mortiz0010

While meeting with a college president who was hiring my firm to do a customer service audit of her school, she asked me a basic and important question. “How do you measure success? How do you know if this all works?” There are five ways to make that measurement. Some of them may take longer than a year to determine but then changing a college’s culture is a long term project. Colleges are great at studying others and telling them how to change but a bit weak in studying themselves and making change occur on campus. One, take a survey of students, staff, faculty and administrators at the beginning of a project to increase retention through any means. Then use that survey as a benchmark to judge progress. An increase in positives will show success in the area that the survey question covers.   We include a survey of all these groups in our customer service audits so our client colleges and universities have a way to make both measurements of success and decisions about what needs t...

Though it will seem to cause some pain and hurt for some individuals on campus the reality needs to be said. Students do not come to college to learn. They come to get a job. Well, to get the certification through a degree or at least to be trained and educated to get a job. They are not there to learn and grow though they will accede to that as a condition to getting the diploma they seek to get a job. Want proof? just think about required courses. Why are they required? Because if they were not students would not take them. Students do not see them as fitting into their immediate career studies and goals. As an ex-composition teacher I endured many a student who simply asked me why he or she had to take writing if they were going to be a (fill in the blanks)they simply did not see the required course as necessary to their career goals. Courses are required because we believe they are necessary for someone to learn the material and ideas in them to be an educated person. If we di...

When schools try to figure out what to do to increase retention they often make primary errors. They approach attrition as if it were a rational and logical decision that can be overcome by reasonable improvements.   They do not look at the underlying problems and issues they create for students that “turn them off” and negatively affect their emotional attachment to the school. And they do not come through on promises to be a “a school that cares about students and where you are not just a number”. Students do not make a rational decision to stay or leave a college or university. They do not sit down, take out a piece of paper and weigh the pros and cons. They decide to leave almost as they chose to come to the school –emotion. Think of how students think of going to a college and what they say about it. They use phrases like “I want to go there”.” “I love this school”. “I hate this place ”or “ I want to get the %*&# out of here”. These are emotional statements that indicate ...

Zeno the Greek philosopher devised a paradox that describes the situation of many colleges and universities right now and into the near future.   He stated that if a person wants to get to a goal but can only cover half of the distance each time, he will never get to his goal. This is so because there will always be 50% of the distance remaining to go.  Considering that the average college or university loses half of its population every year, it holds that they will never get to their goals either.   Fifty percent annually means that it must always recruit at least half of its population every year just to try and stay even. And it gets worse because the distance to go actually increases annually because the cost of operating goes up every year. So all things being equal, the college loses ground just by staying even at a 50% attrition rate. Okay, so all one needs to do is increase tuition costs to cover for the lost retention just to stay even. But every increase in tu...