolments. Based on the model, which included a smoothing constant (α) for each school, each college budget was set by the board. The head of the board personally selected each smoothing constant based on what she called he “gut reactions and political acumen”