Intrusive, data-driven advising: track unregistered students, audit degree plans, and bring advising directly to students¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

USC's approach centers on systematically identifying students at risk of not graduating and intervening before they ask for help. Staff "started running lists of all the continuing students who had not yet registered for the upcoming semester," later automated in an online advising database giving advisors across majors the same student record. Every student builds a four-year plan audited at the end of the third and fifth semesters, receives projected time-to-degree reports, and a mid-semester grade reporting system alerts advisors to academic difficulty.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A provost-level position responsible for retention and graduation
• Funding for retention projects (over $500,000 at USC)
• An online advising database so advisors give consistent advice

Constraints¶

• USC is a private research university with substantial resources; the article presents institutional self-attribution, not a controlled evaluation

Target Learners¶

• Undergraduates at four-year institutions, especially underrepresented students

Target Learning Goals¶

• Timely degree completion and closing graduation-rate gaps

Related Strategies¶

• Colleges can adopt evidence-based support practices—wrap-around advising, proactive advising, non-tuition financial support, co-requisite courses, early alert systems, and disaggregated data—to improve completion
• Provide schools real-time early warning data reports and credit recovery reports to monitor student performance and support on-track progress
• Focus school improvement efforts on the ninth-grade transition using real-time data to monitor and support at-risk freshmen
• Integrate background grade-prediction models into early alert advising systems
• VCU University College first-year model — proactive advising in another case from the same series

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Mary Nguyen, Erin Ward Bibo, and Jennifer Engle. (2012). Advancing to Completion: Increasing degree attainment by improving graduation rates and closing gaps for African-American students. The Education Trust. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED535504