ACADEMIC ADVISEMENT AND STUDENT RETENTION: EMPIRICAL CONNECTIONS & SYSTEMIC INTERVENTIONS

Joe Cuseo

Defining and Describing �Quality� Academic Advising
Findings reviewed in the previous section point to the conclusion that enhancing the quality of academic advising should improve the rate of student retention. However, any potentially effective attempt to increase student retention through improvement in academic advisement must be guided by a clear vision of what �good� or �quality� advising actually is�because if we cannot define it, we cannot recognize it when we see it, nor can we can assess it or improve it. Among the factors that contribute to poor advising, lack of consensus about the role or function of the advisor (Wyckoff, 1999). The following statements, selectively culled from the scholarly literature on academic advising, have the potential to serve as starting points for defining what �quality� academic advisement is, and may serve as focal points for guiding the development of effective advising practices and procedures.
(a) �Developmental academic advising is a systematic process based on a close student-advisor relationship intended to aid students in achieving educational, career, and personal goals through the utilization of the full range of institutional and community resources. It both stimulates and supports students in their quest for an enriched quality of life� (Winston, Miller, Ender, & Grites, & Associates, 1984, p. 538).
(b) �The formation of relationships that assure that at least one educator has close enough contact with each student to assess and influence the quality of that student�s educational experience is realistic only through a systematic process, such as an academic advising program. It is unrealistic to expect each instructor, even with small classes, to form personal relationships of sufficient duration and depth with each student in his or her class to accomplish this� (Winston, Miller, Ender, & Grites, & Associates, 1984, p. 538). (c) �Developmental academic advising is not primarily an administrative function, not obtaining a signature to schedule classes, not a conference held once a term, not a paper relationship, not supplementary to the educational process, [and] not synonymous with faculty member� (Ender, 1983, p. 10).
(d) �Academic advising can be understood best and more easily reconceptualized if the process of academic advising and the scheduling of classes and registration are separated. Class scheduling should no be confused with educational planning. Developmental academic advising becomes a more realistic goal when separated from class scheduling because advising can then go on all during the academic year, not just during the few weeks prior to registration each new term. Advising programs, however, that emphasize registration and record keeping, while neglecting attention to students� educational and personal experiences in the institution, are missing an excellent opportunity to influence directly and immediately the quality of students� education and are also highly inefficient, since they are most likely employing highly educated (expensive) personnel who are performing essentially clerical tasks� (Winston, Miller, Ender, & Grites, & Associates, 1984, p. 542).
(e) �Students may enter the advising process with a set of perceptions and expectations quite unrelated to those of the advisor. The importance of the interpersonal relationship for students should not be underestimated (Wyckoff, 1999, p. 3).�
From the students� perspective, previously cited research points to the conclusion that undergraduates value most highly academic advisors who function as mentors or counselors, and who are: (a) available/accessible, (b) knowledgeable/helpful, and (c) personable/approachable. Integrating the perspectives of both student advisees and advising scholars, high-quality academic advisement may be distilled into, and defined in terms of, three key (�core�) advisor roles or functions.

1. Advisor as humanizing agent:

An advisor is someone who interacts with students outside the classroom on a less formal, more frequent, and more continuous basis than course instructors. Students� instructors will vary from term to term, but an academic advisor may be the one institutional representative with whom each student can have continuous contact and an ongoing relationship that may endure throughout the college experience. Thus, an advisor is uniquely positioned to develop a personal relationships with students and to serve as a humanizing agent�someone whom students feel comfortable seeking out, who knows them by name, who knows their individual interests, aptitudes, and values, and who takes special interest in their personal experiences, progress, and development.

. Advisor as counseling/mentoring agent:
An advisor is an experienced guide who helps students navigate the bureaucratic maze of institutional policies and administrative protocol, and a referral agent who directs and connects students to campus support services that best serve their needs. An advisor is also a confidante to whom students can turn for advice, counsel, guidance, or encouragement; who listens to them actively, empathically, and non-judgmentally; who allows them to freely explore their personal values and belief systems; and who serves as a student advocate�treating them as clients to be served and developed�rather than as subordinates to be evaluated and graded.

3. Advisor as educational/instructional agent:
An advisor is someone who can equip students with specific strategies for success, and who can bring integration and coherence to the students� college experience�by promoting their appreciation of the college mission, the college curriculum (e.g., the purpose of general education), and the co-curriculum (e.g., the educational value of experiential learning outside the classroom).
An advisor is also someone who, through effective questioning techniques, helps students become more self-aware of their distinctive interests, talents, values, and priorities; who enables students to see the �connection� between their present academic experience and their future life plans; who broadens students� perspectives with respect to their personal life choices, and sharpens their cognitive skills for making these choices�e.g., effective problem-solving, critical thinking, and reflective decision-making.

Systemic Strategies for Enhancing the Quality of Academic Advising
The above-cited qualities paint a picture of the ideal advisor in an ideal advising scenario. In order for the present reality of academic advisement in higher education to begin to approach this ideal state, several systemic changes need to take place in the way most advising programs are presently designed and delivered. Aforementioned findings from national surveys and national reports strongly suggest that academic advisement programs in higher education are not presently well positioned to deliver high-quality developmental advising. Thus, it appears as if academic advising at many institutions needs systematic and systemic overhaul before it can be expected to approach a level of program quality that exerts dramatic impact on student retention. To this end, the following systemic strategies are offered as major fulcrums for levering positive change in the quality and retention-promoting impact of academic advisement.

1. Provide strong incentives and rewards for advisors to engage in high-quality advising.

Advising runs the risk of being perceived as a supplemental, low-status, and low-priority activity by college faculty because it typically does not carry the same professorial status and resume-building value as conducting research, acquiring grants, presenting papers at a professional conference, or engaging in off-campus consulting. Even at postsecondary institutions that do not place a high priority on research and publication, classroom teaching is typically valued more highly than academic advising. Without any incentives to pursue excellence, it seems unlikely that advisors will be motivated to invest the time and energy needed to improve the quality of their work.
Faculty have only a finite amount of time available to them to perform their three primary professional responsibilities: teaching, research, and service. Given increasing expectations for faculty to publish at many colleges and universities (Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 1991), while maintaining their traditional teaching loads, it is reasonable to expect that the degree of faculty commitment to academic advisement will be severely compromised by institutional reward systems that place greater value on competing professional priorities.
Before we can expect to see substantive improvement in the quality of advising received by undergraduate students, and concomitant improvement in their retention rates, higher education administrators must begin to intentionally and creatively redesign traditional reward systems to place higher value on academic advisement as a professional responsibility. For example, professional workloads could be intentionally reconfigured and funds reallocated to allow faculty sufficient time to engage in true developmental advising�as opposed to perfunctory course scheduling. Academic advising could be redefined as a bona fide instructional activity and, as such, might be counted as equivalent to the teaching of one course in a faculty member�s workload. If advising were redefined and elevated to the status of college teaching, it may even be possible to allow faculty with historically poor records of advising performance the option of substituting an additional course in their teaching load, in lieu of advising. This policy might serve to increase the likelihood that faculty who do advise are those who possess a genuine interest in and commitment to delivering high-quality advising.
Faculty research and scholarship could be more broadly defined to include research on the advising process, and such scholarship could be counted in decisions about promotion and tenure in a fashion similar to discipline-driven research. Such an expanded view of scholarship would be consistent with the late Ernest Boyer�s call for a �new scholarship� that would include the scholarship of �teaching� and the scholarship of �application� (Boyer, 1991). Also, professional (non-faculty) advisors might be given the opportunity to advance in rank from assistant to associate to full (tenured) status�based on the quality of their advising and advising scholarship�just as faculty have been traditionally promoted on the basis of their teaching and research.
Research on factors that promote faculty change toward student-centered professional activities indicates that two of the most common barriers to the change process are the influence of educational tradition and limited incentives for faculty to change (Bonwell & Eison, 1991). For high-quality advising to become a reality, advisors need (a) to know that the institution considers advising to be a high-priority professional activity that is equivalent in value to classroom instruction or research publication, (b) be given the time to do it, and (c) to know that the time they do devote to it is counted and weighed in decisions about their professional rank, promotion, and tenure.

2. Strengthen advisor orientation, training, and development, and deliver them as essential components of the institution�s faculty/staff development program.
National reports calling for improvement in the quality of undergraduate education have repeatedly emphasized the need for instructional development of faculty, because graduate school typically does no prepare them for college teaching (National Institute of Education, 1984; Association of American Colleges, 1985; Wingspread Group, 1993). The very same case could be made for college advising, because faculty are the most prevalent advisors at all types of colleges and universities (Lareau, 1996), yet the importance of professional development for academic advisors has been given short shrift by national reports calling for higher educational reform. In fact, it is probably safe to say that advising is the professional role for which faculty are least prepared to perform. Undoubtedly, faculty receive even less preparation for academic advising during their graduate school experience than they do for undergraduate teaching. (For instance, there are no �advising assistantships� in graduate school, as there are teaching assistantships.) Lack of advisor preparation before entering the professoriate is subsequently compounded by the lack of substantive professional development programs for faculty advisors after they enter the professoriate. Recent national survey results obtained from a sample of approximately 1000 postsecondary institutions indicate that only 55% of American colleges and universities provide any type of preparation or training for advisors of first-year students (Policy Center on the First Year of College, 2003). The dire need for better advisor training to realize the goal of developmental academic advising is well articulated by Ender (1994):

Faculty are, for the most part, powerless to implement developmental advising without adequate training. To be an effective developmental advisor requires sills, competencies, and knowledge beyond any given academic discipline. Improving communication, building relationships, setting goals, and enhancing knowledge of campus and community resources are but a few examples of training areas to which faculty and other advisor need exposure (p. 106).

Redressing the underpreparedness of faculty advisors requires systematic design and delivery of intensive and extensive professional development programs, which should be more substantive than the common practice of reducing advisor development to an advising �training� program that begins and ends with a one-shot, immersion orientation session for new advisors. Orientation needs to be augmented by professional development seminars and workshops delivered in person, and supplemented by advisor support delivered in print�in the form of a carefully constructed and regularly updated �advising handbook.� A comprehensive advisor handbook should include: (a) current curricular information (e.g., up-to-date information on course requirements, sequences, and prerequisites; (b) current information relating to academic policies and procedures (e.g., procedures for adding/dropping classes and petitioning for an incomplete or changed grade); (c) student self-help and self-management strategies (e.g., strategies for learning and time management ); (d) names, phone numbers, and office hours of key campus- and community-support services (e.g., learning assistance center, career development center, personal counseling center, local service-learning opportunities);and (e) strategies relating to the process of developmental advising (e.g., student-referral strategies, and concrete advisor behaviors or practices that effectively implement developmental advising).
Research reviewed by Wyckoff (1999) indicates that advisor preparation and training has a demonstrable impact on student retention, as evidenced by lower attrition rates for students whose advisors receive training in advising techniques�relative to students whose advisors are untrained.

3. Assess and evaluate the quality of academic advisement.
Regular assessment of academic advisement sends a clear message to advisors that student advising is an important professional responsibility and increases the likelihood that weaknesses in the advising program are identified and corrected. Conversely, failure to monitor and evaluate the quality of advising tacitly communicates the message that it is a student service which is not valued by the institution. As Linda Darling-Hammond, higher education research specialist for the Rand Corporation, points out: �If there�s one thing social science research has found consistently and unambiguously . . . it�s that people will do more of whatever they are evaluated on doing. What is measured will increase, and what is not measured will decrease. That�s why assessment is such a powerful activity. It cannot only measure, but change reality� (quoted in Hutchings & Marchese, 1990). Thus, the mere fact that advisors are aware that their advising is being assessed may, in itself, lead to improvement in the quality of academic advisement they deliver.
Assessment should reflect the perspectives of advisors, as well as students. Advisors should be given the opportunity to assess the quality of administrative support they receive for advising�for example, the effectiveness of orientation, training, and development they received, the usefulness of support materials or technological tools provided for them, the viability of their advisee case load, and the effectiveness of advising administrative policies and procedures. National survey research of first-year student advising practices indicates that only 11% of postsecondary institutions involve advisors as evaluators in the assessment process (Policy Center on the First Year of College, 2003). This is a disappointing finding, because involving advisors in the assessment process can serve two very valuable purposes: (a) provides front-line feedback to the advising program director that can be used for program improvement, and (b) enables advisors to become active agents (rather than passive recipients) of evaluation, which serves to increase their personal investment in, and �ownership� of, the advisement program.
Advisors can also become more active agents in the assessment process if they engage in self-assessment. This could be done in narrative form, perhaps as part of an advising portfolio, which would include (a) a personal statement of advising philosophy, (b) advising strategies employed, (c) advisor development activities, (d) self-constructed advising materials (e.g., an advising syllabus), and (e) responses to student evaluations. This type of advisor self-assessment could also be used as evidence of advising quality and counted in decisions about promotion and advancement in rank, comparable to how the �teaching portfolio� is used in faculty evaluation of instructional effectiveness.

4. Maintain advisee-to-advisor ratios that are small enough to enable delivery of personalized advising.
Existing advisee:advisor ratios at many colleges and universities are from being conducive to the formation of a personal relationship between student and advisor, which is the foundation for effective developmental advising. As Winston (1994) notes: �Unfortunately, on many campuses today (especially at public four-year institutions) advising centers have student-advisor ratios in the hundreds and these ratios are growing. With such workloads, developmental advising is impossible, not matter what the philosophy or skills of the advisors� (p. 113).
The same can be said for many public community colleges. In the California community colleges, for example, the average student/advisor ratio is about 600:1 (Pam Schachter, personal communication, December 12, 2002). Advising sessions are not typically scheduled by personal appointment, and they are not conducted in a private office setting; instead, they take place in a large, impersonal center on a drop-by basis, which often results in the same student seeing a different advisor each time she �drops by.�
One way to begin the process of reducing student/advisor ratios to a level that allows for personalized advising is to increase the number of advisors deployed. This could be accomplished in a cost-effective manner that would not require hiring of additional personnel, if academic advisement were to be conceptualized as a shared responsibility assumed by multiple members of the college community, namely: faculty, professional staff, administrators, student paraprofessionals (trained peers), graduate students, and possibly retired faculty or staff. If such a team or community approach to advising were adopted, then student:advisor ratios might be reduced to more manageable levels�ideally, to a level at which each and every student has a personally assigned advisor, and all advisors have case loads small enough to allow them to provide individualized attention and personalized advising to each one of their advisees.

5. Provide strong incentives for students to meet regularly with their advisors.
At some 4-year colleges, and most community colleges, students can register for classes without ever seeing an academic advisor (e.g., via electronic or telephonic registration). Leaving students on their own to design an educational plan and to select courses relevant to that plan, means that students completely bypass the advising process, along with its retention-promoting potential. This is an especially risky procedure to employ at any college or university, but especially at community colleges, which (a) offer a complex array of multi-purpose courses designed to fulfill multiple missions (e.g., transfer-track courses, technical-vocational track courses, personal enrichment courses), and (b) are open-admission institutions that attract higher proportions of first-generation college students, students with diverse educational goals and intentions, and students with diverse levels of academic preparedness. While the practice of registration without advisement may be consistent with the community colleges� historic goal of promoting college access, it may be simultaneously inconsistent with the goal of promoting college success�because receipt of absolutely no advising (or even informal advice) militates against their prospects for retention to program or degree completion. (Such a shortsighted focus on promoting student recruitment without attention to subsequent retention is reinforced by state funding practices that annually reward postsecondary institutions for the total number of students enrolled [FTEs], but which provide no fiscal incentive or reward for retaining and advancing those students who do enroll.)
Requiring an advisor�s signature as a pre-requisite or pre-condition for course registration, as well as for dropping or adding classes once the academic term has begun, provides a strong incentive for students to connect with their advisors, and should serve to promote their retention by (a) enhancing the quality of students� educational planning and decision making, and (b) increasing student contact with faculty and staff outside the classroom.
Strong incentives should also be provided for students to meet with advisors at times other than the hurried and harried period of course registration, i.e., at times when advisors have time to interact with students as persons�rather than �process� them as registrants, and when advisors have the opportunity to explore or clarify students� broader, long-term educational plans�rather than focusing narrowly, myopically, and episodically on the imminent, deadline-driven task of class scheduling.
One promising curricular vehicle through which advisors may be given the opportunity to engage their advisees in meaningful long-range educational planning is the first-year seminar. Presently, 20% of institutions offering first-year seminars have arranged for students to be placed into sections of the course that are taught by their academic advisors (National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience, 2003), thus ensuring regular advisor-advisee contact during the critical first term of college. Other institutions have built assignments into the first-year seminar that require students to meet with their academic advisors to engage in long-term educational planning and decision-making (Cuseo, in press).

6. Identify highly effective advisors and �front load� them�i.e., position them at the front (start) of the college experience to work with first-year students, particularly first-year students who may be �at risk� for attrition.
Research indicates that at least one-half of all students who drop out of college will do so during their freshman year (Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange, 1999). According to Lee Noel (1985), �The critical time in establishing the kind of one-to-one contacts between students and their teachers and advisers that contribute to student success and satisfaction occur during the first few weeks of the freshman year� (p. 20). Support for this observation is provided by the National Institute of Education�s (1984) landmark report on the quality of undergraduate education in America. Its panel of distinguished scholars� first recommendation for improving undergraduate education was �front loading�, which they define as the reallocation of faculty and other institutional resources to better serve entering students.
John Gardner suggests that front-loaded support for first-year students during their early weeks on campus works like the marketing concept of �second sale,� whereby the college helps students overcome �buyers remorse� and make a long-term commitment to remain at the institution (Gardner, 1986, p. 267). High-quality advising during the first-semester of college may be one way to promote long-term student commitment and retention. The importance of quality first-year advisement for the retention of African-American students, in particular, is empirically supported by research indicating that the frequency of personal contacts between black freshmen and their academic advisors is the variable that is most strongly associated with retention through the critical freshman year; furthermore, the frequency of student-advisor contact is significantly higher if the first contact occurs early in the freshman year (Trippi & Gheatham, 1989).

7. Include advising effectiveness as one criterion for recruiting and selecting new faculty.
Beal and Noel (1980) surveyed 947 colleges and universities, asking administrative officials involved with student retention the following question: �What makes students stay?� Ranking first in response to this question was �a caring faculty and staff.� As Tinto (1987) expresses it, �Students are more likely to become committed to the institution and, therefore stay, when they come to understand that the institution is committed to them. There is no ready programmatic substitute for this sort of commitment. Programs cannot replace the absence of high quality, caring and concerned faculty and staff� (p. 176).
It may not be easy to �train� people to develop these altruistic characteristics; more realistically, individuals with these qualities need to be found. The harvesting of caring, concerned, and committed faculty and staff begins with careful attention to these qualities during the recruitment and selection process. College position announcements should publicly and explicitly state that academic advising is an important component of the position, and candidates� written applications and personal interviews should be scrutinized for signs of a �caring� disposition, and for a demonstrated interest in and commitment to student advising.

Summary and Conclusion
Research reviewed in this manuscript strongly suggests that there is much need for, and room for, improvement in the quality of academic advisement and the rate of student retention in higher education. The research also suggests that improvement in the former is associated with improvement in the latter. However, to promote extensive and enduring gains in student retention, academic advisement programs need to undergo systemic change at four foundational levels: (a) recruitment and selection of advisors, (b) preparation and development of advisors, (c) recognition and reward for advisors, and (d) advisor assessment and program evaluation. As Habley and Crockett conclude from national surveys of academic advising practices: �Training, accountability, evaluation, and recognition/reward are the cornerstones of performance in every field or job. Yet those continue to be stumbling blocks in most advising programs� (1988, p. 68). These four elements are also the cornerstones and building blocks that undergird construction of any high-quality advising program. Only when sufficient institutional attention and resources are devoted to securing each of these foundational features of program development will the quest for quality academic advisement be successful and its potential for promoting student retention be fulfilled.

Final Note: For strategies relating to assessment of academic advising, see the following URL: http://www.advising.hawaii.edu/nacada/assessmentlG/advising_assess_tools.asp,

Or, contact Joe Cuseo at: [email protected]

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