How to improve graduate student retention
Colleges and universities have spent years strengthening support for their undergraduate students. Now, as graduate enrollment slows and more of these students struggle to navigate the academic and administrative steps that keep them on track, institutions need to give their graduate support models some attention too.
This blog explores what good graduate student support looks like and how two institutions are using technology to coordinate it.
Graduate student risk isn’t always easy to see
Graduate students are often working adults navigating timelines, milestones, and barriers that most support models were not designed to catch. Traditional signals like course performance, registration status, and early alerts still matter, but they do not show whether a student is stuck waiting on a thesis proposal, missing a research milestone, or unsure about deadlines for faculty review. Those milestones often live in departmental spreadsheets or email threads. And because they sit outside the systems leaders use to understand retention risk, students can look “on track” while falling behind in the work that determines whether they complete their graduate degree.
That’s what makes supporting graduate student success tricky: so much of their progress is difficult to see. Institutions need a clearer view of graduate progress so they can spot delays earlier, prompt the right person to take action, and help students avoid extra time they probably can’t afford.
Identify the moments where graduate students stall
Another reason graduate progress is hard to see is that so much of the experience is decentralized and managed at the program level. That structure gives programs the flexibility to set timelines, milestones, advising practices, and faculty review processes that fit their field, but it can also leave students and leaders without a clear view of what comes next. A thesis-based PhD, a counseling master’s program, and a professional business program will all have different structures, but the students in all those programs still need a clear path to follow.
Institutions need a standard way to make key milestones and obstacles visible, even when those milestones differ by program. Students should always know their next steps, faculty should know when action is needed, and graduate schools should be able to see where progress is moving or starting to stall.
The examples below show how two Navigate360 partner institutions improved visibility at different points in the graduate student journey.
Case study 1: Northern Illinois University connects graduate students to support from the start
Graduate students at NIU kept running into “invisible administrative hurdles” that never showed up in any system. Students didn’t know which office owned their issue, and no office knew the issue existed. To reduce those barriers, NIU used Navigate360 to give graduate students a coordinated support model that provided clearer next steps and easier access to the right resources. NIU began by identifying each incoming graduate student’s needs, then automatically connecting them to relevant support and bringing their essential tasks, resources, and appointments into one place.
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Solution
- Intake survey captures incoming graduate students’ needs, from tutoring to housing assistance
- Students are then automatically connected to the relevant resources
- Navigate360 student app puts everything graduate students need in one place: checklists of key to-dos, appointment scheduling, class schedules, and more
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Impact
- 1,262 appointments scheduled by grad students in the first year using Navigate360 for this population
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12% of NIU’s Navigate360 student app users are grad students, in line with their share of enrollment
Thanks to Navigate360 surveys, instead of saying ‘let us know if you want to meet,’ we can send a link that says, ‘You told us you want to meet—here’s how to schedule.’
Brandon Lagana
Coordinated Student Success and Retention Initiatives, Northern Illinois University
Case study 2: Georgia Tech makes thesis progress visible
Georgia Tech has more than 30,000 master’s and PhD students across 100+ programs, but lacked a way to consistently track and enforce thesis milestones. There was no system of record, progress reviews weren’t consistently documented, and leadership had no real-time way to see which students were falling behind. This risked delays piling up over several years, resulting in students taking longer to graduate and facing growing financial pressure. To address this, Georgia Tech used Navigate360 to create a shared workflow for managing the entire thesis process.
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Solution
- Student App Journeys automatically assign and guide students through core thesis milestones — Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) requirement, qualifying exam, candidacy, defense, and certificate of thesis approval
- Alerts and cases trigger the required faculty and staff actions at each milestone and keep research progress on track
- Email capture records key decisions and student acknowledgments, so every review is documented and every decision is confirmed
- Programs keep control of how they review and advise students within the shared structure
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Impact
- A single system of record for thesis milestones across all programs — for the first time
- Consistent documentation of every milestone
- Faculty and staff have the ability to identify and reach students before delays or missed deadlines occur
- Reporting tracks on-time milestone completion, on-time thesis reviews, and time from milestone to faculty review and/or graduation
Five ways you can make graduate student progress easier to see
A student success CRM, like EAB’s Navigate360, helps institutions standardize visibility into student progress across decentralized programs while preserving the flexibility each discipline needs.
1. Turn program milestones into trackable checkpoints
Graduate programs can keep their own requirements, but the important steps should not live only in someone’s spreadsheet or inbox. Digital checklists help students see what comes next while giving staff a way to see who is moving forward and who may be stuck.
2. Automate outreach when students miss key steps
It’s easy for a missed milestone to go unnoticed when follow-up depends on one person remembering to check. Navigate360 automatically triggers outreach when a student misses an important step. This helps make sure the student—and the right staff member—know right away when something needs attention.
3. Centralize notes, appointments, and referrals in a shared system
Graduate students often work with many people: faculty advisors, program directors, graduate school staff, financial aid, career services, and other support offices. A shared student record helps staff see a student’s full journey in one place, so they know what has already happened instead of asking the student to explain the same issue.
If a student continues from undergraduate to graduate study at the same institution, Navigate360 helps preserve a shared view of their support history rather than making graduate staff start from scratch. That continuity helps advisors and support teams understand what has already worked, what challenges the student has faced before, and where the student may need support earlier in their graduate journey.
4. Identify patterns across programs and cohorts
Individual student visibility is important, but leaders also need to see where progress is slowing down across groups of students. Reports and dashboards can reveal patterns by program, cohort, milestone, or support need. That makes it easier to spot program-level issues instead of treating every delay like an isolated problems.
5. Coordinate care around the student
Graduate students can lose momentum for reasons that are not always obvious, like work, finances, family responsibilities, or health needs. Technology can help staff refer a student directly to the right person or office, assign follow-up, and confirm whether the student received support. The student only has to tell their story once.
Graduate student retention starts with better visibility
The biggest challenge in supporting graduate students is that most institutions can’t see that they’re struggling until students are already facing the consequences. By using technology to make milestones, responsibilities, and next steps more visible, colleges and universities can give graduate students the clarity they need to keep making progress towards graduation while preserving the flexibility that makes graduate education unique.
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