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catool: Compensation Analysis Tool

CRAN status
R-CMD-check
Lifecycle: experimental
GitHub version
Walkthrough Vignette

catool (Compensation Analysis Tool) is an R package that calculates fair and transparent overload pay for college instructors. It analyzes course schedules and applies institutional policy rules to determine qualified credit hours and compensation—prorated when needed.

🔧 Key Features

  • Filters out under-enrolled or ineligible courses
  • Calculates overload based on qualified credit hours only
  • Prorates pay for enrollments below a specified threshold
  • Sorts courses by enrollment and counts from lowest up
  • Supports instructor- or institution-favoring strategies
  • Produces clear summary tables for individual or full-schedule use
  • Tidy tibble output, ready for export and reporting

📦 Installation 

# Install from GitHub
# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("dawit3000/catool")

🗂️ Input Format

Your course schedule data must include:

Column Description
INSTRUCTOR Instructor’s name (e.g., “Smith, C”)
ENRLD Enrollment in each course
HRS Credit hours assigned per course

Optional: SUBJ, DEPARTMENT, COLLEGE, and PROGRAM for advanced filtering.

📂 Sample input: The schedule.csv file provides a realistic example of course schedule data used by the package. It includes columns such as SUBJ, CRN, INSTRUCTOR, DEPARTMENT, and COLLEGE.

🧪 Quick Start 

library(catool)

schedule <- data.frame(
  INSTRUCTOR = c("al-Abdul", "baxter", "Smith, Courtney"),
  ENRLD = c(12, 7, 4),
  HRS = c(3, 3, 3)
)

# Analyze one instructor
ol_comp(get_instructor_schedule("baxter", schedule))

# Apply one instructor with a custom policy
ol_comp(get_instructor_schedule("Smith", schedule),
        L = 4, U = 9, rate_per_cr = 2500 / 3, reg_load = 12)

# Summarize full schedule (payroll-ready summary of all instructors in the schedule)
ol_comp_summary(schedule)

🔍 Filtering Options 

# Filter by subject
filter_schedule(schedule, subject_pattern = "MATH|STAT")
filter_schedule(schedule, subject_pattern = "^MATH|^STAT") # If subject codes are always exact prefix

# Filter by department
filter_schedule(schedule, department_pattern = "Business")

# Filter by instructor
get_instructor_schedule("davis", schedule)

# List all instructors
get_unique_instructors(schedule)

📊 Output Structure

The ol_comp_summary() function returns a clean tibble with:

  • QHRS: Qualified credit hours above regular load, eligible for pay
  • PAY: Calculated compensation per row
  • TYPE: "PRO" where ENRLD < 10, blank otherwise
  • SUMMARY: Instructor headers, notes, and totals

Note: Pay is never per-course—only on qualified credit hours.

⚖️ Policy Logic

Default institutional policy:

  1. Regular teaching load = 12 credit hours

  2. Courses with ENRLD < 4 are excluded

  3. Qualified credit hours beyond regular load are paid at $2,500 / 3 per hour

  4. For ENRLD < 10, pay is prorated:

    $$ \text{Compensation} = \left(\frac{\text{ENRLD}}{10}\right) \times \text{rate per CR} \times \text{qualified CR} $$

  5. Overload hours are counted starting with the least-enrolled eligible courses

🧭 Instructor vs Institutional Interest Inclination Strategy

You can specify how regular teaching load is assigned when determining overload pay:

  • favor_institution = TRUE → Favor institutional interest → Assign high-enrollment courses to regular load first → Leaves low-enrollment courses for compensation → Results in less total pay

  • favor_institution = FALSE → Favor instructor interest → Assign low-enrollment courses to regular load first → Leaves high-enrollment courses for compensation → Results in more total pay

This option is supported in both ol_comp() and ol_comp_summary() functions.

📖 Full Walkthrough

🔗 Vignette & Examples