by Susan Gottheil, Vice-Provost (Students), University of Manitoba, and Senior AACRAO Consultant
Dr. Vincent Tinto's seminal book "Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition" (1987, 1993) has influenced generations of higher education students and, importantly, shaped the evolution of the Strategic Enrollment Management framework in the United States and Canada. With demographic shifts and declines through the 1980's and 1990's colleges and universities had focused on marketing and recruitment initiatives that would attract new student markets and increase admission yields of the incoming class. Tinto encouraged us to expand our vision of the student life cycle beyond the point of admission and the first day of classes. Over the past few decades we have learned that enhancing access to our institutions is only one part of the equation; engaging students inside and outside of the classroom and ensuring they persist is as, if not more, important (Pascarella & Terenzini, Kuh, and others).
Tinto emphasized that the classroom is the center of student education and life and should be the primary target for institutional action. If that is the case, where does that leave the registrarial and enrollment services community? What role do we have in student success?
I would argue that enrollment professionals provide the infrastructure and foundation for many of the retention and student success initiatives on our campuses. Without the foundation of academic policies, technological systems, student services and support programs the teaching and learning that is fundamental to our missions would crumble. We are the skeletal spine that links the institutional body and its activities together. Our work can, and should, bring the academic and administrative silos together and promote campus-wide partnerships. Think of just a small part of what we do:
- Scheduling...ensuring students can get the courses they need so they can persist and graduate on time
- Program planning...helping students intentionally map progress toward their credentials with degree audits and credential laddering "maps"
- Student mobility... developing articulation agreements and credit-transfer policies to facilitate mobility between institutions; working with academic colleagues to ensure transfer students are treated fairly in the evaluation, acceptance and degree application of their early credits; ensuring that the information transfer students receive is timely and correct
- Student awards...helping those in financial need with scholarships, bursaries, work study programs and food banks
- Moving processes on-line...reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, run-around, and frustration.
- Integrating new student support systems, such as early alert, with SIS systems
- Implementing new student success initiatives such as learning communities...figuring out how to admit and co-register hundreds of students into the same 2 or 3 courses
- Reviewing academic policies and procedures ...ensuring students aren't presented with unnecessary "road bumps" that delay their progress toward a degree
Our work has expanded over the past decades. No longer are we "pencil pushers" dealing "only" with student admissions and records management. Strategic enrollment management has put us front and center in institutional planning, data analytics and student persistence and success. As the colleges and universities we work in evolve and change we will need to be leading and supporting our students, faculty and administrative colleagues.
Learn more about the SEM framework and the role you can play in student retention at success at your campus with these resources:
And plan to attend the next AACRAO SEM Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 29-November 1, 2017.