Reframing Retention Strategy for Institutional Improvement


Book Description

Take an in-depth look at the difficulty in gaining traction at the institutional level in improving student retention and degree completion rates—especially at larger four year institutions where size, complexity, and multiplicity of structures and processes present particular challenges. This volume offers a way for institutional leaders to better focus their time, energy, and resources in their retention effort by framing the way they think about it using the 4 Ps of retention strategy: profile, progress, process, and promise. This simple framework challenges long-standing, traditional assumptions about student retention that can distract and dilute institutional efforts, and helps keep those efforts sharply and singularly focused on improving retention and degree completion outcomes. This is the 161st volume of this Jossey-Bass series. Addressed to higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, New Directions for Higher Education provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.




Handbook of Strategic Enrollment Management


Book Description

Improve student enrollment outcomes and meet institutional goals through the effective management of student enrollments. Published with the American Association for Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), the Handbook of Strategic Enrollment Management is the comprehensive text on the policies, strategies, practices that shape postsecondary enrollments. This volume combines relevant theories and research, with applied chapters on the management of offices such as admissions, financial aid, and the registrar to provide a comprehensive guide to the complex world of Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM). SEM focuses on achieving enrollment goals, and sustaining institutional revenue and serving the needs of students. It provides insights into the ways SEM is practiced across four-year institutions, community colleges, and professional schools. More than just an enhanced approach to admissions and financial aid, SEM examines the student's entire educational cycle. From entry through graduation, this volume helps SEM professionals and graduate students interested in enrollment management to anticipate change and balancing the goals of revenue, access, diversity, and prestige. The Handbook of Strategic Enrollment Management: Provides an overview of the thinking of leading practitioners that comprise SEM organizations, including marketing, recruitment, and admissions; tuition pricing; financial aid; the registrar's role, academic advising; and, retention Includes up-to-date research on current issues in SEM including college choice, financial aid, student persistence, and the effective use of technology Guides readers creating strategic enrollment organizations that fit the unique history, culture, and policy context of your campus Strategic enrollment management has become one of the most important administrative areas in postsecondary education, and it is being adopted in countries around the globe. The Handbook of Strategic Enrollment Management is for anyone in enrollment management, admissions, financial aid, registration and records, orientation, marketing, and institutional research who wish to enhance the health and vitality of his or her institution. It is also an excellent text for graduate programs in higher education and student affairs.




Connecting Learning Across the Institution


Book Description

Most research on learning tends to occur in silos based on stakeholder perspective. This volume seeks to break down these silos and draw together scholars who research learning from different perspectives to highlight commonalities in learning for students, faculty, and institutions. When we understand how learning is experienced across the institution, we can develop strategies that help support, enhance, and reinforce learning for all. Exploring what it means to bridge learning across the institution, this volume provides a roadmap to improve learning for all. Both scholarly and practical, it advances the knowledge about the ways we investigate and study learning across and for various groups of learners. It also: Collects thinking about learning in its various formats in one location Provides a platform for synthesis Outlines key questions for thinking more deeply about learning on campus. Instead of thinking of learning as discrete depending on the stakeholder group, this volume highlights the commonalities across all types of learners.




Critical Assessment and Strategies for Increased Student Retention


Book Description

Student retention has become a difficult issue within higher education. As such, it is imperative to examine the causes, as well as provide educators with strategies to implement to improve retention rates. Critical Assessment and Strategies for Increased Student Retention is a pivotal reference source for the latest progressive research on a variety of current student success and attendance perpetuation issues. Featuring a broad range of coverage on a number of perspectives and topics, such as academic performance, counseling, and culture, this publication is geared towards practitioners, academicians, and researchers interested in understanding the difficulties with maintaining student retention.




The Undergraduate Experience


Book Description

A clear, practical framework for getting higher education back on track The Undergraduate Experience is a guide for significantly improving student learning and institutional performance in the rapidly changing world of higher education. Written by recognized experts in undergraduate education, this book encourages college and university leaders to rethink current practices that fragment the student experience, and to focus on creating powerful, integrated undergraduate learning for all students. Drawing from their own deep experience and the latest research, the authors reveal key principles that enable institutional change and enhance student outcomes in any higher education setting. Coverage includes high-impact practices for engagement, the importance of strategic leadership, the necessity of setting and maintaining high expectations, and insight on fostering excellence through systematic planning. Through its core themes and action principles, this book can be a valuable resource for faculty, staff, administrators, and governing boards at all types of postsecondary institutions. The book provides a practical framework for achieving excellence in undergraduate education by focusing on: Learning Relationships Expectations Alignment Improvement Leadership The value of an undergraduate education is under greater scrutiny than ever before, and campus leaders must be able to convey the value of their institutions to students, boards, donors, and legislators. Is a college or university degree worth the increasing cost? Are today's students academically adrift? What's the difference between a degree and an education? Responding to these questions requires focused action by individuals and institutions. The Undergraduate Experience offers practical guidance for creating and sustaining excellence in the face of disruption and change in higher education.




Building the Field of Higher Education Engagement


Book Description

Community engagement has evolved as a respected field and now occupies a seat at the academic table. In the past, this work had often been relegated to the institutional fringes of higher education, its practitioners marginalized, and the work often portrayed as service, not scholarly. Today, higher education community engagement is a dynamic and continually evolving field of scholarship and practice that carries ever-increasing academic respect. This book contributes to the ever-under-construction edifice by presenting a scaffolding of the scholarship that has been part of the building process, documenting and analyzing the past, speculating about the future, and framing a continuing conversation about and for the field.The three parts of this book are designed to promote a continuing field-building conversation: a look back at foundational documents of the field; a set of provocative questions interrogating those foundational works; and a look to the future by the next generation of leaders in the field. The central part is the special 20th anniversary issue of the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, which brings together key documents of the scholarship of engagement with reflections on those documents by key scholars and/or the authors of the original works. In addition to highlighting the foundations and evolution of the field, this work also looks ahead to the next generation of voices and views as input to the conversation, with a closing chapter that includes invited essays by nine outstanding community-engaged thinkers and writers of the next 20 years who share their ideas about probable futures.




In Search of Self: Exploring Student Identity Development


Book Description

Students become new and different people through the course of their education. When students earn the right to say, “I am a college graduate,” that new status becomes a part of who they are. The authors in this volume—scholars from a range of fields—offer methods that staff and faculty can use to explore the process through which students develop new personal, civic, and professional identities. The research and ideas in this volume can assist in designing approaches to encourage student growth, and to help us understand what it means to attend and become a graduate of a college or university. This is the 166th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Higher Education. Addressed to presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, it provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.




Cultivating Capstones


Book Description

Capstones have been a part of higher education curriculum for over two centuries, with the goal of integrating student learning to cap off their undergraduate experience. In practice, capstones are most often delivered as a course or include a significant project that addresses a problem or contributes new knowledge. This edited collection draws on multi-year, multi-institutional, and mixed-methods studies to inform the development of best practices for cultivating capstones at a variety of higher education institutions. The book is divided into three parts: Part One offers typographies of capstones, illustrating the diversity of experiences included in this high-impact practice while also identifying essential characteristics that contribute to high-quality culminating experiences for students. Part Two shares specific culminating experiences with examples from multiple institutions and strategies for adapting them for readers’ own campus contexts. Part Three offers research-informed strategies for professional development to support implementation of high-quality student learning experiences across a variety of campus contexts. Cultivating Capstones is an essential resource for faculty who teach or direct disciplinary or interdisciplinary capstone experiences, as well as for faculty developers and administrators seeking ways to offer high-quality, high-impact learning experiences for diverse student populations. A Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching Book. Visit the books’ companion website, hosted by the Center for Engaged Learning, for book resources.




The Urgency of Now


Book Description

With the student body evolving quickly, and the looming challenge of the “completion agenda,” community colleges are facing circumstances like never before in serving all students and propelling them to fulfilling their education aspirations. The Urgency of Now suggests a way forward, with students and their learning at the center of what community colleges, and all of higher education, must do to generate graduates in possession of high quality degrees and credentials. Through considering comprehensive assessment, new roles for accreditation, faculty engagement strategies, and competency-based education, The Urgency of Now describes our current challenges and the ways we might meet those challenges for the 21st century institution.




Public Policy and Higher Education


Book Description

Amid changing economic and social contexts, radical changes have occurred in public higher education policies over the past three decades. Public Policy and Higher Educationprovides readers with new ways to analyze these complex state policies and offers the tools to examine how policies affect students’ access and success in college. Rather than arguing for a single approach, the authors examine how policymakers and higher education administrators can work to inform and influence change within systems of higher education using research-based evidence along with consideration of political and historical values and beliefs. Special Features: Case Studies—allow readers to examine strategies used by different types of colleges to improve access and retention. Reflective Exercises—encourage readers to discuss state and campus context for policy decisions and to think about the strategies used in a state or institution. Approachable Explanations—unpack complex public policies and financial strategies for readers who seek understanding of public policy in higher education. Research-Based Recommendations—explore how policymakers, higher education administrators and faculty can work together to improve quality, diversity, and financial stewardship. This textbook is an invaluable resource for graduate students, administrators, policymakers, and researchers who seek to learn more about the crucial contexts underlying policy decisions and college access.