Category: Blog

With the current pressure on completion rates and the growing demand for higher education from a non-traditional “adult” demographic (a diverse, heterogenous demographic, comprising working mothers, career-aged adults seeking a career change or a safe harbor amid a troubled economy, military veterans, and adults of all ages returning to complete a degree), more colleges and universities across the US are devoting more attention to the recruitment and retention of adult students. Because enrollment policies and practices have long been tailored to traditional-aged students (especially at four-year institutions), efforts to recruit and enroll adults offer special challenges. We reached out to Mike Barzacchini, director of marketing services for Harper College, who has seen considerable success in this area, for advice on how institutions can increase their enrollment of adult students. Increasing Inquiries from Adults First, Barzacchini suggests a two-pronged approach to generating leads: Mine your historical data to identify past stop-outs and other cohorts that have shown interest in a degree at your institution Create an adult-friendly website Stop-outs are those who did not attain their degree — not for reasons of low academic performance, but because of the intervention of life circumstances. An audit of your records can tell you which past students stopped a few classes shy of a degree. […]

Published in 2011. As advancement officers strive to maintain the health of the annual fund in a season of donor uncertainty, articles such as this recent feature in the Calgary Herald point to a growing awareness among North American colleges and universities of the need to engage alumni early (even before they graduate), and a trend in institutions offering more high-demand services in order to remain connected with alumni after graduation and demonstrate the institution’s interest in a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship. We turned this week to Julie Hays Bartimus, vice president of the alumni career center for the University of Illinois Alumni Association, to learn more about how academic institutions can offer meaningful career services for alumni — on a limited budget. Based on lessons learned from the progress at the University of Illinois, Bartimus offers an array of tips for resourcing key career services initiatives: Facilitating professional networking among young alumni Expanding the educational programming you can offer Ramping up to offer one-on-one career counseling services Facilitating Alumni Networking “The greatest stated need of alumni,” Bartimus remarks, “is for us to help them identify job opportunities. But in reality, the job board is not the most effective […]

Since the release of the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s December 2010 study of Twitter usage and the social media monitoring service Sysomos’ release, in the same month, of data on the growth of Twitter, there have been a surge of fresh articles on the uses of Twitter in higher education. Taken together, the data from Pew and Sysomos tell a compelling story: Only 8 percent of American internet users are Twitter users, but that percentage doubles among the college-aged 42 percent of Twitter users joined in the past year, evidence of a rapid and recent increase in the tool’s popularity But it is important to cut through the hype and not to simply encourage faculty to use Twitter on the assumption that the tool will automatically have a positive impact on student engagement or academic performance, independent of a deliberate pedagogical strategy. The key to assessing where Twitter (or any social media tool) can help is to identify specific pedagogical challenges or outcomes and align them with the strengths of particular tools. For example, the strengths of Twitter include real-time, rapid communication and feedback; ease of sharing links and resources; and the ease of making a channel more public than a particular classroom. There […]

One campus sustainability trend emerging in early 2011 is that more institutions are considering larger solar installations. To cite a few major examples from the past few weeks, the University of Maryland at College Park recently announced its plans to install more than 2,600 solar panels on buildings across campus, and Princeton has announced plans to install a solar field featuring 16,500 panels on 27 acres of campus-owned land. To assist other colleges and universities that are considering whether to add solar installations (either small or large), we turned this week to Jon Pietruszkiewicz, senior project manager for renewable energy and energy efficiency at Black & Veatch, to learn more about: How the solar market is changing What questions institutions need to address as they consider investments in solar energy Trends in the Costs of Solar Power Pietruszkiewicz notes that as recently as two or three years ago, the payback period on rooftop solar installations for institutions of higher education was uncertain or long enough to make it difficult for many colleges and universities to justify return on investment. However, two factors have contributed to making solar power much more affordable for colleges and universities: A swift decline in the cost of solar […]

Renewed national and public pressure on college completion rates is fueling a continuing surge of interest in “early warning” intervention programs for college students deemed at risk of withdrawal or failing. The earlier an academically at-risk student is identified, the better the prognosis for their success in college. Early alert systems, implemented within the first 4-8 weeks of a term, can be instrumental in beginning an intervention that can help facilitate students’ success and increase retention. However, faced with frequent studies offering multitudinous data on factors influencing student attrition, it can be challenging to sort through the information available to determine what indicators deserve most attention, both to proactively identify students who may be at risk at a point prior to enrollment, and to drive early alert systems in the first weeks of a semester. This week, we interviewed Jennifer Jones, a clinical assistant professor and recently director of academic retention at the University of Alabama. Jones has developed a comprehensive and strategic approach to identifying at-risk students. Predictive Historical Data The past decade has yielded abundant studies citing factors that can contribute to the likelihood of student attrition. Cohorts often deemed at risk in the published research include the academically under-prepared, students who have taken a […]

The recent economic crisis has driven a surge of interest in program prioritization, as state legislators and governing boards insist that colleges set priorities for future investment and as institutional leaders find that they can no longer afford to “be all things to all people.” Facing severe financial shortfalls and external demands for accountability, many colleges and universities are having to make difficult decisions about what programs and initiatives are most worthy of investment. A PROCESS FOR UNDERTAKING PRIORITIZATION In his book Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services: Reallocating Resources to Achieve Strategic Balance (Jossey-Bass, 2nd ed; 2010), Dickeson outlines a process for pursuing prioritization efforts with direction, transparency, and rigor. Over the past 10 months, four workshops addressing program prioritization have drawn 550 higher education officials from approximately 300 institutions in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico. At each workshop, participants were queried about the drivers behind program prioritization and the challenges faced at their campuses. Though participants varied in their level of experience with program prioritization (some were exploring the desirability of conducting a prioritization process; others were mid-process and had questions about next steps; and still others had completed the process once and were returning to it), an amalgamation […]