EM Articles – Enrollment Management

LIVING YOUR SCHOOL’S BRAND ACROSS THE CAMPUS: AN OPEN LETTER TO CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICERS

2/21/2020The student-recruitment gloves are off in the wake of DOJ-mandated changes to NACAC’s Code of Ethics and Professional Practice.
By Eric Sickler

February 20, 2020

In a prior “Call to Action” blog post directed to college and university presidents, I wrote, “Exercising leadership discipline in the management of your college’s brand is the best way to help prospective stakeholders know your institution as you want them to know it, and to encourage them to act in ways you’d like them to act: inquire, apply, enroll, persist to completion, donate to and advocate for your college.”
The notion of persisting to completion now takes on weightier significance as increasing numbers of college and university admission leaders across the nation (23 percent according to a recent EAB study) “say they will consider recruiting students who have already committed to another institution.” I haven’t talked to anyone in the profession who believes this number has peaked.
As recruitment and marketing operations innovate and bolster efforts to catch and keep the students they want most, it’s also time for all other operating divisions of every campus to feel the same urgency to make certain they’re fully delivering on the promises recruiters are making to prospective students and their families.
We’ve said it for many years, but today it’s truer than ever before: recruiting a student isn’t successful until the student completes her program and earns that credential.
An occasionally overlooked opportunity to breathe life into your school’s brand — and deliver on its recruitment and marketing promises — sits squarely in operational areas typically managed by your chief business officer and staff.
To introduce some brand-alignment thinking to your CFO, consider setting up a brainstorming session to discuss ideas, like:
Integrating an introduction to your school’s brand foundation into new employee orientation activities.
Front-line staff in the business/comptroller’s office, buildings and grounds, food service, bookstore, switchboard, and other public-facing and auxiliary business units should be trained and coached to deliver on your institutional brand promise and to make programming decisions for their units with your school’s brand foundation in mind.
Recognizing and rewarding exemplary demonstrations of brand-aligned performance at annual employee gatherings.
Demonstrating institutional brand alignment (in words and imagery) via artwork and other commissioned “environmentals” like signage, planters and kiosks in public spaces.
Mandating that all individuals engaged in commissioned artwork, facilities master planning, architectural/building projects and other highly visible campus initiatives are fully briefed on the foundational elements of your brand foundation; ask them to integrate your school’s brand promise, pillars, character and centering idea in their deliverables.
Routinizing the practice of making sure all strategic business discussions and decisions take into consideration the question “How can this opportunity powerfully align with, and provide institutional support for, our institutional brand?”
Making sure wall coverings, surfaces and furniture color schemes for new and renovated building projects align with (or at least complement) the official institutional color palette associated with your brand foundation.
And perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit of all: ensuring that all official college/university business forms (statements, reports, invoices, financial aid award letters, correspondence, etc.) adhere to official institutional graphic standards; likewise, the tone and substance of all editorial content (even standard postal and email correspondence) must reflect the nomenclature and intent of your brand foundation.
Eric Sickler has helped the nation’s college and universities clarify and elevate their brands for more than three decades. You can reach him at The Thorburn Group, a Stamats company.

WHY A TUITION PRICING STRATEGY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

6/26/2019
June 11, 2019
Refine Your Pricing Strategy, Market Research,
Stamats Insights By Patrick Stark

On May 9th, the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) stated that tuition discount rates have hit a record high of more than 50 percent for first-time full-time students. These findings from a national study of tuition pricing reflect exactly what we’re seeing in the field and why having a pricing strategy is more important than ever.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Pricing strategy is more than setting a high discount rate—it’s about analyzing a complex set of data that examines the combined effect of your current market price and brand value compared to your competitors. That’s why tuition pricing elasticity and brand value studies are indispensable. They look at a combination of data-driven factors that inform pricing strategy.

Pricing studies are always directed at inquiring students, applicants, and parents of these students, with the end goal of reaching your future prospective students and parents. Depending on institutional needs, these student groups can be segmented. For example, you might direct a study at general inquiries and applicants, STEM students, athletes, or even students from different socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds.

In many cases, public institutions cannot adjust tuition without approval from an authorizing board. However, many public institutions are free to make decisions about fee structures. A pricing study offers considerable insight into how fees might be adjusted and communicated. Private institutions tend to have more freedom to adjust published price and net cost, and a pricing study can produce results that can immediately inform or confirm these strategies. Without a doubt, justification is a prudent and necessary measure that data driven pricing models can produce.

Accurate Pricing Strategies
Using choice-based modeling (often referred to as choice-based conjoint) rather than simply looking at historical data, pricing studies allow you, with great precision, to:

Determine the price point (both publish and net cost) that will attract the most students (including whether significant pricing adjustments are required, such as a tuition reset)
Identify the price point that will generate the most revenue
Calculate the number of students you will gain (or lose) at different price points
Determine the impact financial aid and discounting will have on enrollment
Understand how students of different abilities (think GPA and ACT/SAT scores), geographies, and backgrounds (such as household income) value your institutional brand.

Understand Your Brand
Beyond pricing strategy, a tuition pricing elasticity and brand value study will allow you to:

Determine how different student segments compare you to your competitors
Understand how students who list you as “first choice” compare and contrast with students who list you at a “second” and “third” choice, or “never attend”
Identify the college characteristics and choice attributes that are of most value to students and parents so you can build your brand and customized communication strategies
Identify both the general messages and the specific messages that create interest and drive value
Create baseline brand metrics or compare existing metrics

Timing Your Pricing Study
As you might guess, it is especially useful to conduct a pricing study ahead of any changes in tuition or when building revenue models. For most schools, this means starting to conduct the study in Fall (though TPES studies can run through the next year). Timing is especially important, because it needs to coincide with student knowledge and decision making. By fall, inquiring students and applicants begin to have a greater awareness of which colleges they are interested in, pricing, and what factors are unique about each college they are considering.

No matter the time of year, there’s never a wrong time to start thinking about your tuition pricing strategies.

CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS IMPACTING HIGHER EDUCATION & SHU’S ENROLLMENT INITIATIVE RESPONSE

5/7/2019

Traditional Market (CAS)

Demographic declines in high school graduates through 2025 worst declines occur in the mid-west, Michigan is one highest declines in the mid-west, decreased >15%
Demographic declines are increasing competition among both private and public university impacting marketing, outreach, and awarding of institutional aid from private and public institutions.
Devaluation of higher education resulting from heavy political and media focus on free college and the lack of value in holding college debt is creating increasing difficulty for recruitment officers to convince families of the value of the higher education investment
Traditional market is looking for increasing options for educational delivery creating flexibility and increasing speed to degree

Post-Traditional Market (GPE: CPS|GRC)

Demographic declines within the post-traditional market are following those in the traditional market. These declines started about five years after the declines started in the traditional market, approx. 2008, and will end around 2030; lagging behind the traditional market by that same five years.
Increasing competition in the post-tradition market has exploded as a result of the national drop in the traditional market and the need to supplement traditional tuition revenue with lower overhead post-traditional and graduate revenue. Competitors in our primary market include reputational significant institutions like Purdue, Ohio State, and Arizona State.
The strength of the economy and falling unemployment has increased the difficulty to find and convince post traditional prospects of the urgency and need to increase their educational levels. Historically weak employment helps post-traditional enrollment and strong employment hurts it.
Increasingly the age and hours of the post-traditional students are dropping with only 25% of the post-traditional undergraduate market holding more than 60 hours, the hourly benchmark to enter SHU’s degree completion program. Currently SHU is unable to aggressively attract and recruit an under 60-hour post-traditional student or 75% of this market.

Report Card Initiatives for Enrollment

A series of initiatives have been initiated in the EM Division to address the challenges within the traditional and post-traditional markets. Results for all of the enrollment initiative can be found at the following web address:
http://em2020.sienaheights.edu/strategic-initiative-results.html . The progress of these initiatives are updated regularly.

Graduate and Professional Enrollment (GPE) have engaged three primary initiatives implemented to enhance the marketing and recruitment practices of Siena’s post-traditional markets. These changes are designed to improve Siena’s competitiveness and effectiveness in an every growing and highly competitive online and adult market.

The initiatives are:

Integrated digital marketing for increased market outreach and branding
Call Center qualification and verification of marketing prospects for faster engagement and
Development of partner institutions to build an additional source of organizationally supported post-traditional pool of prospects

The GPE Marketing Initiative is designed to increase Siena’s market recognition, brand development and draw inquiries into the recruitment database for the post-traditional enrollment segments for Graduate and Professional Enrollment. This effort is focused heavily in the digital marketing area with multiple program outreach through social media and search engine optimization. Secondary efforts through other multi-media outlets are supplementing the digital efforts.

The GPE Call Center Initiative is designed to qualify and validate inquires attracted to Siena’s post-traditional markets within 24 hours of their initial interest. The constantly growing level of competitiveness within this market requires timely contact, unattainable with Siena staff. Once qualified the inquiries are pass into the EMP database for personalized communication and to Siena’s GPE professional staff for recruitment. The qualification of marketing prospects allows a limited professional staff to focus on the prospective students who are truly interested in Siena’s graduate and professional programs.

The Partnership Initiative is designed to build active partners from education, health care, corporate entities, and governmental organizations to build mutual benefit for both. Siena gains access to employee populations for its various academic programs to help meet its enrollment goals while the partners are able to offer an additional educational benefit for their employees at a discounted rate. Additional benefits include cross branding, employment opportunities and mutual public engagement. This initiative is a coordinate effort between GPE and GPS.

Enrollment efforts for the College for Arts & Sciences (CAS) have focused on offsetting challenging demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the traditional market. These characteristics have created a critical need for Siena to look beyond its historic geographic draws to supplement the CAS student body in a set of actions that are built within one primary initiative.

CAS Out of State Initiative is designed to increase the volume of students from states other than Michigan. This has a dual purpose; these students will live on campus adding to housing revenue and this segment generally have strong family incomes. A series of actions have been underway to support this initiative that include:

multi-media marketing in the Ohio market
increasing visitation and outreach to Catholic high schools out of state
more aggressive direct mail campaigns in our targeted non Michigan states

Finally, these enrollment initiatives are wrapped around a pricing strategy that builds on the market’s concerns revolving around value, price certainty and affordability. The Siena Tuition Advantage (STA) has already received highly positive feedback in our graduate market and in discussions with parents of rising seniors in the traditional market. The market value of showing stability in the University’s pricing structure will prove to be a benefit in growing the enrollment for all three University segments. Evidence can already be seen in the benefit of price stability; the FY20 CAS tuition lock seems to be supporting an initially strong registration rate for the upcoming fall. As a reminder, STA will take effect in Summer 2019 for the Graduate College but will not begin for both undergraduate segments until the 2020-21 academic year. G. Wolf

BUILDING A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY TO ATTRACT POST-TRADITIONAL STUDENTS

11/20/2017When you picture today’s quintessential college student, what do you see? If it’s someone straight out of high school, lounging around on an idyllic college campus lawn, think again. Known as the “traditional student,” this sector of the student population still represents the majority – but there’s another group making ground and increasingly demanding attention. Post-traditional students—that is, people who come to education a little later in life—represent a staggering 40 percent of all students, and that number continues to grow. Because they’re arriving at universities later—often after they’ve started working—reaching them requires a unique strategy (and a different way of thinking about the Higher Ed student population in general).
To build this strategy, you’ll need to do a few key things:

Understand who post-traditional students are, and what they need
Identify what you can offer them in response to those needs
Connect with them through their preferred channel, when they’re ready to connect with you

Each of these steps will help you develop a targeted, cohesive marketing strategy to connect with and embrace post-traditional students.

Know Your Audience (Post-Traditional Students) and What You Can Offer Them
Getting to know post-traditional students is the first step in framing your digital marketing strategy narrative. After all, successful marketing is about communicating the right message, effectively, at the audience’s level.
So who are post-traditional students?

Define the Audience
Post-traditional students are usually older than traditional students. The group spans anywhere from 19 to 52 years of age. Within that range, we can identify a few important trends.
The average post-traditional undergraduate and graduate students are 29 and 33, respectively

Almost 70% of them are women
They tend to be single and have fewer children
While they’re racially diverse, most of them tend to be non-minorities
Most of them work either full-time or part-time
They are typically financially independent from their parents

Understand the Audience
Now that you know who post-traditional students are, the next step is to identify what they want. This usually aligns with their overall lifestyle and needs.
For example, post-traditional students increasingly prefer online learning to studying on campus. They also have an overall preference for convenience. This aligns with the fact that most post-traditional students work full or part time. Convenient online study allows them to balance their education with their current careers.
Post-traditional students also tend to be motivated by their employment in other ways. Many of them want to pursue higher education to improve or change their career prospects. That’s why they look for a high job placement rate after graduation.
Another important factor to consider is money. Because most post-traditional students are financially independent from their parents, affordable tuition and financial aid is also a priority.
All of these are examples of concrete needs tied directly to the post-traditional student’s lifestyle—needs that you could fulfill.

Identify What You Have to Offer
You’ve identified your audience. You know what they’re looking for. But what can your institution offer to students that nobody else can? This step is all about (a) understanding your program, and (b) understanding the value it adds for potential students.
To identify what you can offer and put it into context, ask yourself these questions:

Which of their needs can my program address?
What exactly am I offering to fulfill those needs?
Is our program unique from our competition from the perspective of my audience? If so, how?
What is the clearest, and most effective way to communicate all of this to potential students?

Once you have the answers to each of these questions, you’ll have a clear picture of what message you want to send your audience.

Building a Multi-Channel Digital Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve figured out your message, the next step is to deliver it to your audience. This is where your multi-channel digital marketing strategy comes in. In essence, you want to use a variety of platforms and formats to deliver a consistent message to your audience.
Multi-channel digital marketing is a valuable strategy for several reasons:

It casts a wide net. Because your message is represented across a variety of media platforms, you have multiple opportunities to reach people you might have missed with only one channel.
It gives you an opportunity to build a cohesive brand identity—and it gives your audience an opportunity to become familiar with it over time in different settings.
It provides multiple touch points. That gives your audience more chances to interact with you whenever they’re ready.
It generates more data that you can use to understand your audience.

Your Digital Marketing Tool Kit
When building a multi-channel digital marketing strategy, you have a lot of tools at your disposal. It’s up to you which of these you use, but diversifying your options is a great way to cover your bases and connect with as broad an audience as possible. Those include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is about focusing on your website’s position in organic search results. While time consuming to manage, it’s an opportunity to position yourself as an authority in your space – and inquiries tend to be higher quality since students are actively searching for schools or programs on their own.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Paid Search: This buys the ad listings surrounding organic search results. While it can be competitive and expensive to manage, it has the potential to deliver high volumes of targeted traffic, lots of data, and is great for A/B testing.
Display and Social Media Advertising: This refers to the graphic ads you might see on blogs, websites, and in social media applications. It’s great for building brand awareness, easy to target specific demographics, and easy to measure. But it also has a lower conversion rate, is high risk, and generates lower quality traffic.
Affiliate Marketing: Outsourcing some of your digital marketing to a third party can be a convenient option that also increases brand exposure. You often only pay for the results you want (i.e. clicks, leads, calls) rather than up front. However, make sure you track your affiliate’s activity closely to make sure their activity aligns with your standards.
Television and Video Marketing: This also includes digital video like Hulu and Netflix. It’s more effective than any other channel in driving brand awareness, and lifts the effectiveness of other channels by almost 90%. However, A/B testing can be challenging, and it can be expensive to produce and run. Also, it can take time to start seeing results.
Mobile Marketing: Since more than half of all website visits come from mobile devices, it’s crucial that all your web pages and forms, and other digital efforts, are optimized for mobile accessibility.
Email Marketing: 75% of marketers believe that email is the most effective channel for brand awareness, acquisition, conversion, and retention. It has a high average ROI, low cost, and it’s easy to test and track. That said, it’s also easy for you to get buried in inbox clutter.
Other Opportunities: Don’t forget about your non-digital marketing efforts! Avenues like radio advertisements, print ads, sponsorships, and event marketing could be a great complement to your digital marketing efforts, and help to build up your presence in your community.

If you understand who post-traditional students are, what they want, and why, you can create an effective message that hits your target. And by embracing multi-channel digital marketing, you can make sure that message gets delivered in a variety of ways. Of course, picking the right mix of channels and allocating the right amount of resources to them depends on your institution’s size, goals and other unique factors.
Bruce Douglas: 9-26-2017

25 PRINCIPLES OF GOOD ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE

8/29/20171.   Every student wants to attend Cheers University and every employee wants to work there! “where everybody knows your name and they’re awfully glad you came.
2.    Give a damn about graduating students; not just recruiting them.
3.    Do unto students as you would have done unto your son, your daughter, your mother or your father.
4.    Students come before personal or college-focused goals. Students really are more important than you or I.
5.    Processes, rules and products should assure that students and learning are at the center of the institution.
        If not, rethink them.
6.     Be honest in all communications. Do not patronize.
7.    Students can never be an inconvenience.
8.    The goal is not to recruit the very best students, but to make the students you recruit their very best.
9.    Just because someone else did a dis-service or harm does not relieve you of correcting the injury.
10.  Students and employees deserve an environment that is neat, bright, welcoming and safe.
11.  Students are not really customers. They are professional clients.
12.  The customer is not always right. That’s why they come to college and take tests.
13.  Satisfaction is not enough and never the goal.
14.  Do not cheapen the product and call it customer service. No cheap grades.  No pandering.
15.  To every problem there is more than one solution and they may be external rather than within academia.
16.  Not everyone is capable of providing good customer service. That does not mean they do not have value somewhere.
17.  There must be a good match between the college and the student or do not enroll the student.
18.  Fulfill all promises
19.  Engagement starts at first contact and continues into alumni status.  Engage. Engage. Engage and then engage again.
20.  Everyone deserves an environment that is neat, bright, welcoming and hospitable.
21.  All members of the community must be given courteous, concerned and prompt attention to their needs and value.
22.  Train, trust and empower all employees to do what is right to help students.
23. Websites must be well designed, easy to navigate, written for and focused on students and actually informative
24.  Attendance is key to being able provide good customer service and must be attended to with a Campus-wide policy.
25.  Decorum in the classroom is an important service and training for the future
Posted by Neal Raisman – NRaisman & Associates at 10:02 AM

ATHLETICS AND ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT: MORE THAN A GAME

6/22/2017
College presidents feel relatively unprepared to manage both overall enrollment and athletics programs, according to recent research (“Pathways to the university presidency,” Selingo, Chheng and Clark, dupress.deloitte.com). From our experience with hundreds of clients, we offer some insights for Presidents and other campus leaders on how athletics fit in with enrollment management, since deficits in these domains add risk and produce missed opportunities.

Given its impact on enrollment, finances and reputation, today’s college leaders must understand the national athletics hierarchy (where do we fit in?) and the athletics organization on campus. Even at DIII institutions where the role of athletics has less of a direct financial impact, athletes make up a distinct recruitment track, where the athletics department augments the admission office, and coaches add to the recruitment team. This parallel recruitment effort typically operates loosely across organization verticals.
Over the years, as enrollment operations have become more rule-oriented and dependent on automated systems like student search and CRM messaging, athletics departments have typically remained “old-fashioned” with a high-visit, high-touch, high-engagement style. A coach takes it personally when a prized recruit defects to another program.
These different styles and reporting arrangements pose management challenges. Occasionally, coaches overreach their authority attempting to “land” a key player, causing some heated debate. Poor communication can leave the enrollment office unaware of the enrollment “targets” for athletes. A coach’s unexpected departure can ruin the recruitment cycle for a key team. And when an athletics director leaves for a new opportunity, the AD’s “personal” system exits just as quickly. Athletics can be a very productive enrollment resource, but its volatility can produce big enrollment swings.

Tough competition today, especially for smaller nonprofit colleges, makes adding a team or two a great organic enrollment growth tool. Consider a college of 1,500 undergraduates enrolling 400 freshmen a year: adding one new team with a 20-person roster might offset other losses or produce 5% net, new student growth. Since enrollment yield for recruited athletes typically exceeds that of non-athletes, building the sports admission “channel,” can improve overall enrollment results. (For an expanded discussion of college sports, see Reclaiming the Game, Bowen and Levin, Princeton University Press: 2003.)
Athletics participation also increases engagement, now and in the future among alumni. On occasion sports programs will create controversy and produce serious management problems. A President should have a clear lens on athletics to maximize potential and avoid risk. This provides even more reason for a President to have a firm handle on its potential as a positive force in enrollment and its place in the overall organization.

We suggest a President keep the following questions in mind:

How do the enrollment and athletics organizations align? Do the units share information, track transactions, exhibit good working relations? Do they have a “common mission” for enrollment?
Do the athletics coaches understand that incoming athletes figure importantly in the overall enrollment goals of your institution and that their numbers impact the entire university budget? Do they see themselves as partners with the Enrollment Management office?
Do administrators understand the role of athletics in enrollment? Does the Board? Does anyone feel that the athletics department should just be left alone to do its thing (this is a key danger sign)?
How much of your enrollment consists of athletes? Can the program grow? Will growth be cost effective? Has the athletics enrollment trend shown marked ups and downs?
Does the varsity athletics program offer possibilities for related programs in club sports, academic programs (e.g., kinesiology, sports management etc.)? Can sports become a “destination” element for youth programs, fitness courses, community engagement, business partnerships?

The answers to these and similar questions will give you a view of the athletics-enrollment system operating at your college. Understanding its functioning will reveal its strengths and weakness and set a base for future efforts. If a staff member reports new student enrollment is “about on target,” ask what’s happening with athletes; the answer will likely be revealing.

Maguire Associates, 2017

RETENTION AND STUDENT SUCCESS: IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

2/14/2017
llucian
A sharpened focus on retention, persistence, and graduation has colleges and universities looking for more effective ways to support student success. But even for institutions with a transparent focus on persistence, putting effective programs in place is difficult. Chrissy Coley, Tim Coley, and Katie Lynch-Holmes, senior consultants with Ellucian, describe what institutions can do today to design, develop, and launch retention and student success programs that work.

You’ve probably heard the old adage—in fact, you might have heard it from a professor of yours when you were a first-year student in college: “Look to your left. Look to your right. Next year one of you will not be sitting here.” There was a time when an institution’s prestige was tied to its ability to weed out students—when our attitude about student success was simply sink or swim. Thanks to the work of such scholars as John Gardner and George Kuh, colleges and universities began to develop a new perspective on student success. Whether we measure that success by persistence to graduation, transfer success, time to degree, or improved learning outcomes, we know that we bear responsibility for providing students with the support they need to achieve their goals.

But what kind of support? In the past few decades, we’ve seen a virtual cottage industry of retention initiatives spring up on our campuses—writing centers, remedial curricula, academic resource centers, outreach and engagement programs—the list is a varied and creative one. Yet, in spite of the attention paid to retaining students, we have made very little progress on a national scale. For instance, in its 2013 Digest of Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics noted that nationally, slightly over 1.5 million first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students began their undergraduate careers at four-year colleges and universities in the fall of 2006. However, only four in ten (39 percent) actually achieved their goal of earning a bachelor’s degree within four years, and six in ten (59.2 percent) completed their degrees within six years. Degree and certificate completion at two-year colleges is even more sobering. Of the 857,607 first-time students who enrolled at two-year public institutions in fall 2007, only 26.5 percent completed degrees or certificates from their starting institution within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. ACT trend data confirm that four-year and two-year graduation rates over the last 30 years have remained relatively flat; thus, as a nation we have failed to move the needle in the right direction.

Clearly, our efforts to support students to graduation can be improved. As policy makers continue to shift their focus from access—as important as that has been to the equitable delivery of education services—to completion, the failure of these efforts is likely to come under increasing scrutiny. Consider the policy-makers’ perspective:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, students who graduate with a two- or four-year degree in hand can expect to earn up to 70 percent more than those who complete only a high school diploma
Our economic recovery depends in large part on how well we succeed at delivering education and retraining
Building human capital to drive innovation is critical to sustaining our global standing

Federal programs, such as the Obama administration’s American Graduation Initiative and the U.S. Department of Education’s plan to tie financial aid to college performance and published college ratings, sharpen the focus on retention, persistence, and graduation. As that focus sharpens, and the demand for accountability continues to grow, student success will become a critical factor that will affect funding, reputations, and rankings.

A more diligent approach to student success
When major news outlets are highlighting student retention, you can be sure the topic has people’s attention. A unique combination of factors is at play in our renewed attention to student success. Today, accrediting agencies are demanding higher levels of accountability around outcomes, as are policy makers and citizens concerned over the value that education delivers. These demands have spurred movements like the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA), and the University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN). Professional organizations are also challenging member institutions to move from emphasizing access to emphasizing success. For instance, the American Association of Community Colleges’ 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges has challenged two-year institutions to close achievement gaps and increase the percentage of students successfully completing developmental education programs.

Additionally, states are increasingly moving to higher education funding formulas that allocate some amount of funding based on performance indicators such as course completion, time-to-degree, or transfer rates. In some states, funding also is tied to the number of degrees awarded to low-income and minority student graduates. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 25 states currently have a performance-based formula in place, including Ohio and Tennessee. Other states across the country are watching the results carefully.

But increased scrutiny around outcomes isn’t the only reason we are paying closer attention to student success. High school graduation rates and population demographics across the country are shifting rapidly. According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), some parts of the country, particularly the Northeast and Midwest, will experience declines in the number of high school graduates over the next decade, making student success and retention a clear priority. Many Southeast and Western states will see significant growth in the number of high school graduates, particularly first-generation and under-represented college students who may require additional academic, financial, and social supports to persist to degree completion. These demographic changes bring with them a new reality. Institutions will have to work harder to retain the students they have traditionally enrolled, as well as deliver new kinds of support to new groups of students. Finding better ways to retain and progress students, then, is something we owe to everyone seeking an education from our institutions.

So how do you bridge the gap between theory and execution? ACT’s 2010 report, “What Works in Student Retention” found that:

While approximately 60 percent of two-year colleges and 70 percent of four-year institutions have identified an individual responsible for coordinating retention strategies, there is still opportunity for significant improvement
Only 32 percent of two-year colleges, 54 percent of four-year privates, and 66 percent of four-year publics have established an improvement goal for retention of students from the first to second year
Only 23 percent of two-year colleges, 36 percent of four-year privates, and 53 percent of four-year publics have established a goal for improved degree completion

In their follow-up 2010 AIR Forum paper, “Retention: Diverse Institutions = Diverse Retention Practices,” the report’s authors conclude that “while many known retention practices are in use today, their use is far from universal across institutions.” In his foreword to the 2014 publication What Excellent Community Colleges Do, Anthony P. Carnevale observes that despite the attention being paid to student success, “the fundamental structures of community colleges have not evolved to make student success the core business.” The literature indicates the same can be said for four-year institutions as well.

Even at those institutions with a transparent focus on persistence, we find that “moving the needle” is still difficult. A 2009 Ellucian survey indicated a perception by academic administrators that most at-risk students don’t take advantage of available support services even when they are aware of them. We also know that even when institutions are able to identify at-risk students, resources for delivering appropriate interventions are limited. And when the institution has no systematic way to identify at-risk students early enough to make a real impact on persistence, those problems are only compounded.

From theory to execution
But the news is not all bad. The Education Trust confirms that some colleges and universities are doing better than others when it comes to defining and supporting student success, even when holding constant institutional and student characteristics. For instance, some small private colleges have realized retention rates of around 95 percent for first-time, full-time students, and larger, public institutions that provide supportive initiatives for students, have achieved retention rates around 90 percent. While two-year technical and community colleges serve a wider variety of students, the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program has identified institutions that have demonstrated exceptional levels of success; for instance, several Aspen Prize finalists graduated 35–40 percent of their fall 2007 first-time, full-time student cohorts, several percentage points higher than the national average.

What sets these institutions apart? We think, in part, they have been able to find ways to bridge the gap between theory and execution by clearly defining the factors contributing to better retention and graduation and by engaging faculty, administrators, and students alike in a shared goal. While the programs they have created to support student success vary, these institutions have made a visible, and indeed measurable, commitment to student success.

This commitment represents the changing climate in how higher education views student success. Today, a substantial body of research demonstrates that what colleges and universities do about student success matters. And, increasingly, administrators and faculty understand that doing something early matters even more.

Redefining “early”
Traditionally, colleges and universities have used final course grades to signal academic success. But we know that even by midterm, time is already running out for meaningful interventions. Today, we have better data about the factors that contribute to student success or student failure. And we are using that data to develop early intervention programs that can help get students back on track early.

In order to succeed, students need to be supported both academically and socially. And we have made progress in both areas. We know that early academic achievement is a predictor of future success. With that in mind, we have created first-year seminars, developed writing centers, established academic support centers, and experimented with peer tutoring. We also know that students who engage fully in the life of the institution thrive. So we have established learning communities, improved advising, and established bridge programs that recognize the critical importance of a student’s first year.

We have also gotten better at identifying the students who would benefit the most from these programs. We know how to look for red flags: absenteeism, weak writing and math skills, poor grades, behavioral changes. We know what social constraints our students will find most challenging: finding peers, struggling economically, juggling family responsibilities. Predictive modeling can draw on pre-enrollment data to help us identify at-risk candidates even before they arrive on campus. And we are putting tools in place to monitor students more consistently and to respond more quickly to what we see and hear. Has a student already missed classes in her first two weeks or performed inadequately on a test or quiz? Has she reported feeling overwhelmed to her academic advisor? Has she failed to engage in your learning management system (LMS) as early or often as you would have expected? By anticipating the needs of our students, we can reach out with appropriate resources—perhaps a study group, or a peer support program—rather than expecting our students, who may not know that such support even exists, to stumble into it on their own.

Research calling for a comprehensive and strategic approach to student success, persistence, and completion is ubiquitous. How, then, can we use this scholarship as a foundation to design, develop, and implement retention strategies that make a measurable difference in recognizing and fostering the potential of all students?

1. Establish a shared vision of student success
We all want our students to succeed. And while discrete departments across the institution can have a real influence on student success, designing and implementing a comprehensive institutional strategy means moving beyond the “hunches” many of your stakeholders have about what drives it. Establishing a shared vision of student success and communicating that vision across your campus means you can more effectively align resources to support defined goals.
Moving from theory to action will mean asking some very specific questions:

What are our priorities? Do we need to improve overall retention and graduation rates for all students? Do we need to focus on a particular student cohort or academic program?
How do we define “at risk”? What criteria will we use to assess who is at risk and who isn’t? Missed classes? Poor test results? Lack of LMS activity?
What defines student success? How will we know if our efforts have been successful?
Do our institutional leaders (president, provost, vice presidents, deans) communicate their vision for student persistence to degree completion to campus constituents, lay out expectations for supporting student learning and success, and allocate resources to ensure goals are achieved?

Delta State University
While Delta State University’s Student Success Center had been operating for two years, it needed a more systemic approach to retention. “Ten months ago, no one [person] was really responsible for student retention,” says Charles A. McAdams, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Delta State University. “If it was one person’s job, no one else jumped in. If it was everyone’s job, it was no one’s job.” In January 2014, with the active support of President William LaForge, provost McAdams established a cross-campus Student Success task force made up of four committees: academic advising, early alert, first-year seminar, and institutional data analysis. Under the task force, faculty, staff, and student representatives aligned their efforts to these committees’ initiatives. After creating an operational definition and implementation plan, the student retention efforts could expand campus-wide. To further momentum, McAdams met with every department on campus to discuss his vision of academic affairs and share his commitment to helping students succeed. Now, student success efforts engage the academic council, the dean council, and cabinet members as well as freshmen orientation and enrollment groups. “We discussed opportunities, defined context and challenges—both locally and nationally—and set up action plans,” says McAdams. “I built support one department at a time. Our success is tied to our students’ success—it’s the right thing to do for our students and it helps secure a strong financial future for Delta State University.”

Ocean County College
Establishing a shared vision of student success has to start with an institution’s top leadership and spread through the entire campus to every employee. New Jersey’s Ocean County College puts students first, and president Dr. Jon Larson leads by example. He responds directly to every student email to ensure that all students’ questions are answered quickly. The same responsiveness and caring is displayed across campus. For example, just one week after launching a volunteer mentoring initiative for students, more than 50 faculty and staff volunteered to serve as mentors for students. Even more inspiring is the fact that many of them were already doing it informally. The college has established policies and procedures to make sure its vision for student success is permeated through the campus. “Ocean County College promotes a student-centered culture,” says Dr. Jianping Wang, vice president of Academic Affairs at Ocean County College. “There is an expectation that everyone is expected to embrace this culture and do all they can to support student success.” It starts with hiring. Decisions on hiring full-time faculty and bringing adjunct back, promotions for both full- and part-time faculty, and sabbatical awards are all contingent on meeting certain student success criteria. Exemplary staff members and teaching faculty excellence awards are bestowed upon those who contribute to student success and are actively involved in campus life.

2. Focus on what successful students do
Many students come to college with little understanding of what it takes to succeed; they make an assumption that class attendance is optional, or that the level of effort that got them through high school will be sufficient for college work. First-generation and low-income students in particular may lack the cultural capital to know how to navigate complex campus systems. Other students are unfamiliar with the services available to them, whether that is your library’s reference desk, your writing center, study groups, tutors, or supplemental instruction. And often, students enrolling in a full-time course of study have to learn, or relearn, what it takes to manage finances, time, and family obligations.
If you want your students to emulate successful behavior, your institution needs to be asking these questions:

Do our students know what GPA they need to earn and the courses they need to take to maintain academic good standing, to pursue a major program of study, and to maintain scholarships and financial aid?
Do our students know what resources are available on campus?
How can the campus use convocation, orientation, and the first-year seminar to articulate expectations?
What opportunities exist to engage students in educationally purposeful activities both in and out of the classroom?

Mercy College
With four campus locations in the New York City metropolitan area, Mercy College enrolls many first-generation, low-income students. In fall of 2012, 71 percent of its first-time freshmen were Pell Grant recipients. “Our student population is at the heart of the national conversation,” says Andy Person, executive director of Student Success and Engagement at Mercy College. “So we had to address the needs of this particular population, help them stay in school and graduate so they could get into the job pool.” Mercy’s Personalized Achievement Contract (PACT) program, established in spring 2009, is geared to help students learn how to navigate a complex college environment, both in and out of the classroom. It’s an intrusive process, it’s proactive, it starts at pre-enrollment and continues through graduation. And it’s working. Since its inception, first-time, full-time students’ fall-to-fall retention rates have increased by 15 percent and graduation rates have increased by 26 percent. At Mercy, PACT mentors are cross-trained in academic advising, financial aid, student support services, and actively engaged from pre-enrollment through every step of the campus experience. They help identify what successful students do differently and give each student one-on-one attention to make sure they do it: take 15 credits each semester, take the right types of courses, focus on life after college, respond quickly to issues, and take initiative to use campus resources.

University of South Carolina
“Successful students use all the resources available, they get involved in research, they participate in extracurricular activities, they are engaged with faculty,” says Eric Moschella, director of the Student Success Center at the University of South Carolina. “Basically, it all comes down to engagement. Our Honors College students have tremendous opportunities and they take advantage of everything we have to offer. They are very well guided and advised and we push them as hard as they push themselves. There is a great sense of community.” Those same students are also leaders. To foster similar levels of engagement throughout the campus, the University of South Carolina has emphasized the concept of student leadership development as part of its Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) for its Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) accreditation. “We encourage peer leadership,” says Claire Robinson, associate director of the Student Success Center at the University of South Carolina. “For example students take on leadership roles and demonstrate leadership qualities on and off campus.” Often, encouraging a student to take that step may require multiple touches, but it all pays off.

3. Determine an intervention strategy
In our experience, schools that create successful campus-wide retention programs have determined a clear methodology to define and identify “at-risk” students, to reach out to students with appropriate resources and support, and to track and monitor student engagement. Intervention strategies often involve faculty and staff who may be involved in formal referral programs or who may help deliver appropriate resources.
Early intervention is key to helping students before problems become too overwhelming to handle. For many students, knowing that someone in the institution cares about how they are performing is a powerful motivator. And helping students establish a solid academic and social foundation for future success is, or should be, an integral part of an institution’s core mission.
How can your institution implement early intervention programs that make a difference? To begin, you can ask these questions:

What is the earliest point at which we know a student is struggling?
What criteria do we use to determine whether a student is off track? Class attendance, grades, midterms, pre-registration information, degree audits, financial aid information?
Who should reach out to the student? What systems do we have in place to ensure this person/office receives alerts in a timely manner?
What resources do we have in place to proactively address students’ academic, health, social, and financial needs once they are identified as at risk?
How do we collaborate with faculty and staff across campus to identify, refer, and intervene with at-risk students?
How can technology facilitate timely and effective communication with our students?
How can technology help us monitor academic progress or identify “red flags” that indicate a student may be experiencing problems?

Delta State University
At Delta State University, helping students succeed is everyone’s priority. For this reason, the university’s early alert initiative empowers all campus members to act on a student’s behalf. “We’ve given every member on campus (including parents and students) the tools to identify at-risk behaviors and send alerts,” says provost Charles A. McAdams. “You can’t connect the dots if you don’t have a dot to start with.” The university’s Stay Okra Strong (SOS) campus-wide early alert and intervention process “makes it easy—you click the SOS button and then it walks you through the steps you need to take to get the student the help they need,” says Christy Riddle, executive director of the Student Success Center at Delta State University. A significant emphasis is placed on training faculty, frontline staff (such as departmental administrative assistants), residence hall directors, and other staff who serve as a first line of defense in responding to student questions and concerns. Workshops and the SOS website explain not only how to use the technology, but also how to recognize signs that a student is struggling and take appropriate action. Once the SOS alert is sent, a member of the Student Success Center team reaches out to the student to determine if the student alert is behavioral or academic in nature and begins the identified intervention process. “We’ve [also] implemented follow-up steps so the coordinator that spoke with the student can follow up with whomever sent the referral and let them know what is happening and what is being done,” says Riddle.

Ocean County College
In the spring of 2014, Ocean County College reached out to three Toms River high schools and identified 58 students who were economically and academically unprepared for college. The college partnered with the high schools and provided special college success programs and support services. After less than three months of intervention, 28 of those students were college-ready and took college-level English and math at Ocean County College during the summer. What is most remarkable is that just a few months before, many of them didn’t even see themselves as college material. “We have to teach students not only how to be successful, but also to believe in their ability to be successful,” says Dr. Wang. Because of the program’s success, Ocean County College is now looking at replicating the model at other local high schools, and the Ocean County College Foundation has just pledged its financial support for this initiative.

University of South Carolina
The comprehensive Student Success Center at the University of South Carolina includes Academic Coaching and Engagement (ACE) coaching, tutoring, transfer student support services, academic recovery programs, cross-college advising, supplemental instruction, financial literacy programs, and early intervention initiatives. “We do everything we can to support students in and out of the classroom,” says Moschella. “The services we offer are all designed to help students navigate fairly common traditional challenges, and we try to offer them while the student is experiencing the stumbling block.” Because the Student Success Center relies on referrals from faculty and staff, it launched its new Success Connect initiative in 2013 as a way to formalize referrals both in and out of the center by partnering with academic advisors, Greek advisors, residence life advisors, and other departments across campus. “Now, a cross-college advisor can log into the system and schedule an advisee’s meeting with a tutor,” says Robinson. “These are active, intentional referrals that help students get immediate attention.” Early referrals are so critical that the Student Success Center reached out to the supplemental instruction faculty members who teach high D, F, or withdraw (DFW) rate courses and asked them for referrals. They found that faculty could often predict those students who were going to struggle within the first three weeks of the semester. It’s making a significant difference: Students who went to the Student Success Center for help had a three percent attrition rate from fall 2012 to spring 2013, while students who did not take advantage of early intervention had a seven percent attrition rate.

4. Start small and grow
Chances are your institution already has programs and initiatives in place to support student success. Finding those programs and evaluating what works and what doesn’t will be critical as you begin to build a more strategic approach to student retention and progression. Starting small—by course, by department, by program, by major—provides a way for you to put systems into place—referral programs, intervention tactics, measures of success, reporting mechanisms—for more comprehensive efforts. If you can foster a model program, communicate its successes to other parts of your campus, and build enthusiasm for it, you can more successfully grow that program in ways that will reach every student on your campus with the appropriate support and outreach.
When evaluating programs that might be good “incubator” candidates, you should consider some of the following questions:

Where do we want to begin? At the level of our school or college? Department? Major? First-year studies?
Who are our allies there?
How will we measure success?
How can this program improve and grow?

Mercy College
Funded by the President’s Office to address the needs of first-generation and low-income students, Mercy College launched a pilot of its Personalized Achievement Contract (PACT) program with 50 students in spring of 2009. The pilot was so successful that the following fall they ramped it up to 500 students, and by 2012, the program included all freshman students. The program has been nationally recognized for its effectiveness in serving at-risk students. In 2010, the American Council on Education recommended PACT to the White House as a model for innovation in higher education, and in 2012, the program’s executive director, Andy Person, was selected as one of 10 national recipients of the Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at University of South Carolina. According to Mr. Person, the keys to effectively growing a program are to focus initially on a specific student population, generate executive support for the initiative, foster faculty and staff buy-in and involvement, and demonstrate success. Since PACT’s inception, first-time, full-time students’ fall-to-fall retention rates have increased by 15 percent and graduation rates have increased by 26 percent.

University of South Carolina
In 2005, the University of South Carolina launched its Academic Coaching and Engagement (ACE) program. That year, it had a total of seven appointments. But by 2014, it had upwards of 2,000. That tremendous success is due to the Student Success Center’s cultivation of 18 partnerships including five academic units across campus during the past nine years. These partnerships now generate 80 percent of the students who seek ACE coaching, as the academic units require students on academic probation or with faculty referrals to participate in the program. To meet this demand, the ACE program employs three full-time coaches as well as 20 graduate students who coach part-time. Because the coaches see many at-risk students, the Student Success Center has adopted a holistic approach rooted in the groundbreaking theories in The Appreciative Advising Revolution, by Jennifer Bloom, an author, expert, and professor at University of South Carolina. “

Before, the questions were focused on study skills,” says Robinson. “Now we ask positive, open-ended questions that help the students reflect and create an academic plan based on their strengths.” So in addition to asking, “Why did you choose your major?” coaches also ask, “Tell me when you were so engaged in an activity that time just flew by and you felt alive and happy.” “This approach doesn’t separate the academic from the personal,” says Robinson. “We see the student as a whole.” Based on a meaningful conversation, the coach can refer the student to a counselor, financial aid officer, or tutor so students get the help they need.

5. Build bridges
To cultivate successful pilot programs into comprehensive, campus-wide student success initiatives, you will need the cooperation of everyone across your campus, and often partners from off campus. Identifying at-risk students can begin with class absences, but it shouldn’t end there. Taking a comprehensive approach to student success means finding a way to communicate with every campus stakeholder who holds a piece of the puzzle. And by connecting what is happening inside the classroom with what is happening outside of it, we can provide not one, but multiple safety nets for our students. To build student success initiatives that consider and value the full student experience, collaboration will be key. Student affairs, financial aid, academic affairs—all of these functions and more play a role in student success. A campus-wide student success strategy will need to create common goals, consistent messages, and appropriate incentives to ensure the participation of all of these stakeholders. To start building bridges on and off your campus, you may want to consider:

What departments or academic units are already collaborating on our campus? How can we build upon these existing partnerships?
Which on- and off-campus stakeholders can contribute to our institution’s student success vision? How can we pull these stakeholders together to establish common goals and identify mutually beneficial opportunities for collaboration?
What opportunities exist to integrate resources, initiatives, or synthesize data?
What incentives are there for collaboration?

Ocean County College
In order to make higher education more accessible and affordable for its students, Ocean County College has developed several strategic partnerships with other institutions. For instance, due to its large aging population, Ocean County College’s number one career opportunity is in the health care industry. And because the nursing field is hiring more people with bachelor degrees rather than associate degrees, the college partnered with Kean University to develop a generic bachelor of science in nursing degree. This is a complete innovation because most campuses will offer 2+2 programs, in which students earn their first two years at community college and then transfer to a four-year institution to complete the last two years. But with this joint bachelors program with Kean, students can enroll in the BSN program on the Ocean County College campus and earn the degree while paying more affordable tuition. With this partnership, Kean also delivers a PhD in Nursing Leadership on the Ocean County College campus, so the college offers students the full spectrum of degrees from associate to doctorate. Another strong partnership is with Fairleigh Dickinson University, which works together with Ocean County College to offer Ocean County College graduates a 40 percent tuition reduction so they can afford to transfer to this large private university and complete their studies. Additionally, Fairleigh Dickinson University’s master’s degree in Student Service Administration is provided on the Ocean County College campus to allow Ocean County College employees seeking further education broader opportunities for professional growth. Dr. Jianping Wang, vice president of Academic Affairs, notes that Ocean County College’s partnership with private, public, and businesses is based on the belief that, “together we can achieve more.”

University of South Carolina
“Student success doesn’t happen in one office,” says Eric Moschella, director of the University of South Carolina’s Student Success Center. “It happens across the campus. It is a connection and a partnership, and there are multiple people complementing each other’s efforts.” According to Moschella, the key to the center’s success at building bridges has been in discovering what the other person or department needs or wants to accomplish and offering to help them achieve these goals. For example, academic advising was a challenge because the colleges and programs had different standards, processes, and advising models. The university decided to invest in a centralized advising appointment system to better serve students—no small task given the decentralized model and because it would require the colleges to change their processes. The Student Success Center saw this as an opportunity to offer up its services to the provost’s office in moving this process along. Now, the person who oversees the new software is housed in the Student Success Center, which offers infrastructure and support for the process. Not only does this support the efforts of the various colleges and departments, but it allows the center to move forward with its cross-college advising initiatives. “We looked at it as a way to discover and create best practices for scheduling,” says Moschella. “We can better serve the students when it’s a shared service.”

6. Use data—don’t just collect it
Using good data is essential in guiding a retention strategy, monitoring students’ progress, assessing program effectiveness, and directing decisions and resource allocations. A successful approach to student success depends on good data, and most academics will dismiss you unless you approach them with statistics that support your goals. Luckily, there are plenty available. Start with existing scholarship, some of it outlined in this paper, some available at sites such as the Education Department’s Toolbox Revisited. Identify sources and repositories of data—on your campus, in your state, and elsewhere. Solicit the help of your institutional researchers to identify an institution-specific at-risk model. How will success be defined? A decrease in DFW rates? An increase in retention rates? Your institutional research department can help you find the resources you need to pull the right data and format the right reports.

Remember to use your data to move more confidently toward your student retention goals. Good data can help us focus our efforts on the most promising tactics and strategically allocate scarce resources. To start thinking about a data strategy to support your success and retention efforts, you might want to consider the following questions.

What data are most important for understanding student persistence, learning, and success?
What data governance structure is in place?
Do we have access to timely, quality data that presents “one version of the truth”?
How are data used for decision-making, program development, and resource allocation?
How can technology facilitate relevant reports and records to help campus improve services to students?
How can technology provide access to concise, graphical displays of point-in-time and trend data through dashboards and scorecards?

Delta State University
Delta State University’s Student Success task force relies on the retention and data analysis working group to identify successful students, analyze patterns, and identify significant variables associated with success. “We use data to looks for trends—who drops out, who succeeds,” says Riddle. They use the information to intervene proactively. For example, if students in a certain major are more likely to drop out, the university makes sure they get extra support. “Data can be a useful tool, but you have to know what you want to collect and how you want to use it,” says McAdams. Using data to identify need, Delta State University identified 10 students who were close to graduating but hadn’t registered for the following term. The university contacted the students and learned that, for a variety of reasons, the students’ financial difficulties were going to jeopardize their graduation. With $27,000, the university created a Retention Success scholarship and disbursed the funds. It made a significant difference: four students of the ten graduated that semester and another four are back on track.

North Iowa Area Community College
Like many institutions, North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC) had a retention solution in place but needed additional information to help it be more effective. Additionally, a recent report from the Higher Learning Commission stated that the college was data-rich but information-poor. As part of their revitalized retention efforts, the college enlisted Ellucian Technology Management Services. To give the college more insight into their data, Ellucian delivered a prototype retention dashboard. “The data indicated that prompt follow-up and contact increases retention and student success,” says Tom Hausmann, chief information officer at Ellucian. The new dashboard revealed the importance of engaging with students; personal contact from the Student Services team increased retention by 20 percent.

Data also found that the college was only contacting 50 percent of the students identified as a retention case. In response, the college revised its methods for assigning and working retention cases. “Assigning students to counselors through rules and automatically directing cases leverages the Colleague®Retention Alert functionality not used before at NIACC,” says Greg Bailey, enterprise applications director. “This new approach will get more students back on track and help them continue their education.” For each new case, the dashboard displays a photo of the student, contact information, and a one-click link to their cell phones—so counselors can take immediate action. And the dynamic, real-time dashboard lets executives monitor retention efforts on the fly by analyzing communication history and different cohorts.

Conclusion
It is not easy to achieve sustainable and measurable strides in improving student learning, success, and persistence-to-degree completion. However, such organizations as The Education Trust and The Aspen Institute have demonstrated that colleges and universities can make significant improvements and outperform other institutions through an intentional and concerted approach. And the institutions highlighted in this paper also serve as exemplary models of the best practices of establishing a shared vision of student success, focusing on what successful students do, determining an intervention strategy, starting small, building bridges, and using data in meaningful and actionable ways.

Ellucian student success portfolio
Student success is one of the most visible markers of your institution’s ability to meet increased demands for higher levels of accountability. Given the increased scrutiny being brought to bear on student outcomes today, designing a coordinated institution-wide approach that supports your strategic objectives, breaks down silos, and recognizes the right tactics to identify and support at-risk students is imperative.

Ellucian provides the broadest portfolio of software and services in the industry. For more information about how Ellucian can support your student success efforts, visit our Student Success page. For specific information on Ellucian services that support designing a coordinated plan like those highlighted in this paper, please visit the Ellucian Student Success and Retention Planning Services page.

References
American Association of Community Colleges. (2012, April). Reclaiming the American Dream: A report from the 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges. Washington, DC: Author.
ACT. 2014. “National Collegiate Retention and Persistence to Degree Rates.” ACT, Iowa City, Iowa.http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/reports/graduation.html.
ACT, 2010, “What Works in Student Retention?” ACT, Iowa City, Iowa.http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/reports/retain.html.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, unpublished tables, 2012.
Retention: Diverse Institutions = Diverse Retention Practices? Paper presented at the 2010 AIR Forum. Chicago, Illinois. June 2, 2010. Kurt Burkum; Wes Habley; Randy McClanahan; Mike Valiga. ACT, Inc., p. 19.
National Center for Education Statistics, 2013 Digest of Education Statistics, Table 305.10, Table 326.10, and Table 326.20,http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2013menu_tables.asp.
National Conference of State Legislatures, Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education, March 5, 2014.
National Student Clearinghouse. (2013, December). Completing College: A National View of Student Attainment Rates – Fall 2007 Cohort. Available from http://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport6/.
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. 2012. “Knocking at the college door: Projections of high school graduates.” Boulder, CO: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
Wyner, Joshua S., 2014. What Excellent Community Colleges Do. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press. p. xiv.

WHAT DOES CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR HIGHER ED ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

1/30/2017Date Published: January 23, 2017
by Sarah Seigle, Academic Impressions

Providing good customer service to students has become an expectation in today’s higher education environment, yet “customer service” is still new in higher education and few are certain how to do it well, or what the term means when placed in the context of students, faculty, and staff.
To learn more about how colleges and universities are adapting the concept of service competencies to this sector, and to gather practical advice for how units and departments can navigate this shift in mindset, we turned to three acknowledged experts on customer service in higher education:

Dr. Heath Boice-Pardee, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at Rochester Institute of Technology;
Emily Richardson, Dean of the Hayworth School of Graduate & Continuing Studies at Queens University of Charlotte; and
Eileen Soisson, Executive Director of Training, Development and Service Excellence at Coastal Carolina University.

These three also serve as the faculty for our customer service skills training and certification.

Sarah Seigle. Hi Heath, Emily, Eileen. Thank you for joining us for this conversation! The first question we want to ask is: How has the way higher ed looks at customer service changed over the past 5 years?

Emily Richardson. The expectation of immediate responsiveness was not around 5 years ago, and in the digital age, we now expect a response to a request immediately. Our students and their parents experience this type of service response daily, and are now expecting the world of higher education to offer the same type of immediate service response. Service in higher education is being compared with service customers are receiving from retailers like Amazon.com and Land’s End; entertainment conglomerates like Disney and Princess Cruises; as well as many other companies that now realize service to customers is the key to repeat business and good word of mouth.

Eileen Soisson. When Coastal Carolina University began its customer service program in the summer of 2012, there may have been ten colleges or universities that had such a program. Today, you see almost 75 institutions who have started focusing on the priority of service within higher education. The word “customer” is still a bad word in academia, but we are talking about it more and defining who our customers are, more than before.

Heath Boice-Pardee. As the number of students in parts of the United States decreases, colleges and universities are looking at models from other industries to attract and retain “customers.” The Obama administration has added to this endeavor by emphasizing that higher education must be mindful of the “value” that colleges and universities offer students and their families. Looking to ideals of “customer service” is a natural route for many in higher education, since one goal for many of us is improving the student experience and student satisfaction.

Sarah Seigle. How do you provoke the culture change necessary to achieve superior customer service on campus?

Emily Richardson. Ideally, the culture change begins with the president and their executive team presenting a firm statement about their belief in the importance of “service excellence” at an institution of higher education. However, this does not always happen, so department supervisors need to be willing to step up to the plate and have conversations with their staff about how service can be improved within their division. You should not wait for a voice from the top to start the discussions, since it is often the frontline staff that provide daily service to multiple customers both on and off campus. Seek frontline perspectives on what can be improved.
Eileen Soisson. At Coastal Carolina University, it was important that the Feel the Teal® Service Excellence Initiative clearly communicated that the program was not based in any way on the outdated, antiquated, never-should-be-said-again expression, “the customer is always right.” The customer is not always right, but it is our job to make the situation right.
If a college/university intends to provoke culture change with “the customer/student is always right,” then that tells faculty and staff that they are always wrong. Who wants to buy into that? Instead, create an empowering culture that allows and encourages people to go out of their way for the good of the customer. Show them how to do that through training and supportive measures built into the program. Reward and praise the behaviors and results you want to see more of; it is amazing how fast and far that can go in a program that is about serving others.

Heath Boice-Pardee. As with any problem, encourage people to look at the data. If you don’t have data readily available, identify ways to collect it. Listen to what your internal and external customers are telling you and heed their advice in measured and public ways. On a college campus, if students aren’t satisfied with programs and services, this should be the only provocation necessary to inform change.

Sarah Seigle. You mentioned training. What is the best way to provide customer service training in a college/university setting?
Emily Richardson. Training on customer service in higher education must be done with planned care and thought. Simply using the term “training” can sound remedial, and adding to that the concept of “customer” may put off some individuals who feel that the institution looks too “business-like” and who may not want to attend the training. Keep the effort focused on the student and their needs, and on how delivery of services can help retention and graduation numbers. That can produce broad interest across the institution.
One approach is to work directly with individual departments on their points of service contact. Allow small successes with these departments to inform the “word on the street” about the training opportunities that are available on campus.

Eileen Soisson. At Coastal Carolina University, we implemented a university-wide service excellence training program to support and drive the initiative from the beginning. If we expected employees to exhibit service behaviors and attitudes, we needed to set expectations and define what that meant, specifically, at our university. Our eight training modules address service basics, attitude, civility, history & traditions, assisting with difficult situations, and personal accountability. This comprehensive training program has allowed us the opportunity to set clear expectations and raise the service skills and awareness of our employees.
Sharing the history and traditions of your college/university is an excellent way to use training to create more of a culture and build institutional pride, which then shows in every service interaction. Coastal Carolina University includes a two hour session, CCU History & Traditions, as part of the training program. Participants are taught about the institution’s beginnings as a junior college and its growth throughout the years. This particular training module is the most popular in the program, and employees have asked for more training about the university’s history. As one visual example of how this training and this movement of Feel the Teal® has impacted the campus: years ago, students and employees were known to wear other universities’ sweatshirts on campus, and now, four years later, that is rarely seen on a campus full of teal.
In order to create buy in for the training and an attitude of “I get to” vs. “I’ve got to,” I would encourage not making the service training mandatory. “Mandatory” is such a dreaded word in higher education, and that approach will set a program up to fail from the beginning. At CCU, employees are strongly encouraged to attend the service excellence trainings, and then the university rewards those who take advantage of the opportunity with a celebration and certificate when the training program is completed.

Heath Boice-Pardee. Many staff and faculty don’t like to consider students as customers. I’m regularly met with the argument, “We aren’t a 4-star hotel, the customer isn’t always right.” This is true, and at most 4-star hotels the customer isn’t always right either. Customers usually don’t expect to have every whim catered to; the goal is usually to meet or exceed expectations. In higher education it can be helpful to illustrate ways that we all work to enhance student satisfaction by meeting expectations. What are students’ expectations and how should we work to meet or exceed them?

Sarah Seigle. Speaking to your peers at other institutions who are working to improve service to students, parents, and other customers, what is the single most critical piece of specific advice you would offer them?

Emily Richardson. I strongly believe that if you don’t start to measure your service, you won’t make it better. Whether that is the time it takes to answer a phone call from a prospective student, to the time it takes to respond to an email from a colleague, or the number of complaints you receive monthly about cleanliness in dorms, without measurement, you can’t improve or begin to make a difference in customer service on a campus. Even asking questions about how long or how many can begin to make the difference.

Eileen Soisson. As much as some cringe at the business term “customer service,” customer service is meeting the expectations of those who provide the inflow of funds or value to an organization. Although public universities are public organizations and not for profit, a large percentage of a university’s operating budget comes from tuition dollars; colleges and universities must address the reality of customer service in higher education settings.
Students today have so many options and if they are not engaged and valued in the academic community they are in, they will go to another institution. To quote Sam Walton, “If you don’t take care of your customer, someone else will.” In fact, 23% of students will leave a college or transfer to another institution due to the perception of poor service (Raisman, 2012); it is one of the most frequent causes of attrition:

REASONS STUDENTS LEAVE COLLEGE
Source: (Raisman, Why Students Leave College 2012 Study Results, 2012)

Heath Boice-Pardee. Listen to your customers and do your best to put yourself in their position. When possible, put yourself in a position to observe or experience what your students and other customers experience. This will not only enhance your credibility with your customers but will likely entice you to make changes based on personal experience.

THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF THE REGISTRAR: CHANGING RESPONSIBILITIES IN LIGHT OF TECHNOLOGY

4/6/2016

When considering the areas that pertain to enrollment management, it is fairly obvious that the Registrar’s Office plays a part. But just how strategic is the office in the efforts of an institution that is attempting to implement strategic enrollment management? Isn’t the office primarily responsible for maintaining accurate records and insuring compliance with curricular requirements? How can an office that focuses on records and compliance be a strategic part of institutional efforts to manage enrollment? I think a significant answer to that question lies in addressing assumptions about the role of the office within the institutional context. Let’s first take a look from an historical perspective to see how the role of the office has developed over time.

History
The role of registrar developed out of the faculty from the need to record and authenticate student educational records. In early universities, doing so required the production and validation of diplomas but progressed to the recording and validation of coursework in the form of transcripts. Producing accurate transcripts required tracking class rosters and eventually grades. At that time, the role of registrar was often given to a senior member of the faculty; someone to whom the responsibility for student records was delegated.
Throughout time, institutions have changed. As institutions of higher learning increased in size and scope, the need for professionalized staff for various student service functions also emerged. Gradually, the areas of student affairs emerged even though faculty were once almost exclusively responsible for these functions (being intimately involved in all aspects of students’ education). Gradually, student service functions were delegated to competent individuals and staff.

One problem with office functions such as registration and records is that, as they have moved further from direct faculty involvement, they have devolved at many institutions to be primarily clerical in nature. Student record data is received from admissions and is prepared for registration. Student registration data is received and class rosters are developed and maintained. Grades for classes are received and transcripts are produced. Transcripts are reviewed for completion of program requirements and degrees are awarded. Many of these functions are clerical in nature and require detailed and efficient processes to maintain accurate records of enrollment data. The interesting thing is that technological solutions now exist that allow software systems to do most of these basic clerical functions. If that technology is implemented, what then becomes the responsibility of registrar’s office staff?

Technology
With the advent technological solutions now part of today’s higher educational landscape comes opportunity to redefine the role of the office. In fact, it allows for the professionalization of the staff and responsibilities such that they serve a greater purpose for the institution and the education of students. Registrar staff are not only able to track record and registration data but use it effectively to guide student registration practices and advising; help faculty understand implications of curricular decisions; help interpret and implement policy and suggest changes that may better meet the intent of the educational philosophy of the institution.

There is a misnomer regarding technological solutions that often pervades our institutions today—that technology will reduce the need for staff. Rather, technological solutions rarely afford institutions the ability to reduce staff since staff must be present to manage the technological solution. Yet, upon implementation, these same staff can harness these solutions to deliver better service, better data, or better integration. They are also better equipped to partner with others at the institution to integrate the solutions with other solutions or programs at the institution, thus improving the educational delivery process.

Partnership with Faculty
This partnership is best displayed in the development and delivery of academic programs. Registrar staff, because they see students from start to finish of an academic program and the specific issues that students face in the enrollment process, can provide insights to faculty regarding the structure of their academic programs. Considerations such as course sequencing, registration processes, and student progress toward graduation can strategically affect the outcomes that an academic program might desire. These factors, when considered in program assessment and planning can improve program delivery and long term educational outcomes for students and the institution as a whole. However, such a partnership requires faculty to change their perspective about registrar staff and their role within the institution—moving from tactical to strategic partner in the delivery of education.

Unfortunately, not only do faculty often view registrar staff as relegated solely to clerical functions, but the staff themselves often see their role this way. A shift must occur where registrar staff see themselves as peers of academics and partners in the delivery of educational programs. This may mean changes to job descriptions and tasks, and may require that relationships with faculty and programs be intentionally fostered. In some cases, this may also require changes to the kind of people who fill registrar staff positions as it requires a different skill set than a position that is primarily clerical or technical. Such a change requires the ability to use the data at hand to help shape discussions and decisions in the context of relationships with faculty and academic staff.

Strategic Role with SEM
Registrar staff play a strategic role within the SEM organization at an institution primarily because of access to vast amounts of data that are needed to drive SEM efforts. However, that data is best utilized when seen through the lens of desired educational outcomes, something that can happen when partnerships exist between enrollment and academics. Registrar staff are uniquely suited to fulfill this role due to the crossroads within the institution where the position sits—between service to students and the academic programs that students pursue. However, for many institutions, fulfilling this role will require significant changes to the primary responsibilities of staff in the office as well as perceptions of the role by faculty. Nonetheless, such changes may be exactly what are needed by an institution in order to focus the office to play a strategic role in the institution’s enrollment efforts.

This article was authored by AACRAO Senior Consultant Dr. Reid Kisling.
Download this paper here: The Strategic Role of the Registrar: Changing Responsibilities in Light of Technology

INTENTIONAL RETENTION MANAGEMENT

4/6/2016 Building strong retention is not passive but an organized and integrated effort to fulfill student expectations and institutional purpose

Why do students leave college before completing a degree? This question is of interest not only to scholars, but also to employers, institutions, students, parents of students, and spouses. A student who leaves college before graduating paid tuition that will probably not be made up for through employment, for a person who lacks a college degree will have diminished lifetime earnings (compared to college graduates). In addition, there is a loss of tuition for the institution, a loss of a major in some department, and a loss of human capital–that is, the loss of highly trained individuals to enter the workforce or perform civic duties.

Retaining a student is fundamental to the ability of an institution to carry out its mission. A high rate of attrition (the opposite of retention) is not only a fiscal problem for schools, but a symbolic failure of an institution to achieve its purpose. Siena’ retention management effort is designed to apply intentional high touch and high tech tools to engage students early and often to improve both the term to term return rates and the cohort retention rates with the primary objective to improve student success at Siena.

The coordinating force of Siena’s effort is the Director for Student Retention (DSR), who is charged to bring the institution together in its various retention activities for the purposes of institutional effectiveness. Sarah Korth was installed in this position in fall of 2014 to lead this organizational activity. The program applies a cross-divisional approach to address the tactical needs for addressing individual student retention obstacles through the direction of the Director for Student Retention (DSR) working with the members of the Student Retention Team (SRT).

The Retention Management System (RMS) has been the primary tool to identify student retention concerns. This tool tested in the Winter of 2014 and fully deployed the fall of 2014, is designed with two primary purposes one to identify the potential attrition risks in the new freshmen class and two to provide a consolidated communication tool to coordinate identified issues and responses through the College of Arts & Sciences.

The implementation of RMS has created an efficient coordinating point for the implementation of retention intervention and programming.

The coordination of retention activities and intervention across the institution are the critical factors in achieving intentional retention management. Often times in higher education you hear that retention is everyone job. This is true, but without direction and coordination it usually results in well intentioned efforts that lack focus and sustainable enrollment results. Intentional retention management must bring all those actions together in a comprehensive institutional effort that feed a tactical and strategic enrollment plan designed to improve student and institutional success.

Siena’s retention management structure is designed to promote student success through intentional and coordinated institutional action to promote each student’s success. Further retention program is designed to identify institutional areas of consistent attrition concern for institutional review by the SEM Team to research options for institutional improvement. The goal is resolution of the systemic attrition issue for strategic improvement.

EM DIVISIONAL LEADERSHIP

George F. Wolf
Vice President for
Enrollment Management
gwolf@sienaheights.edu

Dan Yatzek
Director of Financial Aid
dyatzek@sienaheights.edu

Regina Dunn
Director of Undergraduate Admissions (CAS)
rdunn@sienaheights.edu

Chris Cox
University Registrar
ccox3@sienaheights.edu

Lesley Weidner
Director for Graduate & Professional Enrollment
lweidner@sienaheights.edu

Liesel Riggs
Director of Marketing and Communications
lriggs1@sienaheights.edu

EM DIVISIONAL LEADERSHIP

ARCHIVES