Student Recruitment for Student Retention

1
Student Recruitment forStudent Retention

• Anna Round
• Student Services Centre
• University of Northumbria

2
Recruitment and Retention

• Course choice
• Mistaken expectations
• Reactive entry
• Entry requirements
• Institutions need to recruit MORE students
• BUT they need to recruit the RIGHT students

3

• Identity is still being formed (Shipton 2004)
  (students are late adolescents)
• Life/learning paths never simply the products of
  rationally determined choice
• Learning careers take place in the context of
  life experiences/changes
• Young people are highly adaptable
• Changes choices are highly complex
• Bloomer Hodkinson 2000
• I had to be there to know it was wrong
• Davies Elias 2003

4
I chose the wrong course

• Cited by withdrawing students in most surveys
• Davies and Elias 2003 (DfES) 24
• Mantz Yorke 1999 39
• Long 1999 (Australia) 20 to 35
• Far less important for mature age students
• McGivney 1996 found that mature-age students who
  left were more likely to do so because of
  non-academic factors
• Yorke et al 1997 found that mature-age students
  were more likely to feel satisfied with course
  choice to feel committed
• Wrong course students will often try again
• stopout not dropout

5
What is the wrong course?

• Course does not match students strengths
• Course does not match the precise focus of the
  students interests
• Course does not match many of the students
  interests
• Course does not match the students career goals
• Student has radically changed interests/goals

6
Advising and course choice some problems

• Students receive poor advice from official
  channels
• Advice is too backward looking
• Advice is limited in scope
• Advice is agenda-driven
• Students receive poor advice from unofficial
  channels
• University advice is ignored

7
Danger signals in course choice

• This course will get you a job with a high salary
• This course leads to jobs and you have to do
  something
• This is the course for people who get good grades
• You need to decide on a course quickly (youre
  already late!)
• You did well in this at school university will
  be more of the same

8
Mistaken expectations - subject

• University vs. school content
• discipline vs. syllabus theory and practice
  stereotyping
• University vs. school learning styles
• knowledge vs. problem-solving focus no right
  answers
• modular vs. discipline thinking
• Relevance to career aims/the world
• Scholarly focus vs. assessment focus
• Academic demands

9
Mistaken expectations - studying

• Workload and organisation
• Hours of study
• Independence
• The great spoon feeding debate
• Student satisfaction relates MORE to meeting of
  expectations than to ACTUAL levels of
  workload/academic demands

10
Mistaken expectations - social

• Finance
• The money. That really scared me a rabbit in
  the headlamps
• Accommodation
• I cried when I saw my room I had to share a
  bathroom and kitchen with thirty other people
  just painted breeze blocks
• Independence
• you come to university having been spoon-fed
  through A-levels its your first time away from
  home youve been used to having mum and dad run
  you everywhere in the car and youve been used to
  having an awful lot of support
• One big party/ the Big Brother House
• when the work started to come I was still
  partying
• Ozga and Sukhnandan 1998

11
Mistaken expectations - attitudes

• A culture of entitlement?
• students appear to be getting higher grades
  for doing less
• McInnis et al 2000
• Media-led images?
• it was all magazine reading, watching TV and
  hearsay
• Ozga and Sukhnandan 1998 Consumers and
  customers?
• attitudes have shifted very clearly in terms
  of a consumerism/
• customer kind of relationship, that were
  providing a product
• lecturer quoted by Medway et al 2003

12
What is reactive entry?

• Subject-irrelevant choices
• University is the natural progression
• Everybody like us goes to university
• My parents/teachers want me to go to university
• I cant think of anything else to do
• I dont want to get a job just yet
• This subject/university fits my image

13
Entry grades and retention

• For all students, non-continuation rates RISE as
  A-level grades FALL
• Qualifications other than A-levels correlate with
  LOWER retention rates
• For students who persist in higher education,
  entry grades do NOT appear to predict degree
  outcomes
• The explanation for the relationship between
  entry grades and retention is unclear

14
Subject motivations for HE entry

• Correlate with
• Longer private study hours
• Higher rates of attendance
• Stronger academic orientation
• Higher academic satisfaction
• Higher social satisfaction
• Better academic social adjustment

15
Non-Subject motivations for subject choice

• Correlate with
• Shorter private study hours
• Slightly lower rates of attendance
• Lower academic satisfaction
• Worse academic adjustment

16
Addressing course choice issues

• Acknowledge the external problems
• Normalise course change
• Flexibility of first year credit dont bore the
  decided ones and allow the undecided ones to
  move
• Offer DETAILED information
• Applicants have an increasing requirement for
  information, which it is felt is no longer
  totally satisfied by prospectuses, brochures and
  the selected information given by an
  institution... what applicants learn
  pre-enrolment will determine whether they remain
  within the institution Bowden 2003

17
Managing creating? expectations

• Honesty
• if Im paying decent money to go to college I
  want to make damn sure that Im getting 110 per
  cent attention off the teachers that Im paying
  to teach me.
• Hutchings and Archer 2001
• Detail
• What will a typical day week term be like?
• How is the subject taught? What are the
  assessments?
• The ACT of offering detailed information inspires
  trust in the institution.

18
Current students

• Are perceived as more honest
• Benefit from interaction with staff
• Address issues with up-to-date information
• Can use recruitment activities to develop
  employability skills or even as part of
  course-work
• Luton University found that conversion rates rose
  by 60 when current students advised on
  recruitment and pre-enrolment materials

19
ACTIVE recruitment works Stephenson 2003

• Encourage students to examine their own
  interests/goals
• Encourage students to question their experiences,
  expectations attitudes
• Expose students to HE subjects experiences they
  dont ask for/want
• Use dialogue, group activities, taster sessions
  and current students

20
Student recruitment and advertising

• Information in Advertising
• - Less is more
• - A picture is worth words
• - Change your image, not change your life
• (get not do)
• - Buy this now, buy something else next week
• Information in effective recruitment
• - Concrete, practical information
• - Up-front and explicit information
• - Encourage students to be actively involved
• - Encourage students to commit to a course

21
Overselling?

• Prospectuses have taken on some of the
  characteristics of travel brochures and may set
  up presumptions and expectations that visits are
  unable to dispel Yorke 1999, p.100
• Advertisement literate students?
• May distrust shiny happy literature on
  principle
• May be familiar with advertising images but less
  able to decode these
• May be immune to yet another lifestyle ad
• May leave purchasing to their parents

22
The Glamorgan Solution 1

• this year we've decided to embark on something
  different - we've gone out on a limb by asking
  our prospective students to think
• Crofts 2003
• No glossy pictures or vague positive language
• Plain typeface and line drawings
• Subject-based pop up questions and responses
• Fast-response chatrooms where applicants could
  ask any questions about subjects or applications
• Avoid the morass of lifestyle advertisements

23
The Glamorgan Solution 2

• Information is interesting for its own sake
• Active learners get the most out of university
• University life isnt always glossy and
  glamorous, but its still worthwhile
• you become a different person when you learn
  Crofts 2003
• Our campaign aims to get our audience thinking,
  to snare those with the intellectual curiosity
  and inquisitiveness thats necessary to succeed
  at university to establish a new cerebral
  sexiness

24
Questions for students

• Do I have a specific career/area in mind?
• Do I want to just chill out for a bit?
• What sorts of question interest me?
• What is important to me?
• Which generic skills do I want to develop?
• Do I want a fresh start?
• Can I afford it?
• What are my alternatives?

25
Parental involvement

• Positives
• Boosts dialogue between parents students
• Generates parental support for students
• Helps parents understand student experience
• Problems
• Parental goals dont always motivate students
• Student may want/benefit from fresh start
• Conflict between parental attitudes subject
  issues

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Conclusions

• Students should be active in recruitment
• Students need full and honest information
• Students need to be prepared for change and for
  surprises
• Institutions need to be flexible (different
  students, changing students)
• Current students are a valuable resource
• Student integration starts at recruitment
• Students should be clear about their own choices

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• Baillie, L (2001) IT employers skill demands do
  they know what they want? Professional Liaison
  Centre, City University, London
• Bloomer, M and Hodkinson, P (2000) Learning
  careers continuity and change in young peoples
  dispositions to learning. British Educational
  Research Journal 26 (5) 583 - 597
• Bowden, R (2003) Institutional approaches to
  improving student success at the University of
  Brighton. Paper presented at the conference on
  Enhancing Student Retention using international
  research to improve policy and practice
  (Institute for Access Studies) Amsterdam,
  November 2003.
• Crofts, P (2003) Why I think we need to market
  cerebral sexiness. Times Higher Educational
  Supplement 24 August 2003
• Davies, R and Elias, P (2003) Dropping out a
  study of early leavers from Higher Education.
  DfES Research Report 386.
• Hutchings, M and Archer, L (2001) Higher than
  Einstein Constructions of going to university
  among working-class non-participants. Research
  Papers in Education 16 (1) 69 91
• McGivney, V (1996) Staying or Leaving the Course
  Non-Completion and Retention of Mature Students
  in Further and Higher Education. Leicester
  National Institute of Adult Continuing Education
• McInnis, C, Hartley, R, Polesel J Teese, R
  (2000) Non-completion in vocational education and
  training and higher education A literature
  review commissioned by the Department of
  Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Australia)
  Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The
  University of Melbourne.
• Medway, P, Rhodes, V, Macrae, S, Maguire, M and
  Gerwitz, S (2003) Widening participation through
  supporting undergraduates what is being done and
  what can be done to support student progression
  at Kings? Department of Education and
  Professional Studies, Kings College, London
• Ozga, J and Sukhnandan, L (1998) Undergraduate
  non-completion developing an explanatory model.
  Higher Education Quarterly 52 (3) 316 333.
• Shipton, A (2004) The evolving of a sense of
  self over a university career. Manuscript, UNN.
• Stephenson, E (2003). Retention a pre-entry
  issue. Paper presented at the conference on
  Student Success What works?, Action on Access,
  London, December 2003
• Yorke, M, with Bell, R, Dove, A, Haslam, L,
  Hughes Jones, H, Longden, B, OConnell, C,
  Typuszak, R Ward, J (1997) Undergraduate
  non-completion in England (Extended Final Report
  of a research project commissioned by HEFCE)
  Bristol HEFCE.
•  Yorke, M (1999) Leaving early Undergraduate
  non-completion in higher education. London
  Falmer