Across higher education, student support systems are often built for institutions, not for students. As a result, many learners encounter a maze of disconnected services that feel reactive, impersonal, or inaccessible. For students already balancing work, caregiving, and financial pressures, this fragmentation can be the difference between staying enrolled and stopping out.
As Chief Academic Officer, I’ve seen how crucial it is to align support structures with academic goals and student realities. Institutions must move beyond piecemeal solutions and instead design holistic ecosystems that prioritize student experience, equity, and completion from the start. That means leveraging data, embracing design thinking, and fostering cross-campus collaboration.
Where fragmentation undermines student outcomes
Many institutions approach support through isolated units: advising, student success, IT, and academic departments each operating in silos. The result is a disjointed experience for students, where important information is delayed or missed altogether. Without a unified view of the student journey, opportunities for early intervention or personalized support fall through the cracks.
This fragmentation disproportionately affects students from historically underserved backgrounds. When support isn’t accessible or timely, those with less institutional knowledge or fewer resources are more likely to disengage.
Disconnected systems can lead to:
Missed early warning signs
Delayed or generic interventions
Frustration from navigating multiple systems
Lower retention and completion rates
It’s not enough to offer services. It’s crucial to ensure those services are connected, visible, and tailored to real student needs.
In my experience, when institutions treat student support as a set of tasks rather than a strategic function, it limits their ability to make meaningful progress on equity and completion. Students shouldn’t have to navigate a patchwork of websites, offices, and policies to get the help they need. They deserve a system that anticipates their challenges and responds in real time.
What a connected, learner-first ecosystem looks like
A modern support ecosystem begins with data. Institutions need to unify data from across the student lifecycle (from admissions to advising to classroom performance) to create a comprehensive view of each learner. With integrated platforms, faculty and staff can access timely insights to guide interventions and support decisions.
At Collegis, we’ve seen how data-powered ecosystems — supported by platforms like Connected Core® — drive measurable improvement in retention and equity. But technology alone isn’t enough. Data needs to be paired with personalization. That means using predictive analytics to identify students at risk and deliver outreach that is relevant, proactive, and human.
It’s not about automation replacing connection. It’s about enabling the right kind of connection at the right time.
I often ask, “Are support systems designed for students or around them?” A learner-first ecosystem doesn’t just meet students where they are academically. It considers their time constraints, personal responsibilities, and evolving goals. It removes barriers rather than creating new ones.
Key elements of a connected ecosystem include:
Unified, actionable student data
Proactive, personalized interventions
Support that reflects real student lives
24/7 digital services and hybrid options
Flexible course scheduling, hybrid advising models, and round-the-clock support aren’t just conveniences. They’re equity tools that recognize the unique needs of today’s student body.
Using design thinking to reimagine support systems
Design thinking offers a powerful framework for this work. It starts with empathy — understanding the lived experience of students and mapping the friction they encounter in navigating institutional systems. From there, you can co-create solutions that reflect students’ realities, prototype interventions, and iterate based on feedback and outcomes.
I’ve found this approach invaluable for aligning innovation with mission. It brings together diverse voices (students, faculty, advisors, technologists) to build support systems that are not just efficient, but equitable.
Design thinking allows us to move beyond assumptions. Instead of designing around legacy processes or internal structures, we start with real student stories. This helps us ask better questions and arrive at more inclusive answers.
It’s not just about solving problems—it’s about solving the right problems.
The role of academic leadership in cross-campus collaboration
No single office can transform student support in isolation. It requires a coalition of academic, technical, and operational leaders working in sync. Academic affairs plays a central role in this work, bridging the gap between pedagogy and operations.
In my experience, success begins with a shared vision and clear metrics:
What are we trying to improve?
How will we measure progress?
From there, we build alignment around roles, resources, and timelines. Regular communication and an openness to iteration keep the momentum going.
One of the most powerful things academic leaders can do is model cross-functional thinking. When we approach student success as a collective responsibility, we shift the culture from reactive to proactive. And when data is shared across departments, everyone can see the part they play in helping students succeed.
Turning strategy into action
At Collegis, we’ve partnered with institutions to bring student-centered strategies to life:
Our Connected Core data platform enables the kind of integration that underpins personalized support.
Our deep higher education experience ensures solutions align with academic priorities.
We believe in the power of aligning strategy with execution. We don’t just talk about transformation. We build the infrastructure, train the teams, and help institutions scale what works. From data strategy to digital learning design, we act as an extension of our partners’ teams.
This work is about more than improving services. It’s about advancing equity, accelerating completion, and fulfilling our mission to support every learner.
Designing for what matters most
If we want better outcomes, we have to start with better design. That means asking not just what services you offer, but how and why you deliver them. It means shifting from reactive support to intentional, data-informed ecosystems that center the student experience.
By embracing design thinking, unifying your systems, and working across traditional boundaries, you can build the kind of support that today’s learners deserve and tomorrow’s institutions require.
Student success shouldn’t depend on luck or persistence alone. The most impactful institutions are those that view support not as a service, but as a strategy — one that helps every student reach their full potential.
Let’s talk about how to design smarter student support together.
Innovation Starts Here
Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.
College students are mastering the art of “doing school” – but far too few are actually learning (Geddes et al., 2018; Stevens & Ramey, 2020; Weinstein et al., 2018). The widespread use of artificial intelligence tools among students complicates the learning process by blurring the line between genuine understanding and task completion (Gawande et al., 2020; Jie & Kamrozzaman, 2024). It is incumbent on faculty to design learning experiences that prevent students from mistaking a passing grade for a genuine education.
This hourglass paradigm, created by Western Kentucky University education faculty, outlines key stages of effective learning and aligns with current understanding of how the brain processes and retains information (Mahan & Stein, 2014). It functions as a conceptual guide, helping students contextualize instructional content within a broader framework of cognitive engagement. The hourglass shape represents the complexity and intellectual rigor inherent in genuine learning – an endeavor that far exceeds the passive acts of listening, reading, and rote repetition. Many students, shaped by their P–12 educational experiences, have developed habits that emphasize completing tasks over engaging deeply with the learning process. In high school, success often comes from passive methods like re-reading notes or even something as simple as listening attentively in class (Gurung & Dunlosky, 2023). These habits often persist into college, where students may misplace effort on checking boxes rather than meaningful engagement with the content. While this approach may yield favorable academic outcomes in the short term, it infrequently results in deep understanding.
Figure 1 – The Reading and Learning Hourglass Note. This figure was created by the authors.
Top Half of the Hourglass
The top half represents what students are expected to do when first exposed to novel material – either in lecture or when reading.
Step #1 – Establish a Purpose
This requires students orient themselves toward finding specific information. What specific information are they expected to discern while listening or reading? What are they supposed to do with the information they find? Purpose establishes reason for attention – a key component in encoding the visual/auditory stimuli (Dubinsky & Hamid, 2024). Good teaching provides purpose and directs attention to the most important information.
Practical Application for Instructors
Clearly communicate the purpose of each lecture, reading, or activity. Assign reading surgically – not whole chapters at once. Frame lessons with guiding questions or objectives that help students focus their attention and recognize what they are expected to learn and apply.
As students encounter information meeting the established purpose, they deliberately document (extract) the evidence. This, too, is an important part of the encoding process. It focuses attention, moving students from a passive state during which the mind is prone to wander to an active state of responsibility requiring productivity.
Practical Application for Instructors
Assign students a specific task during lectures or readings (e.g., identifying key arguments, examples, or terms) and require them to record and reflect on these findings. This encourages active engagement and accountability during knowledge acquisition.
Step #3 – Make Sense
Sense and meaning are both necessary for long-term learning, but they are different constructs. Sense means that something is readily comprehensible and consistently applied (Sousa, 2011). After students have extracted the evidence, do they comprehend the material? This is a stopping point if the answer is “No.” They should either revert to the material to try to make sense of it or ask questions of the instructor/classmates (or even generative AI, as permitted) to ensure comprehension.
Practical Application for Instructors
Pause periodically to ask comprehension questions or pose simple checks for understanding. Encourage students to identify confusing parts and model how to work through confusion by thinking aloud or unpacking difficult concepts together.
Step #4 – Form Meaning
Meaning is about connections and relevancy. Once the information has been extracted and is comprehensible, the next step is determining how it connects to other information. To what other concepts is it related in the subject/discipline? How does it connect to something the student knows personally? Formation of meaning and sense making are both crucial steps in the process of consolidation – the second step in the formation of long-term memory/learning.
Practical Application for Instructors
Help students connect new content to prior knowledge by explicitly referencing past lessons or real-world examples. Use prompts such as “How does this relate to what we learned last week?” or “Where have you seen this concept applied outside of class?”
Bottom Half of the Hourglass
With the passage of time comes opportunity to study the information. Studying requires consolidation, retrieval, and active production. If students are simply re-reading information or listening again to recorded lectures, they are still in the top half of the hourglass and are not yet studying – they are simply revisiting the knowledge event. Sometimes review is necessary to ensure sense and meaning. However, students need to understand that unless they are producing something new through active retrieval, they are not studying.
Step #5 – Integrate Knowledge
After students have read multiple assignments and listened to numerous lectures, the resulting notes must be integrated into a cohesive body of knowledge. Students must synthesize this information rather than treating each reading or lecture as a discrete element – a process that supports deeper consolidation over time (Squire et al., 2015).
Practical Application for Instructors
Design cumulative tasks that require students to synthesize information into thematic essays, comparative analyses, or concept maps. Encourage students to revisit and reorganize their notes periodically to build coherence across topics.
Step #6 – Reproduce Knowledge
The best way to study to facilitate long-term learning requires active retrieval (Karpicke, 2012; Sosa et al., 2018). This process strengthens neural connections by repeatedly firing related pathways, leading to long-term potentiation – essentially, learning. Crucially, retrieval typically involves unaided recall; the value lies in the act of retrieval itself, not the product it creates. Reflection and verbal production counts as retrieval even though the product is intangible.
Practical Application for Instructors
Design assignments that require students to produce something from memory (e.g., timed short-answer questions, practice exams, or unprompted written explanations). Encourage use of retrieval-based study tools and de-emphasize passive review.
Step #7 – Share Knowledge
Students often do not know when to stop studying. Many are surprised when asked when studying should stop – the answer feels obvious: “When the test is on my desk!” In reality, studying ends when one can teach the material to someone else. As the final step of the process, the reproduction of knowledge should be so comprehensive and fluent that the students can teach the material to a peer or another individual unfamiliar with the subject matter.
Practical Application for Instructors
Create opportunities for students to teach each other. Incorporate peer instruction, study partnerships, or group teaching assignments where students must explain key ideas to classmates or create short instructional videos.
In a time when grades are often mistaken for understanding and AI tools tempt students to outsource cognitive effort, we must reclaim the purpose of education. The hourglass paradigm reframes learning as an active, metacognitive process – one that challenges students to move beyond passive habits and toward lasting intellectual growth. By designing instruction that aligns with how the brain learns best, we as faculty can help students learn how to learn and not just how to pass. This is not just a pedagogical preference; it is a professional obligation.
Dr. Daniel Super is a Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Teacher Education and director of the Barbara and Kelly Burch Institute for Transformative Practices in Higher Education at Western Kentucky University.
Dr. Jeremy Logsdon is an Assistant Professor in the School of Teacher Education and director of the Center for Literacy at Western Kentucky University.
References
Dubinsky, J. M., & Hamid, A. A. (2024). The neuroscience of active learning and direct instruction. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 163, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105737
Gawande, V., Al Badi, H., & Al Makharoumi, K. (2020). An empirical study on emerging trends in artificial intelligence and its impact on higher education. International Journal of Computer Applications, 175(12), 43-47.
Geddes, B. C., Cannon, H. M., & Cannon, J. N. (2018, March). Addressing the crisis in higher education: An experiential analysis. In Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL conference (Vol. 45). Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning. https://journals.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/3188/3106
Gurung, R. A. R., & Dunlosky, J. (2023). Study like a champ. American Psychological Association.
Jie, A. L. X., & Kamrozzaman, N. A. (2024). The challenges of higher education students face in using artificial intelligence (AI) against their learning experiences. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 12(10), 362-387. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2024.1210025
Karpicke, J. D. (2012). Retrieval-based learning: Active retrieval promotes meaningful learning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(3), 157–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412443552
Mahan, J. D., & Stein, D. S. (2014). Teaching adults – Best practices that leverage the emerging understanding of the neurobiology of learning. Current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care, 44(6), 141-149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2014.01.003
Sosa, P. M., Gonçalves, R., & Carpes, F. P. (2018). Active memory reactivation improves learning. Advances in Physiology Education, 42(2), 256–260. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00077.2017
Sousa, D. A. (2011). How the brain learns. Corwin.
Stevens, R., & Ramey, K. (2020, January). What kind of place is school to learn? A comparative perspective from students on the question. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences: The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences.
Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., & Caviglioli, O. (2018). Understanding how we learn: A visual guide. Routledge.
College students are mastering the art of “doing school” – but far too few are actually learning (Geddes et al., 2018; Stevens & Ramey, 2020; Weinstein et al., 2018). The widespread use of artificial intelligence tools among students complicates the learning process by blurring the line between genuine understanding and task completion (Gawande et al., 2020; Jie & Kamrozzaman, 2024). It is incumbent on faculty to design learning experiences that prevent students from mistaking a passing grade for a genuine education.
This hourglass paradigm, created by Western Kentucky University education faculty, outlines key stages of effective learning and aligns with current understanding of how the brain processes and retains information (Mahan & Stein, 2014). It functions as a conceptual guide, helping students contextualize instructional content within a broader framework of cognitive engagement. The hourglass shape represents the complexity and intellectual rigor inherent in genuine learning – an endeavor that far exceeds the passive acts of listening, reading, and rote repetition. Many students, shaped by their P–12 educational experiences, have developed habits that emphasize completing tasks over engaging deeply with the learning process. In high school, success often comes from passive methods like re-reading notes or even something as simple as listening attentively in class (Gurung & Dunlosky, 2023). These habits often persist into college, where students may misplace effort on checking boxes rather than meaningful engagement with the content. While this approach may yield favorable academic outcomes in the short term, it infrequently results in deep understanding.
Figure 1 – The Reading and Learning Hourglass Note. This figure was created by the authors.
Top Half of the Hourglass
The top half represents what students are expected to do when first exposed to novel material – either in lecture or when reading.
Step #1 – Establish a Purpose
This requires students orient themselves toward finding specific information. What specific information are they expected to discern while listening or reading? What are they supposed to do with the information they find? Purpose establishes reason for attention – a key component in encoding the visual/auditory stimuli (Dubinsky & Hamid, 2024). Good teaching provides purpose and directs attention to the most important information.
Practical Application for Instructors
Clearly communicate the purpose of each lecture, reading, or activity. Assign reading surgically – not whole chapters at once. Frame lessons with guiding questions or objectives that help students focus their attention and recognize what they are expected to learn and apply.
As students encounter information meeting the established purpose, they deliberately document (extract) the evidence. This, too, is an important part of the encoding process. It focuses attention, moving students from a passive state during which the mind is prone to wander to an active state of responsibility requiring productivity.
Practical Application for Instructors
Assign students a specific task during lectures or readings (e.g., identifying key arguments, examples, or terms) and require them to record and reflect on these findings. This encourages active engagement and accountability during knowledge acquisition.
Step #3 – Make Sense
Sense and meaning are both necessary for long-term learning, but they are different constructs. Sense means that something is readily comprehensible and consistently applied (Sousa, 2011). After students have extracted the evidence, do they comprehend the material? This is a stopping point if the answer is “No.” They should either revert to the material to try to make sense of it or ask questions of the instructor/classmates (or even generative AI, as permitted) to ensure comprehension.
Practical Application for Instructors
Pause periodically to ask comprehension questions or pose simple checks for understanding. Encourage students to identify confusing parts and model how to work through confusion by thinking aloud or unpacking difficult concepts together.
Step #4 – Form Meaning
Meaning is about connections and relevancy. Once the information has been extracted and is comprehensible, the next step is determining how it connects to other information. To what other concepts is it related in the subject/discipline? How does it connect to something the student knows personally? Formation of meaning and sense making are both crucial steps in the process of consolidation – the second step in the formation of long-term memory/learning.
Practical Application for Instructors
Help students connect new content to prior knowledge by explicitly referencing past lessons or real-world examples. Use prompts such as “How does this relate to what we learned last week?” or “Where have you seen this concept applied outside of class?”
Bottom Half of the Hourglass
With the passage of time comes opportunity to study the information. Studying requires consolidation, retrieval, and active production. If students are simply re-reading information or listening again to recorded lectures, they are still in the top half of the hourglass and are not yet studying – they are simply revisiting the knowledge event. Sometimes review is necessary to ensure sense and meaning. However, students need to understand that unless they are producing something new through active retrieval, they are not studying.
Step #5 – Integrate Knowledge
After students have read multiple assignments and listened to numerous lectures, the resulting notes must be integrated into a cohesive body of knowledge. Students must synthesize this information rather than treating each reading or lecture as a discrete element – a process that supports deeper consolidation over time (Squire et al., 2015).
Practical Application for Instructors
Design cumulative tasks that require students to synthesize information into thematic essays, comparative analyses, or concept maps. Encourage students to revisit and reorganize their notes periodically to build coherence across topics.
Step #6 – Reproduce Knowledge
The best way to study to facilitate long-term learning requires active retrieval (Karpicke, 2012; Sosa et al., 2018). This process strengthens neural connections by repeatedly firing related pathways, leading to long-term potentiation – essentially, learning. Crucially, retrieval typically involves unaided recall; the value lies in the act of retrieval itself, not the product it creates. Reflection and verbal production counts as retrieval even though the product is intangible.
Practical Application for Instructors
Design assignments that require students to produce something from memory (e.g., timed short-answer questions, practice exams, or unprompted written explanations). Encourage use of retrieval-based study tools and de-emphasize passive review.
Step #7 – Share Knowledge
Students often do not know when to stop studying. Many are surprised when asked when studying should stop – the answer feels obvious: “When the test is on my desk!” In reality, studying ends when one can teach the material to someone else. As the final step of the process, the reproduction of knowledge should be so comprehensive and fluent that the students can teach the material to a peer or another individual unfamiliar with the subject matter.
Practical Application for Instructors
Create opportunities for students to teach each other. Incorporate peer instruction, study partnerships, or group teaching assignments where students must explain key ideas to classmates or create short instructional videos.
In a time when grades are often mistaken for understanding and AI tools tempt students to outsource cognitive effort, we must reclaim the purpose of education. The hourglass paradigm reframes learning as an active, metacognitive process – one that challenges students to move beyond passive habits and toward lasting intellectual growth. By designing instruction that aligns with how the brain learns best, we as faculty can help students learn how to learn and not just how to pass. This is not just a pedagogical preference; it is a professional obligation.
Dr. Daniel Super is a Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Teacher Education and director of the Barbara and Kelly Burch Institute for Transformative Practices in Higher Education at Western Kentucky University.
Dr. Jeremy Logsdon is an Assistant Professor in the School of Teacher Education and director of the Center for Literacy at Western Kentucky University.
References
Dubinsky, J. M., & Hamid, A. A. (2024). The neuroscience of active learning and direct instruction. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 163, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105737
Gawande, V., Al Badi, H., & Al Makharoumi, K. (2020). An empirical study on emerging trends in artificial intelligence and its impact on higher education. International Journal of Computer Applications, 175(12), 43-47.
Geddes, B. C., Cannon, H. M., & Cannon, J. N. (2018, March). Addressing the crisis in higher education: An experiential analysis. In Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL conference (Vol. 45). Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning. https://journals.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/3188/3106
Gurung, R. A. R., & Dunlosky, J. (2023). Study like a champ. American Psychological Association.
Jie, A. L. X., & Kamrozzaman, N. A. (2024). The challenges of higher education students face in using artificial intelligence (AI) against their learning experiences. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 12(10), 362-387. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2024.1210025
Karpicke, J. D. (2012). Retrieval-based learning: Active retrieval promotes meaningful learning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(3), 157–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412443552
Mahan, J. D., & Stein, D. S. (2014). Teaching adults – Best practices that leverage the emerging understanding of the neurobiology of learning. Current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care, 44(6), 141-149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2014.01.003
Sosa, P. M., Gonçalves, R., & Carpes, F. P. (2018). Active memory reactivation improves learning. Advances in Physiology Education, 42(2), 256–260. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00077.2017
Sousa, D. A. (2011). How the brain learns. Corwin.
Stevens, R., & Ramey, K. (2020, January). What kind of place is school to learn? A comparative perspective from students on the question. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences: The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences.
Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., & Caviglioli, O. (2018). Understanding how we learn: A visual guide. Routledge.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Remigiusz Gora/iStock/Getty Images
It was legit: She was a beneficiary of the Colorado Re-Engaged Initiative (CORE), which draws on reverse-transfer policies to allow the state’s four-year institutions to award degrees to stopped-out students who have fulfilled the requirements of an associate of general studies degree.
Created by state legislation in 2021, CORE seeks to reduce the share of the 700,000 plus students in the state who have completed some college credits but don’t hold a degree.
“It has always been problematic for me to think that people could have gone three years, three and a half years to college and the highest credential that they have is a high school diploma,” said Angie Paccione, executive director of Colorado’s Department of Higher Education.
For Varkevisser, getting recognized for her years’ worth of credit accumulation was simple; she just had to say yes to the email. “It came out of nowhere, but I have my college degree now,” Varkevisser said.
Colorado isn’t the only state aiming to reduce the millions of individuals who fall in the some college, no degree population in the U.S. And reverse transfer—awarding an associate degree to students who have met the credit threshold—is a relatively simple way to do it, thanks to new technologies and state initiatives to streamline policies.
But one barrier has tripped up colleges for over a decade: working with students to make them aware so they participate in these programs. In Colorado, for example, fewer than 5 percent of eligible students have opted in to CORE.
“I can’t imagine why” a student wouldn’t opt in, Paccione said. “You’ve already paid money; you don’t have to do anything, all you have to do is call [the institution] up and say, ‘Hey, I understand I might be eligible for an associate degree.’ It takes a phone call, essentially.”
Credits but No Credential
In the 2010s, reverse transfer was a popular student success intervention, allowing students who transferred from a two-year to a four-year institution to pass their credits back to their community college to earn a credential.
Experts say awarding an associate degree for credits acquired before a student hits the four-year degree threshold can support their overall success in and after college, because it provides a benchmark of progress. A 2018 report found that most community colleges students who transferred to another institution left their two-year college without a degree, putting them in limbo between programs with credits but no credential.
Now, reverse-transfer policies are being applied to students who have enrolled at a four-year college and left before earning a degree, who often abandon a significant number of credits.
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s latest report on the some college, no credential (SCNC) population found that 7.2 percent of stopped-out students had achieved at least two years’ worth of full-time-equivalent enrollment over the past decade. In other words, 2.6 million individuals in the U.S. have completed two years’ worth of college credits but don’t hold a credential to prove it.
In addition to Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon and Texas are introducing or modifying policies to award associate degrees to stopped-out students who have earned enough credits. The trend reflects a renewed focus on better serving stopped-out students instead of simply pushing them to re-enroll.
“What’s happening at the national level is that folks are recognizing that we’re still not seeing the completion that we want,” said Wendy Sedlak, the Lumina Foundation’s strategy director for research and evaluation. “It’s taking a long time to make headway, so nationally, people are looking back, and looking into what are those initiatives, what are those policies, what are those practices that have really helped us push ahead?”
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | stphillips/iStock/Getty Images
Obstacles to Implementation
Reverse transfer, while simple on paper, faces a variety of hurdles at the state, institutional and individual levels.
At the highest level, most universities cannot award associate degrees due to state legislation. Before CORE, Colorado universities were limited to being “dual mission” (awarding two- and four-year degrees) or awarding higher degrees, such as master’s or doctorates.
There’s also a stigma around offering two-year degrees to students. Only eight universities are participating in CORE, because “some of the institutions don’t want to be associated with an associate degree,” Paccione said. “They pride themselves on the bachelor’s degree and they want to make sure students complete that.”
Critics of reverse transfer claim that awarding students an associate degree if they fail to complete a bachelor’s gives them an incentive to stop out, but most of these programs require students to have left higher education for at least two years to be eligible for reverse transfer.
Restrictions on student eligibility has further limited the number who can benefit from reverse-transfer programs.
To earn an associate degree retroactively through traditional reverse-transfer processes, students have to begin their college journey at a two-year institution and earn at least one-quarter of their credits there. They are also required to take a certain number (typically 60 or more) and type of credits to fulfill requirements for the degree, whether that’s an associate of arts, science or general studies. So a student who completed 59 credits of primarily electives or upper-level credits in their major would not be able to earn the degree, for example.
While 700,000 students in Colorado have earned some college credit but no degree, only about 30,000 residents have earned the minimum 70 credits at a four-year state university within the past 10 years that makes them eligible for CORE, according to the state.
Most colleges require students to opt in to reverse transfer due to FERPA laws, meaning that students need to advocate for receiving their award and facilitate transcript data exchanges between institutions. This can further disadvantage those who are unfamiliar with their college’s bureaucratic processes or the hidden curriculum of higher education.
In addition, getting up-to-date emails, addresses or phone numbers for students who were enrolled nearly a decade ago can be difficult for the institution.
For some students, the opportunity may seem too good to be true.
Peter Fritz, director of student transitions and degree completion initiatives at the Colorado Department of Higher Education, talked to CORE participants at their graduation ceremony in 2023 who—like Varkevisser’s partner—initially thought the program was a scam. Media attention and support from the governor have helped build trust in CORE. And the state’s Education Department continues to affirm messaging that this isn’t a giveaway or a money grab, but recognition of work already completed.
Thousands of Colorado residents are eligible for CORE, but Varkevisser said she hasn’t heard of anyone in her community who’s taken advantage of it. “Actually, I am the one that’s telling everyone I know, and they go, ‘That’s crazy!’”
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed
Giving Students Degrees
Between CORE’s launch in 2022 and January 2025, 1,032 stopped-out students earned associates degrees, according to Colorado’s education department.
At Metropolitan State University of Denver, one of the Colorado institutions that opted in to CORE, when administrators began combing through institutional data to see which students would be eligible for the associate of general studies degree, they found 4,256 that could earn an A.G.S.
Another few thousand were eligible for a different degree entirely. If students had completed 15 or more credits at the community college system, “you wouldn’t be eligible for us to award you anything,” said Shaun Schafer, associate vice president of curriculum academic effectiveness and policy development. “Guess what? It’s reverse transfer.”
MSU Denver identified nearly 2,000 students who could receive a two-year degree from their community college. “We sent that back to the different institutions saying, ‘Hey, this person is actually eligible to reverse transfer and get an associate’s from you,’” Schafer said. “We can’t really do anything for them.”
In 2024, 336 students accepted an A.G.S. from MSU Denver, just under 9 percent of those eligible. An additional 130 or so students had reached 120 credit hours or more, so the university offered to help them re-enroll to finish their degree, and 300 had resumed coursework at other institutions.
National data shows policies like reverse transfer are making a dent in the “some college no degree” population by eliminating the barrier of re-enrollment to attain a credential. In the past year, about one in four SCNC students who earned a credential in the U.S. (15,500 students in total) did so without re-enrolling, according to National Student Clearinghouse data.
In Colorado, a total of 2,100 SCNC students completed a credential during the 2023–24 academic year alone, and 800 of those did not need to re-enroll, NSC data shows.
Some states, including Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Oregon, require institutions to contact upward transfer students to make them aware of their reverse-transfer eligibility. In Texas, students consent to participating in reverse transfer when they fill out their application; they have to uncheck the box to opt out, giving universities leeway to enroll them in the process when they become eligible.
“Students often don’t do optional,” Sedlak said. “When you create additional barriers, you’re not going to see things get done.”
Alyson McClaran/MSU Denver
The first Summer Ceremony for Associate’s Degrees on June 22, 2024, in the Tivoli Turnhalle.
Leveraging Tech
Some universities have implemented new reverse transfer policies that capture students while they’re still enrolled, utilizing technology to expedite the process.
The University of Nebraska system, which includes the Lincoln, Omaha and Kearney campuses, implemented an automatically triggered reverse-transfer initiative in 2023. All eligible students need to do is respond to an email.
“Rather than putting the responsibility on the students to do that work—most of whom are not going to do that work—the system thought it would be better to create a mechanism that would automatically notify students when the courses that they’ve taken have gotten to that threshold,” said Amy Goodburn, senior associate vice chancellor at UNL.
To be eligible, students must complete at least 15 credits at a community college and then transfer to the University of Nebraska. The registrar’s office monitors a dashboard and, after confirming a student completed the appropriate number and type of credits for an associate degree, notifies the student. If the student responds to the email, the university processes the reverse transfer with the prior institution to confirm the associate degree.
“We’re trying to take the need for students to be proactive off their backs,” Goodburn said.
The process is not a heavy lift, Goodburn said, and it boosts the community college’s completion rate, making it mutually beneficial.
Still, the uptake remains stubbornly low.
At UNL, February 2025 data showed that 2,500 students were eligible to participate in reverse transfer, but only 10 percent have opted in. A reverse-transfer initiative in Tennessee a decade ago saw similar numbers; 7,500 were eligible, but only 1,755 students chose to participate and 347 degrees were awarded.
“I’m curious about the other 90 percent, like, are they not doing it because they don’t want it on their transcript?” Goodburn said. “Or they’re just not reading their emails, which is often the case? Or is there some other reason?”
The University of Montana is in the early stages of building its own process for the reverse transfer of stopped-out students. The institution has offered an associate of arts degree for years as part of Missoula College, an embedded two-year institution within the university. Now, through the Big Sky Finish initiative, officials will be able to retroactively award degrees to former students.
Brian Reed, the University of Montana’s associate vice president for student success, has been leading the project, convening with stakeholders—including the president, the provost, Missoula College leaders and the registrar’s office—to develop the process. The goal, Reed said, is to address the some college, no degree population while also investing in state goals for economic development.
Big Sky Finish hinges on a partnership with the ed-tech provider EAB, which has created a dashboard connecting various institutional data sets to identify which students are eligible for reverse transfer. The system highlights former students who have 60 credits or more that fulfill a general studies associate degree, as well as stop-outs who are mere credits away from meeting the requirement.
So far, Montana staff have identified just 11 students who are eligible to earn an A.A. degree and 150 more who are a class or two short of the needed credits.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | silverlining56/E+/Getty Images
Putting Degrees to Work
While CORE and similar initiatives are helping students earn a degree of value after leaving higher education, it’s less clear what impact associate degrees are having on students. Is it advancing their careers or getting them re-engaged in college?
About 10 percent of Colorado’s stopped-out students have chosen to re-enroll in higher education to pursue their bachelor’s degree, Fritz said.
For Varkevisser, receiving an A.G.S. degree provided the impetus to re-enroll and work toward a bachelor’s degree. The associate degree also gave her access to a variety of resources for alumni, including discounted tuition rates and career services.
“We recognize that it may not be for everybody to do this as a bachelor’s completion model, but the advantage of having an associate over a high school diploma, I think, helps,” Paccione.
But after students have their degrees, the career benefits and long-term implications for A.G.S. graduates are still murky. Median earnings of full-time, year-round workers with an associate degree are 18 percent higher than those with only a high school diploma, but still 35 percent lower than bachelor’s degree completers, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In Colorado, the average high school graduate in their mid-20s will earn about $25,000 per year, whereas a graduate with an associate of general studies degree will earn closer to $34,000 per year, according to 2021 data.
“There was an assumption that maybe an A.G.S. wasn’t really worth much, but the data we had on hand locally said there’s not really much difference financially and employment-wise between the different types of associate degrees,” Fritz said.
“I still don’t really know what all [the A.G.S.] can do for me,” Varkevisser said. “I was never not going to go for it once I got the email and found out it was a real thing, but I don’t know what to do with it necessarily.” She’s considered other forms of employment that require an associate degree, such as a laboratory or X-ray technician, while she finishes her bachelor’s degree in mathematics.
In Montana, there’s a slight wage premium for individuals who hold an associate degree compared to those with only a high school diploma, Reed said. An associate degree also opens doors in some career fields, such as bookkeeping.
The University of Montana is hoping to partner with the city of Missoula to identify small businesses looking for credentialed talent so completers can have a career pathway to transition into .
“I don’t think people are going into six-figure jobs after this,” Reed said. “But it’s creating a step toward something else for these folks. They get another job a little higher up, a little higher up, that prepares them for the next thing.”
But an A.G.S. isn’t a great target for workers and it can’t guarantee further education, MSU Denver’s Schafer noted.
“I hate to say it, but it’s a little bit of, it’s a lovely parting gift,” Schafer said. “Here, you have something that you can now show to the world. But how do I [as an administrator] build you on to the next thing when you’ve already stopped out? Maybe that’s the best hope. Even then, maybe it doesn’t work quite as magically as we want it to.”
First-generation students are twice as likely to leave college without completing a bachelor’s degree than their peers, even if they come from higher-income backgrounds and come to college academically prepared, according to a new report from the Common App. The findings suggest these factors do make a difference for student success outcomes but don’t erase other barriers first-generation students might face.
The report, released Thursday and the fourth in a series on first-generation students, used data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center to track enrollment, persistence and completion rates for 785,300 Common App applicants in the 2016–17 application cycle. (Students whose parents didn’t complete bachelor’s degrees made up 32 percent of the sample.) The report also took into account how a range of factors could affect student outcomes, including students’ incomes, their levels of academic preparation and how well-resourced their colleges are.
Previous studies have shown that “first-generation students are certainly not a monolith,” said Sarah Nolan, lead author of the report and a research scientist at Common App. “We were hoping to give readers a sense for … which first-generation students might in particular need more support.”
The good news is the report found first-generation applicants enroll in college at rates on par with their peers. Over 90 percent of Common App applicants, first-generation and otherwise, enrolled in college within six years of applying.
But first-generation students were slightly more likely to not enroll immediately (17 percent) or to enroll at a two-year college (12 percent) compared to other applicants (14 percent and 4 percent, respectively). That gap mostly closed when comparing students with strong academic records, defined as having SAT or ACT scores or GPAs in the top quartile. According to the report, that finding may be because a higher share of first-generation students may need extra coursework before enrolling in a four-year institution.
Students might also work to save up for college first or opt for community colleges’ more affordable tuition rates, the report suggested. Lower-income first-generation students, who qualified for application fee waivers, were also less likely to immediately enroll at four-year institutions and more likely to first enroll at a community college compared to similar students not from first-generation backgrounds.
Over all, “we are really heartened to see that there’s really not very strong differences in college enrollment,” Nolan said.
Completion rates, however, are another story. While about 70 percent of first-generation students do complete a bachelor’s degree within six years of enrolling, the report found stark disparities between them and their peers.
About half of first-generation students completed a bachelor’s degree within four years, compared to 68 percent of continuing-generation students, a gap of 18 percentage points. And that disparity persisted when looking at six-year graduation rates. About 69 percent of first-generation students graduated within six years, compared to 86 percent of continuing-generation students, a 17-percentage-point difference.
These gaps shrank but didn’t disappear for first-generation students with strong academic records and higher incomes. Academically prepared first-generation students were twice as likely to disenroll with no degree than their continuing-generation counterparts, 14 percent and 6 percent, respectively. In a similar vein, 24 percent of higher-income first-generation students left college without a degree within six years compared to 12 percent of their continuing-generation counterparts. Even for first-generation students who were both academically prepared and relatively well-off, these gaps remained.
Differences in the institutions first-generation and continuing-generation students attend—and the levels of supports they offer—didn’t account for completion-rate gaps, either.
Even when attending the exact same institutions, first-generation students were 10 percentage points less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree within six years than continuing-generation students.
However, higher per-student expenditures did seem to contribute to better student success outcomes. At institutions that spent at least $20,000 per student, 84 percent of first-generation graduated within six years, compared to 94 percent of continuing-generation students. The gap between first-generation and continuing-generation students’ completion rates widened to 15 percentage points at colleges that spent more moderately, $10,000 to $15,000 per student, and 17 percentage points at colleges with low per-student expenditures, less than $7,500.
These findings suggest that, while first-generation students disproportionately face financial constraints and barriers to college prep, it doesn’t explain away their graduation rate gaps. And students attending less resourced institutions isn’t a full explanation, either. Other obstacles must be at play.
What those barriers are may be “best answered by speaking with first-generation students themselves and unpacking what’s happening at the individual level,” Nolan said. But first-generation students likely struggle with limited access to information about higher ed and its “hidden curriculum” of expectations, regardless of income, high school performance or which college they attend.
“Having the right resources at the right time on the pathway—that’s really critical for student success,” Nolan added.
The stakes of success are high—the report found many first-generation students spent considerable time and money on college with no degree to show for it. Almost a third of first-generation students who didn’t earn a degree were enrolled for at least four years.
But a hopeful finding is that “additional investment can be quite positive for helping these students really actualize their potential,” Nolan said.
Dr. Andrew J. SeligsohnHigher education in the United States has come under increasing scrutiny — but not always for the right reasons. Critics claim that colleges and universities award degrees with little economic value, limit ideological expression on campus, and operate primarily for their own financial interests, rather than as institutions of shared public value. While much in this narrative is false, it nonetheless affects the public’s attitude toward higher education and individuals’ decisions about pursuing a postsecondary degree, which may be detrimental to their economic interest.
When these critiques are made in bad faith, we should counter them with facts about the value of college attainment. It remains true for example, that a college degree is likely to yield a significant boost in earnings. Nonetheless, anyone who cares about higher education must also ask why these arguments resonate so deeply with the public. Where real frustrations are fueling legitimate skepticism, addressing those concerns can both improve higher education’s reputation and enhance its value for students, families, and society. Since the experiences that give rise to frustration and receptivity to attacks on higher education are personal experiences, it pays to drill down into the particulars to figure out what’s going on.
In that spirit, Public Agenda, in partnership with Sova and the Beyond Transfer Policy Advisory Board, set out to deepen our collective understanding of learner experiences with the credit transfer process. We knew from research on enrolled students that transfer was a source of pain for many learners. But we didn’t know how many people were affected, how much it mattered to them, and how it shaped their views of higher education more broadly. With support from ECMC Foundation, we fielded a national survey of adult Americans that interrogates transfer experience and outcomes.
Dr. Lara CouturierThe findings were striking, and they should serve as a call to action for institutions of higher education. Nearly 4 in 10 respondents reported that they had tried to transfer credit toward a college degree or credential. This included credits earned at a previous college or university, as well as credits earned from nontraditional sources. In fact, more than a third attempted to transfer credits earned from workplace training, military experience, industry certification, vocational or trade school, or other prior learning. With more households feeling the cost of inflation and needing to upskill to survive in this economy, and more higher education institutions facing enrollment declines, we should be finding ways to develop more on-ramps and clear the path to a college degree.
Unfortunately, the survey revealed that Americans who attempt to transfer encounter convoluted paths, often losing credit hours, money, and motivation along the way. One in five respondents reported having to repeat a class they had already taken because their credits didn’t transfer. Thirteen percent reported running out of financial aid as a result of having to repeat courses. And, most concerning, 16% reported that they gave up on pursuing a college degree or credential because the process of transferring was so difficult. It’s clear difficulties with transfer are not only inconveniences — they’re significant financial burdens and barriers to completion.
We also sought to understand how these direct experiences shape individuals’ broader attitudes toward higher education. We found it profoundly troubling that 74% of respondents who had tried to transfer credit agreed with the statement that two- and four-year higher education institutions care more about making money than about educating students. In fact, respondents who had tried to transfer credit were more likely to hold this jaded view than those who had attended college but had not transferred or those who had no prior experience with higher education. So while some of the current attacks on higher education may be in bad faith, it should not be surprising that they find a receptive audience among so many Americans who recall feeling personally misled.
We know, then, that credit transfer needs reform — but what exactly does that look like? Public Agenda also surveyed Americans about potential interventions, and the results are promising. First, when asked what should happen to a college with a track record of not accepting many credits for transfer, Americans felt public accountability would be more helpful than heavy-handed punitive approaches. Fifty-four percent of Democrats and 47% of Republicans agreed that institutions should have to make a plan to improve credit transfer rates. Conversely, just one-third of Republicans and Democrats thought colleges should lose their funding. But what might go into a plan for improvement? Our survey found broad support among Republicans, Democrats, and independents for a variety of policies intended to make it easier for students to transfer credits. Support is notably strong for requiring that students have free and easy access to their transcripts, credentials, and degrees; requiring institutions to create public databases with transfer information; and requiring that prospective transfer students are quickly told how many credits will be accepted.
The benefits of a better transfer process are clear and compelling. Students would face fewer obstacles to completing their degrees, leading to higher graduation rates, better individual economic outcomes, and broader prosperity. Just as importantly, higher education would rebuild trust with the public by showing that institutions are committed to serving students—not just collecting tuition dollars. And the benefits of this renewed trust extend beyond the higher education system. The perception that public institutions don’t care about ordinary Americans is a key element of the challenge our broader democracy is facing. Since the education system is a direct way many people interact with our government, restoring confidence that higher education works for all Americans can further inspire faith in public institutions.
If we ignore issues like the broken credit transfer system, skepticism about higher education will continue to fester. Worse, more students may give up on college altogether, missing out on opportunities for personal and professional growth—all of which ultimately erodes our democracy. Pushing back against misinformation isn’t the only way to defend higher education; we must acknowledge and address the real barriers students face. Credit transfer is an experience shared by many with cross-partisan support for reform—now is the time to act. Reforming the transfer process won’t solve every challenge facing higher education, but it’s a clear and necessary step toward improving the system for the good of both students and institutions themselves.
Dr. Andrew J. Seligsohn is president of Public Agenda, a national research-to-action organization. Dr. Lara Couturier is a partner at Sova, a higher ed advocacy organization.
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NASHVILLE — College leaders understand the value of a completed financial aid application, but they often face hurdles helping students navigate the slog of paperwork.
Holyoke Community College, in Massachusetts, encountered this problem in spring 2023. That semester, 47% of attendees at the college’s new-student orientation had not completed theirFree Application for Federal Student Aid, institutional leaders said Monday at the American Association of Community Colleges′ annual conference.
Along with low levels of FAFSA completion, they also noted that dozens of students who had otherwise completed their financial aid applications were missing one crucial piece of paperwork — which became the deciding factor between the state completely covering their tuition or not.
Holyoke implemented an early alert system to address challenges among both groups. By proactively reaching out to new students and inviting them to one-on-one advising sessions, officials raised FAFSA completion rates among that cohort by 14% for fall 2023 and got the appropriate state aid to those who were eligible.
Missing paperwork
Enrolling some 3,700 credit-bearing students, Holyoke is located in a college-dense area with about 20 other higher education institutions, according to Lauren LeClair, the community college’s associate director of admissions technology and operations.
“We fight for our students. We wanted to make sure that we were doing right by our students and getting them aid,” she told conference attendees. “New students probably had no idea that they didn’t have paperwork that was needed.”
Many also didn’t know where to go to learn more about financial aid, said Kim Straceski, Holyoke’sassociate director of financial aid compliance and customer service.
“They’re getting different information from different offices, and not always coming to meet one of the experts in financial aid,” she said.
In spring 2023, the college lacked a way to alert students or financial aid staff about missing financial aid documents, according to education consultancy EAB. Holyoke employed the group to establish a new customer relationship management system to address these issues.
The new system pinged students to alert them about the missing paperwork and prompted them to schedule an advising appointment to fix the error. An adviser also followed up with a more detailed email, highlighting that they could help students hunt down the needed documents.
“Students do open emails — if it’s important enough,” LeClair said.
On the back end, the system allowed both financial aid staff and academic advisers to see notifications to students and any progress they made completing their forms. Before, the two offices were disconnected from one another in this process.
By fall 2023, 67% of students who received early alerts had completed their outstanding aid requirements.
The early alert system also helped new students learn where to seek help for any potential financial aid issues that arise in the future.
MassReconnect
At Holyoke, almost 600 students are enrolled in MassReconnect, a state-run free community college program for nontraditional students. Since 2023, state residents ages 25 and older who do not have a degree have been eligible to attend community college for free, so long as they complete the FAFSA.
Early results indicate the program has boosted the number of adult learners enrolled at Massachusetts community colleges,especially those from households earning below the state’s median income.
But Holyoke identified a problem for about 40 of its MassReconnect students — they were missing one key document.
“All of these students need to sign an affidavit attesting to the fact that they have not earned a prior degree,” said Straceski.
But for many, that requirement was not made clear in the MassReconnect program’s promotional materials.
“When students are reading about it on the state’s website and they’re hearing about it in the news — nothing about this affidavit was ever mentioned,” Straceski said.
Holyoke couldn’t distribute state funding to cover the students’ costs without this documentation. But thanks to the early alert system, Straceski said the college received all 40 affidavits by deadline.
Beyond that paperwork gap, the system has helped the college engage with more MassReconnect students. About half of them, 294,have since used the software to schedule one-on-one advising sessions to answer financial aid questions. The college attributes this to improving students’ ability to stay enrolled.
It also has helped officials identify students who may be eligible for MassReconnect. Even if students don’t ultimately enroll in the program, Straceski said, communication from the college on the topic has garnered “a lot of FAFSA completions.”
Corequisite educational models are tied to higher pass and completion rates for students compared to remedial education, but ensuring learners are passing college-level courses often requires additional institutional investment.
Middle Georgia State University reimagined its corequisite education model to embed tutors, peer mentors and success coaches in entry-level math courses. Now, students who are falling behind are identified on a weekly basis, allowing for targeted and individualized outreach.
After the first term of the initiative, passing rates grew over 10 percentage points and withdrawals decreased, encouraging the university to scale the intervention to English courses and, starting next fall, STEM courses with high failure—D or F—or withdrawal rates.
What’s the need: Middle Georgia State offers 29 sections of its corequisite math course, Qualitative Reasoning. The course has seen stagnant success rates over the past few years, even though the number of students enrolled in corequisites grew, said Deepa Arora, senior associate provost of student success at Middle Georgia State.
Students who didn’t pass the class were less likely to stay enrolled and progress, prompting institutional leaders to consider new ways to engage these learners.
How it works: The solution was to create a support network of professionals who assist learners.
Faculty members are at the center of the initiative, flagging at-risk learners who are missing goals or failing to submit work.
From there, student success coaches, who are embedded in the course’s learning management system, reach out to those students to share resources, create a success plan and make referrals. Coaches also initiate a follow-up a week later to see if students have completed any action.
Depending on the student’s area of weakness, success coaches funnel them to one of two types of student employee: an embedded tutor or a peer mentor.
Embedded tutors address primarily academic concerns, such as low grades. Tutors attend class sessions, provide content-specific coaching and host review sessions as well as set up appointments for learners who need additional assistance, Arora said.
Corequisite learners who may be missing or not participating in classes are referred to a peer mentor, Arora said. In addition to teaching academic skills, peer mentors focus on a student’s sense of belonging and connection to the institution. They facilitate workshops, provide referrals to other support resources and connect students with classmates.
Both tutors and mentors are paid positions for which students must meet certain qualifications: They need to have passed the relevant course, be enrolled at least part-time and fulfill role-specific training.
Building better: The staffing changes were supported by revenue from tuition increases over the past two years. Faculty buy-in was also essential. “Faculty collaboration and cooperation with the success team was an integral part of the initiative and led to the development of a support ecosystem for the student,” Arora said.
Prior to implementing the new model, faculty members were briefed on the initiative’s design and asked to provide feedback and meet with the success coaches to build relationships.
Faculty didn’t receive any specific training other than guidance on how to identify at-risk students—those missing classes, earning low grades or failing to engage. Campus leaders also encouraged professors to send weekly communication regarding student performance and share related information about content with the success coach assigned to their section, Arora said.
The impact: The initiative succeeded in its goal of improving student pass rates: 73 percent of students who attempted the course in fall 2024 passed, a 14-percentage-point increase from the previous fall’s rate. (Excluding withdrawals, 77 percent of fall 2024 students passed the course.)
One trend the university noted was that the students who did fail were primarily in the online sections, suggesting that improvements to the in-person experiences were moving the needle.
Additionally, the connection between faculty and success coaches broke down institutional silos through ensuring timely identification of barriers and sharing of best practices. Success coaches appreciated being embedded in the learning management system, as it gave them greater insight into where the students needed help.
Support staff also noted increased student use of resources.
What’s next: After the initial positive results, university leaders chose to extend the initiative this term to include all sections of Composition I and its corequisite support courses. “The plan is also to extend this strategy to all sections of Anatomy and Physiology I and II where additional support is needed to improve their success rates,” Arora said.
The university will also invest in additional focus on online courses to close success gaps there.
Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.
A survey of community colleges finds, across five states, Pell Grant recipients have lower success rates compared to their peers.
Eduard Figueres/iStock/Getty Images
Low-income students can experience a variety of barriers to success in college, and new data from the Richmond Federal Reserve points to gaps in success and completion among Pell Grant recipients at community colleges, compared to their peers.
An analysis of a 2024 survey of two-year public institutions in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia identified a 13-percentage-point gap in success rates between Pell Grant recipients and those who do not receive the Pell Grant. Forty percent of Pell Grant students achieved at least one metric of success, versus 53 percent of non-Pell recipients.
Methodology
The 2024 Survey of Community College Outcomes includes data from five states—Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia—and 121 colleges. Data includes all degree- or certificate-seeking students enrolled during the 2019–20 academic year, including dual-enrollment students.
Around 34 percent of students included in the study received a Pell Grant while enrolled at a community college, (compared to the national average of 32 percent). Dual-enrollment students are not eligible for the Pell Grant.
The background: Pell Grant recipients, who are low-income students enrolled in a college or university in the U.S., are more often to be enrolled at public institutions, and the greatest share are from families who earn less than $20,000 annually.
Success, as defined by the Richmond Fed, means a degree- or certificate-seeking student at a community college completed one of the following over a four-year period following enrollment:
Earned an associate degree
Earned a diploma or credit-bearing certificate
Earned an industry- or employer- recognized licensure or credential
Transferred to a four-year institution prior to degree or award attainment
Persisted by completing at least 30 credit hours
Over all, Pell and non-Pell students completed an associate degree at similar rates (19 percent), but Pell students were less likely to transfer (10 percent of Pell versus 20 percent of non-Pell) or complete a credential (6 percent versus 7 percent).
Digging into the data: Researchers qualify that while there is a correlation between receiving a Pell Grant and graduation, that does not imply causation, or that receiving Pell Grant funding leads to lower outcomes.
“Students who qualify for and receive Pell Grant funding may have substantively different characteristics than non-Pell students—differences that could be driving the differences in outcomes,” wrote Laura Dawson Ullrich, director of the Community College Initiative at the Richmond Fed, in a blog post.
North Carolina was the only state with higher associate degree completion rates among Pell students, but this could be due to how the state classifies dual-enrollment students as degree-seeking and their ineligibility for the Pell Grant.
South Carolina had the highest transfer rate among Pell (19.3 percent) and non-Pell recipients (27 percent), which could be a result of Clemson University and the University of South Carolina’s bridge programs with community colleges, Ullrich wrote.
Low-income students are more likely to experience basic needs insecurity, which can hinder persistence and completion. The Richmond Fed plans to conduct more surveys focusing on wraparound student supports and how the existence of these resources may contribute to Pell Grant recipients’ success.
Seated in beautiful Charleston, West Virginia, the University of Charleston (UC) boasts “a unique opportunity for those who want an exceptional education in a smaller, private setting.” UC provides a unique student experience focused on retention and student success even before students arrive on campus.
Students are offered an opportunity to complete the College Student Inventory (CSI) online through a pre-orientation module. This initiative is reinforced through the student’s Success and Motivation first-year course. University instructors serve as mentors, utilizing the CSI results to capitalize on insights related to each individual student’s strengths and opportunities for success through individual review meetings and strategic support and skill building structured within this course.
After achieving a 7% increase in retention, Director of Student Success and First-Year Programs Debbie Bannister says administering the CSI each year is non-negotiable. Additionally, the campus has refocused on retention, emphasizing, “Everyone has to realize that they are part of retention, and they’re part of keeping every single student on our campus.”
UC has reinstated a Retention Committee that utilizes summary information from the CSI to understand the needs of its students. Of particular concern, UC notes that the transfer portal has created additional challenges with upperclassmen, so including a representative from the athletic department on the retention committee has been crucial.
Through this focus on retention and strong implementation strategy, UC achieves a 100% completion rate for the CSI for their first-year student cohort. Building off the scaffolding support from early support meetings related to the CSI insights, first-year instructors are able to refer back to reinforce articulated support strategies and goals throughout the first-year experience. The structure and progression through this course reiterates college preparation skills and resources building motivation and a growth mindset to persist through college.
Increase student success through early intervention
