“Student Completion” and “Student Success” are topics which are far from new, but are definitely being discussed in most higher education circles these days. Budget deficits are fueling calls for greater accountability. President Obama has issued a challenge for the United States to have the highest proportion of adults with college degrees. A recent cover article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to increase college graduation rates. Almost weekly it seems another source of discussion around these topics originates. The prominence of these discussions is great, but the majority of the discussion is stuck at a “high level”. There is a very critical factor at the grass roots level that colleges and universities cannot ignore if they expect to reach the goals being set. These are the “roadblocks and barriers.”
Roadblocks and barriers in action at institutions
A large community college system asked for assistance in identifying the obstacles that students were experiencing in relation to the services the institution offered. The administration perceived that there were a number of student complaints regarding basic services – admissions, financial aid, advising, registration/enrollment, etc. Detailed process reviews and focus groups were conducted to identify over 130 “unintentional” roadblocks or barriers which kept students from successfully completing some step, or process, related to student services, without frustration.
Roadblocks and barriers may have many different sources: a poorly constructed or defined policy; a procedure implemented or interpreted differently between offices; a lack of adequate training resulting in inconsistently applied practices; poorly communicated procedures or steps; and, this list could go on for quite some length. This article provides an interesting perspective of one school’s “accidental” achievement of 50% higher degree attainment over an 8-year period by removing roadblocks and barriers.
Examples seen consistently at institutions:
- “The student run around” – students getting different instructions based on which office they talk to, due to different understandings of policies and procedures.
- “Hold” policies that could be handled much more positively through a process change to implement a step, rather than presenting it as a barrier to the student.
- Policies written vaguely to where students are not certain if they apply to them, and often staff are not any more certain, all resulting in frustration and time consumption.
Unfortunately, those most frequently impacted by these “obstacles” are new applicants/first semester matriculates. Is it a coincidence that this is also the group who has the highest percentage of non-persistence? Absolutely not. Numerous stories abound of students who did not matriculate at an institution due to admissions misunderstandings or miscommunications, who “finally gave up trying to figure out the system,” who came to the conclusion “it’s too hard to get financial aid,” and many more stories like these.
In order to increase retention and completion rates, student services need to be more accessible to students. The first step is identifying and removing the roadblocks and barriers.
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