Adding students to your university is important, but keeping them there until they finish their degrees is just as important. During her session "Services as a Tool for Retention," Tracy Hart from the University of New Mexico discussed her “one-stop” program, which she pioneered, as well as ways for attendees to improve student services at their institutions.
“I wanted students to stop having to find the right person to tell their story to,” Hart said, while discussing her one-stop program.
Survey: Which services connect?
Hart was inspired by Nancy Schlossberg’s Mattering Theory to conduct a study at the University of New Mexico to learn how students felt about the university. Her study was a three-part survey which looked at the relationship between online students’ use of university services, and their feelings of mattering to the institution.
“I knew that how we treat people matters,” Hart said.
From the study, Hart learned what services students were using most and which ones made them feel as though they mattered to the university. While the University of New Mexico offers 31 student services, only nine were strongly correlated with students feeling important to the university. These services tended to be ones which were more communication oriented, such as academic counseling and placement services, with retention services having the strongest correlation with students remaining on campus.
Students remember
Four themes emerged from Hart’s study: that student’s view their experience holistically, that technology and access to technology support is important, that having a community or connections on campus are important, and having a personal touch from faculty and staff is also vital. According to Hart, students remember when someone goes above and beyond for them, taking the time and seeming to care about them and their issues, and helping them fix their problems.
“They want to know that they matter to staff, faculty and the other students,” Hart said.
From the study, Hart came up with some implications to improve practices at her university, which included increasing cohesiveness and seamlessness of student services, including customer service training for faculty and staff, and fostering a culture of mattering at the institution. While these are potential solutions and practices to put into place at institutions, this is a complex issue and many factors are out of the institution’s control.
Why students leave
Students come to college to be students, and services are there to help them deal with the business of being a student, such as handling financial aid matters and organizing their schedules. To help illustrate this, Hart drew a comparison between students going to school and taking a plane trip. She explained that when you have a smooth flight and got your luggage and got to where you needed to go without a problem, you don’t really think about the trip. But if you had a problem with your ticket and they lost your luggage, you still got from point A to point B, but it was a hassle. That’s similar to student experiences at college.
“Those experiences paint their overall experience,” Hart said. “If their time at your institution was one hassle after another after another they’ll have a tendency to devalue what they get at the end of it.”
According to Neal Raisman’s book, The Power of Retention: More Customer Service for Higher Education, “customer services issues account for as much as 72 percent of all attrition.” When he broke down the reasons students left, many felt the school was indifferent toward them, they had issues with the staff, or they were just unhappy.
At the end of the day, every service experience involves an interaction and interactions matter to students, impacting whether or not they want to stay at that school to complete their degree. By improving these services and increasing student access to them, students are more likely to remain at college and complete their education, and be satisfied while doing so.
“What you’re trying to do is create a more friendly, accessible and helpful place for students,” Hart said.