Hardwiring Student Success
Building disciplines for retention and timely graduation
This study profiles innovators’ efforts to elevate student success initiatives from the current patchwork of support services to an actively managed enterprise process that is designed to systematically identify and rapidly intervene with students exhibiting behaviors predictive of attrition or graduation delays.
Executive summary
Despite massive institutional investment in advising and support services, national student retention and graduation rates have remained lackluster for decades. The combination of increased pressure from state governments and heightened financial concerns generated by the economic climate have suddenly brought this issue to the forefront of higher education agenda, leaving many schools wondering what more they can do to improve.
Retention exemplars share the insight that significant improvement is possible without adding more support resources. For many, the problem isn’t under-resourced services but over-reliance on students and faculty initiative to utilize them. At the majority of institutions, students receiving help are those self-aware and tenacious enough to ask for it, rather than those who need it most.
Leaders in academic affairs, enrollment management, student affairs, and advising who are responsible for or involved in improving student retention and graduation rates on their campuses will find the practices and tools in this publication useful in their work.
Create accountability for success
Comprising a director and one or more staff, the Retention Management Office oversees the university’s network of early warning systems and serves as the designated point of contact for most retention-related issues on campus. A small staff of counselors works with at-risk students identified via early warning systems or on a walk-in basis.
Implementation Tip: Larger universities should coordinate interventions with college advising offices to manage large volume of alerts.
The retention director acts as the appointed spokesperson for retention issues with the faculty, parents, and administration and serves as the retention advocate to the senior administration. The office is adequately staffed and has the resources to distribute small emergency scholarships to students in financial peril. Such offices typically report up through academic affairs, enrollment management, or student affairs.
Identify at-risk students
Instead of relying exclusively on midterm grades, some universities are identifying academically struggling students via a range of academic performance indicators such as absenteeism and class participation. Instructors submit alerts through an interface built directly into the online course roster. The checkbox-style, exceptions-based reporting tool allows faculty members to quickly alert advisors to those students exhibiting risky academic behavior.
Too little, too late: The problem with midterm grades
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Not early enough
Interventions launched after mid semester succeed far less often than those begun as soon as the student’s performance begins lagging
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Not detailed enough
Grade on a single assignment (typically the first paper or exam) offers little insight into root cause of student’s academic struggles
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Low response rates
At many institutions, low levels of faculty participation leave as much as 50%–80% of the first-year class unmonitored
Reporting at some universities occurs on a rolling basis, while other schools request that alerts be submitted at a single moment four weeks into the semester. Follow-up typically is managed by the retention management office (if one exists) or by the central advising office (or by the individual colleges’ advising offices at larger universities). Some progressive universities have developed automated systems that notify the referring instructor of the outcome of the advising meeting, encouraging future participation.
Hardwire institutional intervention
When an instructor submits an academic alert through the online course roster, the system automatically prompts the responsible advisor in that student’s home college to initiate follow-up. The alert opens a “ticket” that cannot be closed until the advisor meets with the student, assesses the problem, and enters the outcome in the system along with any action steps.
The referring instructor is automatically updated via e-mail on the outcome of the intervention. The system allows central administrators to monitor the progress of interventions, promoting accountability among advisors for following up on alerts in a timely manner. If the queue of open tickets becomes unmanageable, the central advising office redirects resources to ensure coverage.
"“When faculty get the advisors’ reports, they want to participate more in the alert process. These reports keep our system going.”
"José Luis Vargas Director, Educational Opportunity Program
Cal State Northridge
Chart a path to degree completion
Academic departments prepare and publish model four-year course progressions for all arts and sciences majors. These “degree maps” show students the proper timing and pacing of major and general education requirements necessary to ensure graduation in four years.
Degree maps are a familiar concept in higher education, having long been used by professional colleges such as engineering, nursing, and business to ensure that students are taking the right courses in the right order at the right times. The Council recommends that members extend this practice and install degree maps in all arts and sciences departments as well.
Graduation delays often result from preventable academic missteps made early in a student’s career.
To improve timely graduation, some schools are mandating that all departments provide students with clear semester-by-semester guides to degree completion. These “degree maps” show students the proper timing and progression of required major and general education courses. Students are encouraged to fulfill major and general education requirements early, allowing flexibility later for a semester abroad or a double major. Degree maps can be made the centerpiece of an advising conversation or they can help students self-advise in the absence of a face-to-face meeting.
Intervene with off-course students
A small team of transcript specialists in the university advising center hold twice-daily walk-in sessions to help students learn how to interpret their transcript audits and better understand what courses they still need to take before they can graduate. Sessions are open to all juniors and seniors.
Students at many universities need help interpreting transcript audits and determining their outstanding graduation requirements. Transcript audits are often difficult to understand, putting students at risk for making critical errors in course selection that may delay graduation. Transfer credits may not integrate perfectly with the university’s transcript audit technology, exacerbating audit confusion at universities with large numbers of “swirling” students.
Case study: California State University Long Beach
- Urban master’s university with 31,500 undergraduates
- The main advising center hosts twice daily walk-in workshops for juniors and seniors seeking to better understand their unfulfi lled graduation requirements
- Students receive assistance from expert advisors in learning to interpret their degree audits and transcripts and gain insight into the right classes they need to take in order to complete their degree
- Advisors make follow-up appointments with any students who have more complicated questions or require a more in-depth conversation
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