Dennis Day
Dennis is a Senior Consultant with Collegiate Project Services.
Latest posts by Dennis Day (see all)
- Student Success: It is personal! - June 21, 2016
- What Role does Predictive Learning Analytics play in Student Success? - April 26, 2016
- What does sport analytics have in common with student success? - February 23, 2016
State legislatures and the federal government are making “student success” the focal point for state and federal funding. The strings are being tied to how successful students are – across all institution types and all populations of students. This makes student success a priority to be addressed at every institution that receives some type of funding from a governmental agency.
For years, we in higher education have concentrated our efforts on recruitment and enrollment – and it’s time to borrow some of that thinking to advance in the area of student success. We have long understood the “recruitment funnel” that tracks potential students from the inquiry phase all the way through the application process and hopefully ending in their enrollment of classes.
What are schools leaving behind in the Recruitment Funnel?
This continuously constricting funnel demonstrates how the initial prospect or inquiry pool gets smaller and smaller at each process or decision point. For most institutions, that narrowing pool of possible students is counterproductive to the goal of larger enrollments that most presidents and boards are looking for each year. Many institutions support this type of “thinning the cohort” under the guise of finding the “right” student for their school. Potential students are selected or self-selected through a series of test scores, essays, recommendations, or interviews. These select students advance to enrollment…but what happens with all the data and knowledge gathered about the other potential or current students? This gap, or lost data, in the recruitment funnel can become the basis for a new model: a Success Funnel.
How can a Success Funnel enable strategic Student Success?
Looking at the recruitment funnel through the lens of student success, every piece of data can be turned into a possible opportunity to either assist the student or to provide a method of addressing why the student may not fit the expectations of the institution. And from this perspective, a Success Funnel can be developed.
Rethinking Retention as Second Chance Recruitment within the Success Funnel
At the applicant level in recruitment, a 50% conversion rate from applicant to enrollment is considered good. In a Success Funnel, we have a real opportunity to enhance student success by understanding a few key things about our students:
- Who did not enroll
- What data we have about them
- How to recruit them again addressing those factors that may have affected their decision not to enroll initially
This is the first of several opportunities for “second chance” recruitment within a success funnel.
Our next opportunity for second chance recruitment comes within the first semester of enrollment, when far too many students don’t complete the first semester or return for the second semester. Early identification, intrusive intervention and setting expectations are all possible methods of raising the retention numbers in this “second chance” cohort. In many cases if an institution was able to retain 10% more students from semester to semester, they would show a significant improvement in their success funnel. Bottom line: data-driven decisions that create increases in second chance recruitment from the Success Funnel will boost an institution’s performance, increase revenues, and potentially impact funding.
A Success Funnel is critical to support data-driven strategies
As we all face the growing importance of the completion agenda that governmental agencies are advancing, the success of each student is paramount. Strategic, data-driven planning will help identify student needs and align the institution’s services and programs that will lead to success. Institutions can strategically design their own Success Funnel to take advantage of the second chance recruitment opportunities with their own student population, and increase overall student success.
How do you think a Success Funnel strategy will help institutions?
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