It goes without saying, the number of students sitting in lecture halls or engaging with online content is markedly higher at the start of the year than at the end of it. Even now, only a few weeks into a new academic year, numbers are already beginning to dwindle.
What though is the actual cost of student attrition, and why does retention, engagement and student success need to be an imperative for Australian and New Zealand tertiary education providers?
According to studies (Gartner 2018) undergraduate attrition costs Australian universities more than $1 billion dollars per year, with the median Australian university losing more than $20 million every year from undergraduate students withdrawing in their first year. Statistically speaking Australia's attrition rate sits just below 15%, with that figure a little higher—at 16%—for our Kiwi counterparts.
While research shows that regional universities are most at risk of increased attrition rates—Tasmania for example has the highest Undergraduate attrition rate at 34%, followed by the Northern Territory at 26%—metropolitan universities still have plenty to gain from a renewed focus on student retention.
Many things affect student attrition, including age, socio-economic status, location and time on campus. A study by The Conversation (2017) focused on three elements that have the potential to contribute to higher rates of attrition. The first is above-average student-to-staff ratios, as an indicator of student-lecturer interaction.
The second is above-average ratios of part-time enrolments, suggesting students are juggling study with work and personal commitments. The third is above-average ratios of external enrolments (such as students studying online), since these students have little or no access to the majority of on-campus support services.
Understanding now the cost, the challenge and the cause, solutions can begin to be explored. With The Conversation's study finding that those external enrolment students that had little access to campus support-services or engagement with fellow students having the highest attrition; the solution seems to lie in continuous engagement of the student from course enrolment—some may even argue from course selection—all the way through to graduation.
With more than 15% of college students dropping out without any qualification, the problem of student retention has quickly become a priority for education providers. This is where student experience comes in. In higher education, it‘s key to prioritise the experience of students not only to ensure they graduate but to have an engaged and active student base that become energised advocates and alumni.
In the digital age, the landscape of college life and the learning experience is shifting dramatically. This offers colleges and universities a vast array of tools and avenues for increased communication and greater opportunity to ensure that students leave with the credentials they initially came for.
Below we take a look at the strategies three Australian Higher Education providers—La Trobe University, The University of Queensland and the University of South Australia—are harnessing to optimise student engagement, increase student retention and decrease attrition.
Student engagement is about much more than attrition rates and retention statistics—it's also about ensuring students achieve to their full potential.
As Melbourne's La Trobe University discovered, increasing student retention and success opportunities should start before enrolment, and so have reworked frameworks to focus on driving advocacy through student experience.
Below Mark Young, Senior Manager of Sales and Customer Experience at La Trobe University shares details of La Trobe's reworked student experience framework that leverages student feedback and journey mapping to enhance overall experience.
“La Trobe has always had a strong focus on student experience. More recently though we have invested in understanding how students experience university life, from classroom learning, to support services and all the way to car parking and coffee on campus.
As part of the Sales and Customer Experience team at La Trobe we focus on domestic student recruitment and enhancing the customer experience in order to drive retention, advocacy and deliver on La Trobe's brand promise. This became a new focus for us following an initial piece of research which we conducted back in 2015 that explored new avenues through which we could best enhance the student experience prior to enrolment then all the way through their studies and beyond.
Embedded within the framework is a term we've coined called ‘Students as Partners' which describes the level of engagement we're aiming to facilitate through the generation of student surveys and feedback.”
“In any mature market with low to no growth, the focus shifts from sales to experience, or from growth to retention. This was much about furthering the student experience for employability, success and completion than it was good fundamental business decisions.
We say without much hesitation that the sector is increasing its competitiveness—we've probably said this for long enough now that in terms of marketing and recruitment, we are absolutely competing against similar institutions.
Without going into too much detail, if you consider any university analysis, the factors such as admissions transparency, QILT, and technology enhancements put downward pressure on universities to focus on the student experience to drive customer advocacy and minimise attrition. Strengthening how we not only go to market with a brand promise, but deliver on this brand is vital in a student's early experience of the university and gaining a student's trust that the institution can deliver a good learning experience with a partnered model for success in whatever that looks like for the student.”
“Where we previously focused on FYHE as everyone's business (professional and academic staff), so too is the experience of all students and university culture that drives the subsequent outcomes in the form of retention and success.
At La Trobe we don't just focus on success as retention or completion of a degree. Success comes in many forms and we try to look at it more holistically. We look at success as not only retention at our higher education facility, but in the continuation of studies more generally. Success is any student that completes their studies, regardless of whether they started with us or not.
Since 2015 when we amplified the focus on student experience we have observed an incremental improvement in the overall student experience and significant change in the specific focus areas that drive student advocacy more than any other aspect of the experience. As I noted success isn't just about retention, however we do still monitor retention rates at La Trobe and these have remained stable.
In terms of tracking performance, we now use real-time tools that allow us to have a point in time view of the experience, which ensures we have a lead indicator on the position of national benchmarking surveys i.e. SES (QILT).”
An Increasing number of students report losing their motivation for study and instead procrastinating by turning to technology. This trend has risen sharply with the advent of interactive screen use, with modern students struggling to balance the pervasive temptations found online with the mental rigour required to achieve goals and become successful.
Below Diana Collett, Student Counsellor and Head of Teaching & Learning Development at the University of South Australia explores the modern student psyche and delves into how she is working to support student attitudes toward study and improve engagement through a focus on the grit-mindset.
“What we're seeing is that students have a different understanding of engaging with their study, and how they engage with their studies is shifting in a manner which I'm not sure is always conducive to developing a sustained study habit and encouraging student engagement and overall success. Fundamentally technology is changing the way we as humans view the world and how we engage with the world.
If we translate this back to the student experience, the trend that is emerging is that students—right from orientation, all the way through to PhD level—are identifying that they're having difficulty with time management and procrastination. Moreover we're seeing an aversion to students tackling things they won't be able to get the answer for immediately.
This aversion is especially problematic in the higher education space, because we are trying to train our students to engage in deeper level thinking, creative thinking and problem solving at a deeper level. If students don't want to engage with something that isn't easy, or instantly gratifying then they're putting their chances of succeeding—not just academically, but personally also—at risk.”
“Ultimately what we're aiming to develop in those students currently struggling is a ‘grit-mindset' which aids success, engagement and retention by making students more conscious of their choices and how these choices are developing an attitude toward their academic studies that will positively impact the development of achievement and problem-solving in an enduring way.
This shift towards a grit mindset I feel is absolutely becoming more and more critical. As previously noted the modern student lives with an instant hit mentality, they expect things to be fast and simple. However by encouraging grit, students learn to problem solve and learn to create creative solutions when faced with a problem or big task, instead of simply abandoning the task and gaming or watching Youtube.
Part of the grit-mindset is having that sense of achievement that comes with working hard towards a goal. This increase of engagement in personal development is an important aspect of the grit mindset. Universities need to make it much more transparent that there is more than one way to achieve. Developing passion and increasing self-development objectives during your university is equally as important as academic success.”
“By highlighting the importance of student psychology we're helping to bridge the widening gap between the instant-hit expectation that our students come in with, and the deep critical thinking and analysis that is actually expected of our graduates. By developing this critical thinking and allowing students to take ownership of their goals and their student journey we're successfully aiding engagement, retention and overall success.
A defining feature of our student success strategy is the integration of an active learning approach where students actually engage together in the classroom, to learn the processes of study. This process is incredibly valuable because some students have more knowledge than others and they're mentoring the other students.
This helps students to get an understanding of the expectations in a powerful way that only other students can give to them. The influence of peers in the learning process is second to none. They understand completely; they're engaged in the same way, have the same challenges and the support they provide is incredibly powerful.
For those doing the mentoring and perhaps not struggling in the same way with engagement and procrastination as their peers our process allows students to develop skills outside of academia too which can then be translated to a professional or personal space. University isn't just about academic success. We're here to support the achievement of personal development goals too.”
The accessibility of higher education has increased, leading to a larger and more diverse group of students than ever before being enrolled in higher education. With high competition within the sector, the need to deliver enhanced, more personalised experiences is a must in order to attract, engage and retain.
Currently, the 15% of tertiary students who fail to be retained for a second year of study represent a loss of a substantial loss. As such universities are looking to new, innovative methods to help retain students through enhanced tertiary experiences.
Below Dr. Dino Willox, Director of Student Employability at the University of Queensland (UQ) explores UQ's Student Employability framework which is shifting learning from the didactic to the experiential and aiding overall student engagement and retention.
“At the University of Queensland we've come to notice that employers are demanding more from their potential employees, with recent articles published suggesting that some of the big employers aren't actually looking at GPA at all. A degree is standard now— instead employers want to know what else you can offer—which is why we developed our Student Employability framework.
At UQ we view employability as a broader process that encompasses experiential learning, work integrated learning and career development learning. Within the student employability centre we have a careers team, but we also have a work integrated learning team that works with academics to embed employability in the curriculum.
Some four years ago we developed the framework that aims to make learning and experience, not ‘being employed’ the end goal of all actions. The framework, which can be overlaid in a number of different learning environments, is predicated on four pillars; awareness, experience, learning and transfer.”
“Our perception of the student experience at UQ, and I'm sure the same can be said of other universities and higher education providers too, was that our students were too hung up on their grades and that they weren't actually experiencing all that university life has to offer them.
Our Student Employability framework was developed in part as a result of us saying to our students ‘you're kind of missing out if you're not taking in all your life experiences,’ but also due to the recognition that with the globalisation of higher education and increasing numbers of students who are graduating with degrees, it really is more than just a qualification and academic learning that will help secure positions.
Over the last few years we've increased the number of students who are actually registered for the Student Employability award by 34 per cent—which is a great ROI from UQ's perspective; our students are seeing the value of the programme and are registering in increasing numbers.”
“By offering the Student Employability framework, which is so much more than interview techniques and job application writing, we're able to more effectively support and encourage our students.
The main way our Student Employability Centre is achieving this is through strategic collaboration with student clubs and societies and colleagues across the university to get more students involved in volunteering and peer support.
The peer support especially is a great strategic move for all involved. Peer mentoring allows students already at university the opportunity to support and mentor new students. What this creates is a perfect dynamic where we foster student retention for students by students, while simultaneously providing the opportunity for these students to grow their employability through mentoring.
By helping develop an individual's employability, which is the set of achievements, skills, and personal attributes that make them attractive to an employer, and creating spaces and places for students who support each other in that process to succeed, we're directly affecting not just the student experience at university, but their ability to be retained, and their ability to succeed.
The Student Employability framework provides an avenue that not only exposes students to a whole host of new experiences, new roles and new qualities, but that actually emphasises the importance of these in the post-graduation world. We're working to make the entire university experience a value-added experience—one that offers opportunities not normally attained by attending classes, completing work, and going home.”
If you're interested in delving deeper into the impact of student attrition and exploring how student engagement can help overcome this challenge, then join us at the Student Retention & Success Summit 2019.
The event, held in Melbourne on the 27th-28th of June brings together 16 expert speakers from universities across Australia who will all share their student engagement strategies and tips. Expert speakers include; the University of Sydney, RMIT, Monash University, La Trobe, the University of Queensland, Victoria University and Western Sydney University.
To secure your ticket to the event, and for special early bird pricing simply fill in the registration form and email to registration-iqpc.com.au.