How Wiregrass Georgia Technical College achieved enrollment gains by transforming its advising model

Student success has always been at the heart of Wiregrass Georgia Technical College’s (Wiregrass) advising model. But prior to 2017, students had minimal insight into the academic planning process and relied on advisors to create class schedules term after term. Advising appointments were dominated by schedule creation across multiple days.

During peak enrollment times, advisors struggled to adequately handle each student’s scheduling needs. Close to 34% of students were not self-sufficient enough to plan their course or register, and much more felt they lacked the skill to take charge of their academic plans.

In 2015, the Wiregrass leadership team would begin the process to streamline the student advising process, first by establishing a central academic resource center. However, after a year in the new model, Wiregrass realized a technology solution was vital to reach many more of their students and support enrollment efforts at scale.

The following year, in order to further drive improvements, Wiregrass leveraged Navigate to personalize the student advising experience, resulting in an advising structure which supported student development and improved advisor-student rapport.

Wiregrass sees 4 percentage point increase uptick in 2017 applicant yield

Advisors are able to give students the support they need during pivotal term timelines. And the model has increased staffs capacity to run “success workshop” geared towards students needs drawn from this improved interactions. As an institution, the applicant conversion rate increased by 4% from 2016 to 2017, resulting in $79,000 in additional revenue.

• 79K additional revenue earned from enrolling a greater proportion of the total Wiregrass applicant pool