Improve the Quality of Student Advice Without Hiring New Advisors

When Alamo Colleges District implemented a new advisor training program, the percentage of students with a formal academic plan increased by more than 20%.

Even before the Guided Pathways movement cast a spotlight on advising reform, most institutions were already grappling with how to scale meaningful guidance to their students. While most colleges would look to add new sub-specialties of advisors, Alamo Colleges District decided to elevate the quality of their advice through a rigorous professional training curriculum. Alamo noticed that their advisors were spending their limited time on transactional tasks. Advising sessions were typically treated as one-off conversations centered on course scheduling and registration. In turn, students were not receiving the quality, goal-oriented academic and career advice needed to guide their college experience. Get the latest in community college insights—straight to your inbox Recognizing that simply lowering their ratio with more advisors was prohibitively expensive—some community colleges estimate that they would need to commit up to 6% of their annual operating budget to hire enough advisors—Alamo decided to retrain their existing advisors. Professionalization, not proliferation The crux of Alamo’s success is the goal-based advising curriculum they developed in partnership with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). All advisors complete a three-tiered training module that standardizes knowledge and competency across siloes, enabling a cross-departmental case management model focused on student success. The first tier is an online module that provides essential training on institutional process and Guided Pathways. The second tier includes best practices on advising. Finally, the third tier builds on previous competencies with current labor-market data to center advising conversations around career exploration. To incentivize participation and completion, Alamo rewarded advisors who completed the full training with a $1,000 bonus and a title of “certified advisor.” Under this new advising…