student retention strategies Archives - Page 3 of 12 - Ruffalo Noel Levitz Blog: Higher Education Enrollment, Student Retention, and Student Success

Build enrollment from the inside: 6 strategies to implement this spring to improve your retention and graduation rates

January 18, 2017 by Dr. Mari Normyle, Asst. Vice President for Retention Solutions, RNL Leave a Comment

January is a key month on college campuses for enrollment managers and others who are monitoring enrollment. Recruitment leaders are looking forward to monitor how the entering class is shaping up. And simultaneously, those responsible for retention are looking backward to assess the fall term and any progress made in improving term-to-term persistence rates.

The connection between retention and recruitment has never been stronger. As my colleague, Kevin Crockett, observed in his recent blog, “the number of high school graduates is expected to show virtually no growth over the next seven years.” The likelihood of maintaining, much less increasing, the number of students enrolled on college campuses across the country is not going to be the result of just recruitment efforts. Retaining the students already enrolled is an increasingly important strategy.

What can you do now, this term, to improve your retention and graduation rates?

Let me offer 6 college student retention strategies that you can implement now to have a direct impact on the enrollment numbers on your campus through retention:

Connect first-year students to their end goals. Our data from the Mid-Year Student Assessment (MYSA) indicate an overwhelming desire for career development assistance as students move into their second terms of enrollment. All too often, career development programs and services are designed for upper-level students, but students in their first-year also have their hands raised for this critical educational planning information. When students have a plan that helps them see the pathway through college to a career (even though they may change their plan), they are more likely to push through barriers and remain enrolled.
Look backward carefully. To pinpoint opportunities for improvements, take a careful look at your institution’s internal trendlines for term-to-term persistence for the past three to five years, then compare these to external benchmarks. Slice these trends by program, by subcohorts, by GPA, and other indicators that allow you to get your arms around pertinent issues.
Expand your academic recovery programs beyond students on academic warning/probation. Students who are low-performing (below a 2.5 GPA) are at risk, even if they aren’t on probation. I was studying data from a client campus recently and saw a consistent pattern of significantly lower retention and graduation rates of “under-performing” students. Many campuses have strong academic recovery programs but these are too often focused on students on academic probation. What would it take on your campus to expand your academic recovery program to those who are “underperforming”? Helping these students improve their GPAs (and finding a clear path) is worthy of your efforts, too.
Pay attention to your second-year students, too. Many campuses continue to experience double-digit attrition after the third and fourth terms. If graduation rates are going to improve, attention must be given to second-year students as well as first-year students. We advocate clients develop a first through fourth semester/term student success plan. The data we have gathered from the Second-Year Student Assessment indicate high demand for information about internships, employment options related to their majors, academic support and study skills development, and affirmation that their educational plan will help them graduate on time.
Develop a robust “Recruit Back Strategy.” Do you know which of your students are planning on leaving at the end of this term? Most of these students will be in good academic standing. Who has requested a transcript be sent to another institution? Who has not registered for classes, signed up for housing, or applied for financial aid for the next academic year? Monitoring these “attrition triggers” and engaging students in meaningful, problem-solving conversations can help improve retention rates for the next term.
Take advantage of the Prior-Prior Year financial aid changes and award current students their financial aid packages earlier. We recommend awarding for the next year in the spring term prior to students leaving campus for the summer. Provide these awards in a timely manner with a strong communications follow-up plan so that students who are anticipating not returning for financial reasons have time to work with you to resolve their issues and increase their likelihood of continuing enrollment with you.

Start out strong in 2017 with enrollment firing on all cylinders

We hope find these suggestions for your college student retention strategies helpful as you work at building enrollment through both recruitment and retention in 2017. Our research and regular visits to campuses show us that many institutions have substantial, untapped opportunities to grow enrollment by enhancing student success.

Questions? Want to discuss your strategy with an expert?

If you have questions or would like to discuss college student retention strategies with an expert, please email or call us at 800.876.1117.

3 tips for managing retention for the Class of 2020

September 1, 2016 by Dr. Tim Culver, Vice President of Consulting Services, RNL 1 Comment

Most of you at four-year institutions have begun your fall term, or will begin soon, and have welcomed your new class, the class of 2020. But are they really? Some of them will be the class of 2020 and others will be the class of 2021 and a few more will be part of the class of 2022. If you’re reading this, then you’re most likely looking for some ideas for your campus to implement in your retention and completion planning. Here are three tips for you to consider.

Tip 1
First, please know what “normal” retention and completion rates are for your school type. I’ll give you an example but if you don’t know what your type is then please email me at tim.culver@ruffalonl.com and we will define your type. This is the first critical step.

Here’s the example. Let’s assume you are a traditionally admitting school, which means your middle ACT composite range is about 18-24 and your SAT middle score range (all three tests) is about 1290-1650. Also, you are a public institution with a Carnegie Classification of baccalaureate offerings only. If this is you, then your retention rate on average should be about 70 percent and your five-year graduation rate should be around 38 percent.

If the national average for your school type is 70 percent and your campus has set a first-year retention rate goal of 80 percent then you may have a harder time achieving your goal unless you invest in aggressive strategy implementation.

Tip 2
Second, now that you know what is normal, you’ll need to assess what is actual. I always find this to be the most interesting part of the analysis. Recently, I made my first visit to one of the institutions I work with. I met with the Cabinet and they described their vision to have a 60 percent, six-year graduation rate. I asked them what data they had used to establish this vision and the answer was a list of schools they wanted to be like – their aspirant list. I think most schools have either competitor or aspirant lists or both. Anyway, my first question was this: What is your normal persistence and completion pattern? I saw some glances around the room and then asked them to track their 2007-14 cohorts, term-by-term, six years out, so we could see what really happens. The chart below is what really happened.
[Read more…]

Three ways to navigate the complexities of college completion planning

March 22, 2016 by Dr. Tim Culver, Vice President of Consulting Services, RNL 1 Comment

As I travel the country and work with our campus partners I am starting to hear more and more about completion planning. For the past three or four decades, we had really focused on first year retention planning and rightly so because it is still the time period during the student lifecycle, for most colleges and universities, where the greatest attrition occurs. But, now I’m being asked what about years two, three, and four? Should we have a completion plan? How should we define completion? How do we plan for it?

One of the first things I’d recommend is to be aware of the national conversation regarding completion. Some would say we should focus on on-time graduation rates—we should no longer accept the 150 percent of time metric as a standard of performance. I think that may be a perfect ideal and we should try to plan for that, but I also believe that you may need a framework in order to move in that direction. Toward that end, here are three steps to take in order to get your completion planning off to a strong start.

Three steps to focus college completion planning

First, please review what I call your cohort’s reality. What really happens as they persist toward completion? If you’re at a four-year institution, is it true for your institution that yearly attrition for first-time, full-time students is about half as much in each subsequent year and that, if students are retained to the 5th term (third year), attrition is low single digits beyond that term? If you’re a two-year institution, is it the case that attrition is highest from second to third term and begins to decline from third to fourth term?

Second, once you know your cohort’s reality, test the following planning conditions at your institution. I believe they are true at many colleges and universities.

Many colleges and universities have not developed a yearly Attrition Curve, using predictive analytics, which helps allocate resources efficiently to develop targeted advising, outreach, and intervention plans.
Many colleges and universities don’t have a completion planning framework beyond year one to manage the desired outcomes.
- Who understands the cohort reality?
- What are the desired retention and or completion outcomes each year of the student lifecycle?
- Who is responsible for strategy development throughout the student lifecycle?
Many colleges and universities have not prioritized or effectively developed the must-have student success strategies to manage retention and completion. Some examples include:
- Lifecycle persistence and progression data
- Realistic goal-setting and allocation of resources
- Effective planning
- Academic advising/degree planning
- Course scheduling, guided pathways to graduation, co-requisite remediation (I know this one is very controversial), other academic management strategies
- First-year transitions
- Experiential learning
- Early-alert
- Academic support
- Quality service initiatives
- Academic recovery
- Recruit-back strategies
- Co-curricular/residence life programming
- Use of Title III or V
Many colleges and universities have not effectively developed and integrated these strategies throughout the student lifecycle.

Third, and finally, start to make inroads with your completion planning efforts using the data. For example, if you know your cohort’s reality looks like the chart below, and you believe you have planned well during year one, then move to year two and assess the list of planning conditions above under step two for year two. Do you have a robust set of strategies, such as the long list of 14 above, for year two? Who owns the planning effort? Are you able to predict which students who return to year two will return to year three?

[Read more…]

Retention as a revenue-driver: Case example of a small increase bringing nearly $500K

March 8, 2016 by Mary Piccioli Leave a Comment

Last year, the student success coordinator at a client institution of mine shared a story that may be familiar to those who lead the efforts to improve student retention and graduation rates on your own campuses.

A faculty member was nonplussed when the most recent freshman cohort retention figures showed that first-to-second-year retention had improved by about 2 percentage points. A “what’s the big deal” comment was followed by “is it even statistically significant?” After hearing this story, I suggested to the student success coordinator that if her colleague doesn’t see improved student success as good news for both students and the institution serving them, than an appeal to her colleague’s understanding of the bottom line might be convincing.

In this case, net revenue per freshman was about $15,000/year, and a 2 percentage point increase in retention rate translated to 12 additional students persisting to sophomore year. That’s $180,000 in additional net revenue in the second year, not counting room revenue. Using average persistence rates to junior year, 10 would still be enrolled, and eventually 9 students would persist to senior year. That equates to $150,000 and $135,000 in years three and four. In total, the 2 percentage point improvement in retention was likely to result in about $465,000 additional net revenue over a three-year period for the first cohort alone, not counting the additional revenue gained from each subsequent cohort cycle. For small, tuition-dependent institutions, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Calculating revenue from specific majors

At the same institution, the institutional research officer was interested in gaining a better understanding of the internal migration patterns of students who change majors, especially those who began as biology majors. They were seeking to answer not only the question of whether students in a particular major were leaving the institution at higher rates than other majors, but also whether they were remaining as science majors or migrating to majors within another academic division. This need for additional data aligned nicely with the fact that an intentional by-product of our retention predictive modeling and best-practice review is to encourage our clients to do a better job of tracking retention by various subpopulations. To that end, we provide reports to demonstrate movement among majors over time. In this instance, a custom report was designed that the IR director could then replicate internally. This provided the institution with valuable data for planning as they sought to identify majors that, even though initial demand (first-time majors) may not have been strong, showed enrollment increases over time as a result of internal transfers. The financial consequences of enrollments by major would not have been obvious from looking exclusively at initial enrollment data.
[Read more…]

Top 5 gaps in the first-year experience at the middle of the first year

January 14, 2016 by Dr. Mari Normyle, Asst. Vice President for Retention Solutions, RNL Leave a Comment

I’ve talked with a number of colleagues on college campuses this week and they are all focused now on helping their first-year students transition to the second semester. On many campuses, a primary vehicle for this support in the fall term is the first-year seminar—most of which concluded at the end of the first semester. But what structures and support for student success are available once those first-semester courses and programs end?

Data collected from institutions that administer first-year student assessments from Ruffalo Noel Levitz (College Student Inventory, a pre-test, and the Mid-Year Student Assessment, a post-test) show the top five areas in which students had requests for assistance as they entered their institutions and the extent to which assistance was provided during term one:

Data from the 2014 report: changes in freshman attitudes following a semester of classes and interventions

Click image to enlarge.

These data from a recent report, Changes in Freshman Attitudes Following a Semester of Classes and Interventions, reveal that students’ motivational needs persist over time and are multi-faceted. The most substantial gaps between requests and assistance provided were in three areas that spanned all three sectors: financial guidance, career services, and academic support.

These data from the first-year experience indicate the need for structured, targeted support services extended through the second semester. If your freshman seminar has ended, how will you provide this structure of support? And what data will you have available to identify at-risk students and design the most relevant programs and services to address your students’ changing needs in the second term?

My colleague, Tim Culver, wrote about this in a previous blog that I encourage you to read or re-read. The blog emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the P+P=R formula…progression + persistence = retention.

Student attrition continues beyond the first term

Click image to enlarge.

Above, data from the 2015 Student Retention Indicators Benchmark Report show that attrition continues beyond the first semester. This means colleges and universities must develop strategies that support student success beyond the first term, encompassing the entire first-year experience.

How to respond?
[Read more…]