Transcript Slide 1
If this is so Easy, Why is it so Hard to Do? John Lee UNC Conference: Student Success “A Campus-Wide Commitment” October 24, 2007 What is the Problem? Grades and test scores, rather than privilege, determine success today, but that success is largely being passed down from one generation to the next. A nation that believes that everyone should have a fair shake finds itself with a kind of inherited meritocracy. New York Times, May 24, 2005 Research and theory on student persistence have yet to influence, on a national scale, student persistence in higher education According to a 2003 report by ACT, the five-year graduation rates at four-year institutions throughout the past 20 years have ranged from 50.9 percent to 54.6 percent The enrollment gap between low- and high-income students has shrunk over the last 20 years, but rates of college completion have not improved for low-income students According to the 2003 ACT report, of those students starting at a 4year college, 48 percent of lowincome students graduate while 67 percent of high income students did so “There is no one specific type of successful retention organization and/or successful implementation strategy” -Vincent Tinto There is Agreement on Some Basic Principles I. Have an institutional focus on student retention and outcomes, not just on enrollment Consistent Leadership Strong leadership from top administrators who create an institutional culture that promotes student success. They talk about it, fund it, and recognize success A central person, office, or committee that coordinates retention activities across academic and student affairs Use data about retention in the decisionmaking process, as well as to evaluate retention programs Institutional focus on student outcomes Make personnel decisions consistent with improving student outcomes Communicate the importance of student success, and the expectations for each participant, to the whole college Be consistent in your efforts Measure outcomes and report them to the community Institutional focus on student outcomes Gain faculty support Explain that improving student success is not an erosion of standards Maintain high expectations for student success How do we engage students in their education? II. Offer targeted support for underperforming students Engage Students Encourage high levels of student involvement and engagement in campus activities and programs. Create well-developed first-year programs in which student participation is mandatory or high. Improve instruction in “gatekeeping” introductory courses, particularly in mathematics. Support for underperforming students Concentrate on the first year Profile of an at-risk student First generation college Low income Inadequate academic preparation Older, with children Attends part-time Types of support Proactive Structured Identify the problem early Reach out to the student Advising Mentoring Find the right help III. Have well-designed, well-aligned, and proactive student support services Support Students Early warning and advising systems to monitor student progress and to intervene when student performance is low. Academic and social support services that students use due to proactive efforts to coordinate services; these services must be widely advertised. Faculty and staff should be knowledgeable about the available services. Special programs for at-risk student populations, incorporating effective retention practices. Critique of student support services A common problem on many campuses is that efforts directed towards helping firstyear students achieve success are “selfcontained, uncoordinated, and even unknown to each other” Be proactive with student support services Anticipate which students may have problems, and help them before they drop out Reach out to high-risk students; they will not come to you Maintain an aggressive advising program IV. Provide support for faculty development focused on improving teaching What goes on in the classroom, stays in the classroom There is no one model for improving teaching; it depends on content Students must feel that they are learning something worthwhile and are making progress Student engagement in the learning process is critical Some obvious solutions Small classes Reward good teaching Regular academic reviews for students Supplemental support Develop a teaching/learning center for new faculty Elements of successful developmental education programs Context-specific and valued by the learning community Centrally structured and well coordinated with the organization Instructors committed to the students and the field Provide multilevel curricula with credit options and exit criteria Integration of a variety of instructional methods Integrate learning and personal development strategies and services An evaluation system focused on outcomes and continuous program improvement -McCabe & Day, 1998 Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning process. — Carl Rogers V. Experiment with ways to improve the effectiveness of instruction and support services Applied Experiments Develop a hypothesis—why do you think students drop out? Run an experiment—make changes to the program Measure outcomes—did the change make a difference in the outcome? Accept or reject the hypothesis Constant improvement Marginal improvements in specific operations add up A continuous cycle VI. Use institutional research to track student outcomes and improve program impact Track student outcomes Disaggregate student populations Student unit record system Use longitudinal data to identify problems and evaluate outcomes Soft data sources are important Student focus groups Interviews with faculty Individual class analysis What are the characteristics of students that drop out prior to the end of the semester? Why did they leave? Why is This so Hard to Do? 1. Mission conflict Public universities are torn between an impulse toward excellence that leads to an emphasis on research and tighter admission standards, and providing access to a broad range of students 2. Structural problems Universities are federations, with a central government overseeing semiautonomous colleges/schools The bigger the university, the less attention is paid to student persistence at the top levels of the administration This makes it difficult to institutionalize a consistent approach to improving student persistence 3. No coordination among offices Efforts to improve persistence are often program-specific, and in many cases depend on available extra funding The programs are often aimed at helping minority and low-income students or students with physical or learning handicaps 4. Inconsistent data Most universities do not systematically use data to track their students and see where they have problems Universities depend on special studies or occasional reports to evaluate their overall success 5. Incentives External factors influence the amount of attention persistence receives. These include: Changes in state support External accountability requirements Numbers of student applications Accreditation requirements 6. Inadequate Aid Low-income students work a great deal while they attend the university Financial aid programs have competing purposes, and may not provide a coherent safety net 7. Low expectations and effort With some exceptions, most students do not work very hard in their classes. They attend class sporadically and do not do much work outside of class If engagement is a key to persistence, this lack of academic engagement may be an important avenue to explore Faculty should demand more of students Conclusion Persistence is a systemic problem, and no one player can fix it If you don’t change anything, nothing will change Keep focused on student outcomes -- that is all that counts Reengineer; don’t add on Set priorities -- you cannot do it all at once Keep at it “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” -Peter Drucker Thanks to Jennifer Engle and Colleen O’Brien of the Pell Institute The Lumina Foundation, which has funded so much of our work Sources Raising the Graduation Rates of Low-Income Students, Pell Institute, 2004 Demography Is Not Destiny: Increasing the Graduation Rates of Low-Income College Students at Large Public Universities, Pell Institute, 2006 Moving From Theory to Action: Building a Model of Institutional Success, Tinto and Pusser, for NPEC, 2006 Community College Management Practices that Promote Student Success Jenkins, 2006 CCRC Brief 31