3. Balance work-life challenges. College can be a time of dizzying distractions for any student. First-generation students can feel a sense of guilt or abandonment when leaving their family to attend college. These students often are balancing job or family obligations and usually live off-campus and commute. Even mundane issues can feel like monumental setbacks.
Identifying these challenges, and providing 24/7, online support through 1:1 coaching allows students—many of whom are too timid to reach out—the help they need to navigate these work-life challenges.
4. Promote a sense of belonging: One of the toughest barriers that many first generation students face is developing a sense of belonging and connection to the campus community. As the first person in their family to go through this experience, they often doubt their own college worthiness and ability to succeed.
Colleges and universities can support these students through thoughtful, proactive coaching and mentoring focused on cultivating a positive mindset and by showing them how to leverage their existing talents to persist through challenges and overcome obstacles in an academic context.
5. Kick-start career opportunities. While counterintuitive, sometimes career guidance can be a potent strategy for student retention. Students lose motivation to finish college when they see no light at the end of the tunnel or relevance for a potential job.
Helping students map their career interests and goals can help students find a major or program that inspires them, creating an incentive to stick with it when they encounter a difficult course or personal issues.
Boosting Student Retention At-Scale
This approach is beginning to work at scale. The State of Indiana recognized the need to provide support for at-risk students through the 21st Century Scholars program, which provides students with up to four years of tuition at any participating public college or university. Several institutions–including Ivy Tech Community College and Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)–are providing student success coaching to address the non-financial barriers to student success in partnership with experts at InsideTrack.
This technology-enhanced approach to student support has led to critical gains in persistence among the Scholars. For example, Ivy Tech has seen first-year persistence rates increase from a historic average of 36.9 percent to 49 percent in only two years, a 12.1 percentage point increase. IUPUI increased persistence for their most “at-risk” Scholars from a historical average of 50 percent to 60 percent over the same time period.
Beyond the numbers, this new approach represents renewed opportunity for the students now on track to earn their degrees. Degrees matter, and the path to student success all begins with the first-year experience. With the right support, hard work can unlock paths to upward mobility and economic prosperity, regardless of a student’s circumstances.
Cathy Buyarski is the executive director of Student Success Initiatives at IUPUI; Jeff Fanter is senior vice president of Student Experience at Ivy Tech.
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