My
background in Higher Education spans 35 years of Student Affairs
experience. I have had responsibility
for supervising Student Life, New Student Orientation, Leadership Development
programs, Counseling Services, Vocational Testing and Assessment programs,
Resume Writing services, Job Skills Coaching and Management Development, New
Student recruitment, Admissions, Registration, Athletics, Student Health
Services, Educational Opportunity Fund, Academic Support programs and Academic
Advising. Presently I focus on
institutional student completion- success initiatives. Ocean has made a strong commitment to the
Foundations of Excellence program through the John Gardner Institute of
Excellence in Undergraduate Education.
Ocean is in an on-going assessment of how well students engage their
academic experience at all levels of interaction with the institution. Additionally, I also serve as Co-chair of the
college’s Strategic Planning and Budgeting Council.
College
student completion rates are generating quite a bit of national discussion.
Most recently the National Student Clearinghouse reported a 54% bachelor degree
completion rate for students in six years or less. A growing number of states are including some
type of outcomes assessment measure as part of their funding formula to
colleges and universities. The federal
government is also debating similar concepts.
Depending on which study you look at, our global ranking in degree
completion is approximately 16 (Civitas Learning, 2012). Fifteen other countries have better college
completion rates than the United States.
I am very reluctant to consider global
comparisons in education. Each country
has a different system for identifying and supporting students in the pursuit
of a degree. The United States has the
most open and democratic system, which is highlighted by open enrollment comprehensive
community colleges, unique in the world.
That said, we still have an obligation to support and guide students to
successful completion of their goals and reduce the number of students who
leave college with no degree or certificate and, in many cases, crushing debt.
In analyzing
the data we also see that employers don’t have a lot of confidence in the 54%
of the students who do complete a bachelor’s degree. In a recent Adecco
Staffing Survey of 500 top executives, 92% indicated that many graduates are
lacking in the soft skills of communication, critical thinking, creativity and
collaboration. A distant second were
technical skills. Other surveys of
corporate recruiters are finding a similar pattern, college graduates who lack
core business and interpersonal skills and savvy. These students are “completers” but are they
successful?
I, for one,
think we can. Recent research from
Public Agenda sheds some light on the reasons why students don’t complete
college. The bottom line, many students
never really understand their personal
reason for attending college. They
realize that, in general, it is a benefit to have a degree, but for the most
part they have not linked their personal sacrifices, financial demands of tuition,
and long hours of study to a meaningful personal goal. We need to develop an institutional climate
of student engagement that recognizes that most students have no personal
understanding of why they chose to attend college. We need to develop and promote
substantive interpersonal engagement at all levels of the institution which
encourages the student to explore, refine and come to see a meaningful
relationship between the next five minutes and the next five years. Some of
these initiatives require more money, which always seems to be in short supply,
but others require nothing more than one good session of advising that helps
the student learn something new about himself rather than reminding him of what
he already knows.
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