Cultivating Student Success from the Fallout of the Great Recession: An Attempt to Increase Institutional Productivity

       The Great Recession has impacted higher education such that budgets have tightened, course sections have been cut, and remaining sections have become swollen with students.  Higher education administrators have attempted to manage their enrollments and increase rates of degree completion using various means.  The University of Nevada at Reno (UNR) has implemented a strategy that partners the provost’s office with students to clear obstacles blocking their pathway to degree completion.  UNR’s program, the Course Concierge Service (CCS), works to get students the course(s) they need to complete their degrees on time.  This paper summarizes UNR’s CCS program while also providing critical analysis.  It is concluded that the CCS program is a plausible solution for institutions with limited financial resources and limited options.  

UNR launched its CCS program under the auspices of the provost’s office in 2007 to improve institutional performance in three interrelated areas.  First, UNR planned to increase the combined undergraduate and graduate enrollment by 500 students per year through 2012 (Neill, 2011, p. 8).  Second, UNR committed to increasing the six-year completion percentage for undergraduate students by 12% over five years (p.8).  Third, the CCS was implemented to increase persistence rates of freshmen and sophomores (p.8). UNR’s overarching goal is to increase institutional productivity despite drastic cuts in state appropriations.  Indeed, the CCS is an object lesson in accomplishing more with less.  The provost’s office partnered with key academic departments and faculty to construct pathways to academic success for students facing barriers arising from limited course availability or exceptionally extenuating circumstances.  The  primary function of the CCS is to supplement the professional advisement of students by facilitating solutions for certain students’ “more complex and intractable enrollment challenges” through a centralized service (p. 10).

UNR’s institutional research efforts revealed certain institutional practices were constraining students’ scheduling options thereby forcing them to enroll in elective courses superfluous to degree requirements.  For example, UNR found that transfer students were especially likely to stop-out because of UNR’s transfer credit policies.  According to Neill (2011), “The average transfer student on our campus transfers more than 50 credits….A significant number of these credits do not satisfy general education or major requirements” (p. 10).  It was also found that UNR students were being adversely impacted by the limited availability of required math and English courses.  Neill reports that to remedy this situation the UNR president took the bold step of guaranteeing the availability of high-demand courses to high-priority students (p. 8).  Under such a weighty presidential mandate, the CCS takes priority students’ needs directly to the faculty and requests that faculty permit CCS students to register in otherwise closed class sections.  According to Neill, the goal “is to ensure that students who need access to the courses have priority” (p.9).  Scholarship suggests that though the CCS may not be ideal, it is aligned with certain best practices and makes use of existing resources and offices. 

Scholarship on academic advising (Kuh, Kinzie, Whitt, & Associates, 2005; Kuh, 2008) suggests that effective academic advising be structured to accomplish institutional goals within the prevailing institutional context.  UNR’s ability to offer more sections of highly demanded courses is severely limited by Nevada’s dire financial situation.  Thus, the CCS was designed and implemented to facilitate student academic success and institutional educational goals by maximizing extant resources.  Kuh et al. (2005) found that student success is regularly obtained insofar as institutions lay out clear pathways to degree completion (pp. 313-314).  As such, the CCS is designed to clear students’ pathways by opening lines of communication between faculty and administration.  This is consistent with King’s (2007) recommendation that academic advising services collaborate and forge links among the myriad student support offices and programs (p. 249).  The CCS appears to produce positive outcomes for students inasmuch as CCS students are getting the classes they need to graduate, but more data is needed.  

While Neill (2011) concludes by asserting that the CCS, “Provides an effective and efficient enrollment management resource for the freshman class” (p. 11), he does not furnish any evidence to support this claim.  Neill readily admits that the combination of sour economic conditions with decreased state appropriations has produced “perfect storm” conditions for UNR’s enrollment and student success initiatives (p. 10).  However, these conditions are present across the country and students’ responses have ranged from enrolling in community colleges in lieu of public universities (Garcia, 2011a) to not purchasing required textbooks in order conserve limited funds (Garcia, 2011b).  Students academic and professional plans are being affected by the economy and UNR is attempting to mitigate these effects with the CCS.  The CCS attempts to help students save time and money by collaborating with faculty to place students in the classes they need to graduate on-time.  Yet, the lack of data regarding the efficacy of the CCS begs the question of whether there are more economical and effective alternatives.  Time (and data) will tell whether UNR’s CCS program is an effective supplement to academic advising.  

References:
Garcia, R. C. (2011, July 31). The great recession, two hills, and a valley. Retrieved from:      http://collegemoneytalk.blogspot.com/2011/07/great-recession-two-hills-and- valley.html

Garcia, R. C. (2011, August 28). Books and woes. Retrieved from: http:// collegemoneytalk.blogspot.com/2011/08/books-and-woes.html

King, M. C. (2007). Organization of academic advising services. In V. N. Gordon, W. R. Habley, T. J. Grites, & Associates (Eds.), Academic advising: A comprehensive handbook (pp. 242-266). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., Whitt, E. J., & Associates. (2005). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Kuh, G. D. (2007). Advising for student success. In V. N. Gordon, W. R. Habley, T. J. Grites, & Associates (Eds.), Academic advising: A comprehensive handbook (pp. 68-84). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Neill, P. A. (2011). The college concierge service. New Directions for Higher Education, 153, 7-11.