Using varied campus services and classroom technology to help students succeed with their college experience.
With a dramatically increasing number of both traditional and non-traditional students seeking post-secondary education, student retention and post-grad outcomes continue to be an increasingly important topic for both colleges and universities.
The role that institutions play in these outcomes is now gaining significantly more attention with greater emphasis being placed on how well these organizations prepare students for the job market.
Both gradual, large-scale changes and smaller reforms will lay the foundation for a reinvigorated, modern school system.
“Staff training and motivation is crucial to achieving solid student retention and graduate career placement,” said Lauren Weymouth, VP Business Development for Ridley-Lowell Schools. “Retention becomes a reality when a school creates programs like peer mentoring and tutoring alongside implementing clubs and community activities for student enrichment. It takes a village. The more regularly you coach all staff and faculty on this mission, embed making every effort to champion student success into your campus culture, the better your outcomes will be.”
The following are five fundamental ways to promote student success within colleges and universities:
1. Enhance collaboration with academic advisors
There continues to be growing diversity within America’s collegiate student body including a wider breadth of age, race, academic preparedness and degree type. In fact, according to the Department of Education, a third of today’s college entrants are above the age of 25. Many of these outlying populations need additional support and counseling during their college careers.
The lack of academic goals and integration with the college community, including peers, faculty and staff, are key factors that lead students to “drop out” and disproportionately affect these non-traditional students. Since academic advisors serve to connect students with needed services, strong academic advising programs that enhance collaboration between students and college personnel are critical to the success of students, and ultimately, the institution.
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2. Provide real-world working experience
College and universities must do their best to provide students with access to real-world, professional experience and academic opportunities that align with current and future labor needs. Higher education institutions must consistently update programs to better reflect current and future job demand and eliminate or shrink programs in fields with low-labor demands.
Schools should also empower students by informing and openly communicating with prospects, current students and alumni about labor demand and opportunities. Providing access to the Bureau of Labor Statistics job demand assessments is a powerful, but resourceful way to begin this process.
3. Utilize technology as a tool for teaching
Utilizing technology as a tool for teaching and learning is essential for student success. Adopting software, such as e-mentoring programs, allows networking between students and faculty. In fact, according to the “Student Retention and College Completion Practices Report” published by Higher Ed Benchmark, interactive technology was one of the most successful tactics in engaging students taking at least part of their coursework online.
Adaptive learning technology, which allows for greater individualized learning, is also well on its way to enhancing student success, and schools will benefit from incorporating this technical innovation.
4. Share data
Share data with partners to make data-based decisions. Improvements cannot be made without proper measuring. Bigger data sets yield greater insight, which leads to better results. Combining data with that of other schools to create proper benchmarks provides perspective that allows all entities to better understand trends as the industry continues to rapidly evolve. Schools should focus on obtaining job placement data and loan repayment data in order to measure success and predict future success of students.
5. Ensure marketing strategies are agile
The educational landscape is now constantly and radically shifting. Student demographics, labor demands and educational technology all serve to consistently disrupt higher education. Schools and their marketing partners must be agile to keep pace with this disruption. Schools must also ensure that they are fully integrating with marketing partners to ensure that changes are made efficiently across all mediums.
New tactics, including relationship marketing for prospective and current students, is an excellent example of agile efforts that are yielding significant results. Agile relationship marketing tactics include nurture campaigns, one-to-one social media outreach and automated customized content. Automated tactics allow schools to create customized campaigns and outreach for students without ad hoc development.
Benchmarks for success have transitioned beyond graduation, and in order to adapt and promote this shift, policy makers, schools and their partners should reform and combine new metrics to add to the overall success of a student.
Frank Healy is president and CEO of Higher Ed Growth, a full-service marketing agency specializing in post-secondary education. Visit www.higheredgrowth.com for more information.
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