College Completion

College Completion Summit Audio Recap
University Marketing & Communications

Public Perception and college Completion

UMC: This is an audio recap of the College Completion Summit hosted by the University of Utah and the Lumina Foundation. On September 30 and October 1, 2019, the College Completion Summit brought together presidents and senior leaders from public universities that have significantly advanced their college completion rates. Chris Nelson, communications director for the University of Utah, led a panel discussion titled “Completion and Public Perception.”

Chris Nelson: Welcome to the Public Perception and College Completion panel. We had initially talked about making this a media panel, and what we realized is when we talked about public perception of the University of Utah with our communication and marketing team, we do a lot of audience segmentation. So the public is a pretty big, amorphous blob out there and so we had to break down the public. We certainly use the media to reach the public. Media has become a very specific audience for us as well as government officials, at both the federal level and the state level, and we’re talking to donors, other key stakeholders on campus, including students, prospective students, influencers of prospective students. That might be parents, guardians, friends, other family members. So when we talk about public perception, as we get into this, I just want to make sure we’re looking at it very broadly. So not just media perception because again, it’s how we reach the general public as well.

So especially for those students we have in the audience, I know the second half of the panel, the second half of our time, we’d like to spend a little bit of time on some issues that were raised earlier, which is, “How can we better communicate to students and perspective students?” Because that is, as a communications professional, that is a difficult, difficult audience, growing the area, where really all of us are media outlets right now. With my phone and my Twitter account, I can be a media outlet. All of you are media outlets.

UMC: Here’s Kim Parker, director of trends social research at the Pew Research Center.

Kim Parker: I want to talk to you a little bit about broad public views about the value of college and also the role that colleges are playing in preparing this new generation for jobs in this changing economy. And first, you know this, which is to reassure you, Americans place a lot of value on a college degree. They think it’s important for young people to be successful, to have a college degree. College graduates themselves say that their experience was very positive both personally and in terms of preparing them for the workforce. Parents of young children aspire to have their children go to college. It’s still very much a part of the American ethos.

But the same time, there’s a growing sense of discontent about the role that colleges and universities are playing in this country. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction that we’ve started to see in some of our polling. These views are increasingly linked to partisanship. And now it has sort of pervaded views about higher education, which was not the case in the past. And I think that’s interesting and kind of disturbing.

In our recent polling in 2019, we found that only 50% of Americans say that colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country. And that 50% figure is down from 63% just four years ago. That’s a pretty dramatic change in a fairly short period of time. And the increase in negative views of colleges and universities has come almost entirely from Republicans and Independents who lean to the Republican Party.

We found 68% of respondents said they are headed in the wrong direction and that included 73% of Republicans, but also 52% of Democrats. It’s a pretty significant share. And so we ask those people: What are the reasons why you feel this way? Why do you think colleges are headed in the wrong direction? And Republicans and Democrats shared a couple of ideas here. They both pointed to the rising cost of college and tuition cost being a factor and a reason why things are heading in the wrong direction. And they also both talked about job readiness. There’s a perception that colleges aren’t doing a good job of preparing young people for jobs and economy. But after that, they parted ways.

So a big majority of Republicans said one of the major reason colleges are headed in the wrong direction is because they’re too focused on protecting students from views that they may find offensive. And a large majority, I think 79%, also said that professors are bringing their political and social views into the classroom and that that’s one of the reasons that their views are so negative about colleges and universities.

Now just a few more thoughts on the value of college. We do find that the public thinks that a college degree is very valuable, but they see it only as sort of a credential that gets you maybe access to the job market. But there’s a very strong sense among the public, and especially among college graduates themselves, that it’s going to be essential for them throughout their careers to keep gaining new skills, keep getting training and sort of reinventing themselves so that they can stay relevant. And that’s something that I think is useful for people at colleges and universities to understand, that the public really thinks the degree is important, but it’s not enough to set me up for success. I’m going to have to go out and keep pushing, taking on new skills, getting training, whether it’s additional educational degrees or perhaps training from an employer. So that’s very much becoming a part of the public mindset.

UMC: Here’s Mushtaq Gunja, vice president and chief of staff at the American Council on Education.

Mushtaq Gunja: First, the big picture findings are all perfectly consistent with both what Pew found, what Gallup has found: There is a drop in approval that we have found from ’14, ‘15 to ’17, ’18, ‘19. It’s mainly with Republicans, as Kim said, Republicans don’t like the politics that they’re seeing on our campuses. They don’t like the admissions process generally. They especially don’t like affirmative action. And Dems don’t like the admissions process. And in the wake of Operation Varsity Blues, I guess that’s not surprising. But the deep suspicion among Democrats about the legacy admissions and that the whole process is rigged came up over and over, both in our focus groups and in the polling sort of generally. And all—Dems, Independents and Republicans—everybody is worried about costs. So first take away: our findings are perfectly consistent with the other polls that are out there.

Second, I think that what we’ve found is that these worries, especially about cost, have led to some real misperceptions about student debt and the amount of borrowing. So we asked parents and students, “What percent of students that go to college borrow and how much do they borrow?” The public thinks that something like 72% of families and students have to borrow to go to college and that on average they’re borrowing $80,000. On average, completers, those who completed a four-year degree, borrow on average about $30,000. But that gap between $80,000 and $30,000 is enormous.

Maybe the most shocking takeaway from me in our research was that the public does not believe that we have their students’ best interests at heart when it comes to completion. In our focus group, one thing that came up over and over was that people thought that we were intentionally keeping students on campus longer so that we could take their tuition. That we were trying to prevent students from graduating in four years so that if they were there for five or six, they would just pay the public a little bit more money.

We put all of these takeaways together and we tested some mission statements. So we tested one with three messages in particular. One that was about completing quickly with a minimum of debt and allowing students to succeed economically. Let me just read the mission statement to you so that way I can really be accurate with what it was. So X college will help students complete their degree in a timely fashion with a minimum amount of debt to enable them to succeed economically in their lives. The message tested like 75%. 75% of parents said that that would be more likely to send their students to that university. I mean we didn’t get anything else in our surveys that tested nearly as well. So we checked. Our board of directors at ACE is made up of 36 colleges. I went through and I checked the websites of all those schools to see whether or not the schools are doing a good job advertising this on their websites and we are not. Like, not at all.

UMC: Here’s Marjorie Cortez, a reporter at the Deseret News.

Marjorie Cortez: Well, I primarily cover the Utah system and this system is actually in the process, led by the Legislature, of re-imagining. I think all the schools in the system are having to take a really hard look at themselves about how are we meeting students’ needs? How do we help them succeed? What are the barriers?

I think key to telling that story is just really understanding what students are up against. The Utah System of Higher Education is still in surveys of mental health needs. It’s really staggering. That intense anxiety that students deal with. You would think about it, this is the generation, that post-Columbine generation. I’m a mom and I still remember as a journalist I was always schooled by my mentors: never cry at work. Well, I cried the day that Columbine happened because I’m a Coloradan, but also because I knew my kids, who were three and seven at the time, their life was going to be drastically different than mine.

So in a lot of ways I feel like every kid’s kind of a first-gen kid now. There was no FAFSA when I checked in. I kind of had a linear path and I don’t think that’s true anymore. But I also think that students attending colleges now are dealing with things I just can’t even imagine! A third are hungry by many reports. Housing prices are out of control. My youngest daughter just started her master’s degree in public health. Her rent is $1,600 a month. And I go into her apartment and I’m looking like I’m doing some welfare check, like a social worker. Does my kid have enough to eat?

But these are kind of bewildering times for students. I don’t think anyone really argues the value of college education, but we need to show more students, colleges and universities, need to show parents and students, how is this possible for me? How can I make it work when I don’t have enough to eat or when I’m struggling to pay my rent? In the Utah system, 74% of students work at least one quarter and 45% worked full time all year round and try to go to school. If we can demonstrate how we make all those pieces fit together that would be my counsel.

UMC: Here’s Jocelyn Guzman, inaugural member of the policy corps at Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America.

Jocelyn Guzman: So I guess starting with one thing too, I know we’re talking about like the perceived perception of the value of a college degree, but I also want to acknowledge that nationally there’s a perceived perception that certain groups don’t value college degrees, right?
Nationally, I grew up in community that was told that they don’t value college by external factors. And that’s internalized, right? And that’s something that when you’re brought up in those communities and you’re constantly hearing the narrative that you don’t care. It becomes something that almost comes to reality. So I’ve acknowledged that we need to challenge those systems on a daily basis. Also, thank you to the theater folks and media folks.

But for me, I have really thought, from those time I was born, that college was important. Not because someone told me, it just, it’s what you see on TV. You got to go to college, you got to do it. My parents, on all sides of my family, we come from laborers who are primarily agro laborers, shout out to the people in Hawaii.

Philipino ancestry who went to the rice plantations there. People in the Central Valley in California, doing all the agriculture there. And so when you come from a family of laborers like myself and my mom was 15 whenever she was pregnant with me, right? So she actually graduated a year early from the same high school that I ended up attending and graduating from with all these honors.

It’s these factors that you’re told, right? You’re using data in interesting ways. We were told that I wasn’t supposed to succeed, and a lot of students in this room probably share this narrative as well, but the value of college was always in my household.

And so whenever I was asked to speak today on this panel, as I do before, I’m asked to speak at any event, I talk to my community about what they would say if they were invited to speak at the panel, right?

A lot of things that I heard amongst people in my community, a lot of whom are the “some college, no degree” folks, right? A lot of whom have a lot of debt that they can’t pay back, that they’re struggling to pay mortgages or their rent payments, they’re facing eviction notices. And a lot of what they said was that people just don’t care about them, right? There’s this lack of care. And I know it’s very simple and a principal, but this idea that if you care about people and you make them feel like you care, they’re going to succeed. That’s one thing I faced. Also, from a person who goes to these events, studies the topic, is very well aware of the data. I also struggle sometimes to see the value, right? Because I’m facing these struggles that you’re seeing in your thing.

So actually I started at Claremont graduate university and my first day was also my first day of work at the institution. So I was thrown on to start doing all these initiatives and to start being a student myself. I almost did not return. I took a trip back home. Well, first of all, I had to move out on the train, which involved me taking two bags on the train, you know, just to figure out how I’m going to move into a place that doesn’t have an oven, by the way. So that’s fine. It’s just a stove top. It was promised as a full kitchen. Whatever. And I just felt very like it’s a hard place.

It’s also this existence in this space. I still struggle with it. I face the imposter syndrome on a daily basis.

And I’m a very well knowledged person. I know how to navigate institutions, and I imagine for my colleagues that don’t, how difficult that is. And so I understand why students aren’t completing.

UMC:

Chris Nelson of the University of Utah asked the students in the audience:

Chris Nelson:

Where do you consume—Like what, what would it influence you with your college choice, your family and where does that college degree completion perception coming from in your personal world?

Sydney:

Hi, I’m Sydney, I’m from Wayne State University. I’m someone that actually uses Twitter as a way to get news. But in terms of like deciding on what university I wanted to go to as you spoke about, campus tours are huge. So like having campus tours from people who are non-faculty, or… I don’t think faculty does them. But like having people who have went to the university for a very long time ad can speak about the pros and cons honestly without having to hide their truths and hide the flaws of the university’s been really helpful. And especially when I did my campus tours, it was more of a feel, an environment and then if I didn’t feel invited in that environment, when I went to the students center, when went to where most of students congregated, then it wasn’t like I was drawn to that university.
So outside of just the campus tours it was like actually being in the environments that students house.

Chris Nelson:

At what point did they talk about completion? So it that some need for the school to be accessed, but it’s also, I’m curious in your personal experience, when completion, I assume you just assume you’d complete when you got in or…?

Sydney:

It was always just an assumption. You go to college tour and they are under the assumption that you’re going to be done in four years.

There’s not, at least from my point of view, there wasn’t a lot of talk about that fifth year. There wasn’t a lot of talk about that summer class. It wasn’t a lot of talk about, whether or not it might not be the school for you. And things like that.

So of course she wants you to advocate for your school. You want us to persuade people to come to your school. But at the same time you have to be realistic or the fact that there are choices to make when you start school. And so like I said, I didn’t feel it was very present.

Also, over retention rates where I really expressed, or at least I don’t remember, they were expressed fully. We saw what they did to work on retention rates were what I saw or what didn’t make me want to choose that school more. It was more so what the university could do for me.

UMC:

Thank you for listening. Find the audio recap of the next panel discussion, “What’s Next to Move the Needle on Completion?” and other summit proceedings at collegecompletion.utah.edu.

College Completion Summit Audio Recap
University Marketing & Communications
Student discussion group reports and closing remarks

UMC:

This is an audio recap of the College Completion Summit hosted by the University of Utah and the Lumina Foundation.

On September 30 and October 1, 2019, the College Completion Summit brought together presidents and senior leaders from public universities that have significantly advanced their college completion rates.

Gretchen Syverud, director of strategy integration for the Lumina Foundation, prefaces the reports from student group discussions.

Gretchen:

But the biggest themes that I heard that crossed each of these different topics were transparency. And I’d say student appropriate transparency. Someone mentioned just a minute ago, “I may not sit through a three-hour board of trustees meeting, but I want to know what’s going on.”

And empowering students. While this group has maybe self-selected to be here, all students are invested in their own education.

UMC:

Students present the results of group discussions.

Student:

One of the big things we talked about were how to improve like the quality of advising meetings and also how to improve the accountability of advisors. A lot of our students in college face, not so much, they don’t like deal with fear. But more so like they’re hesitant to talk to an advisor, because in a lot of situations advisors don’t necessarily look like you.

Just because some students come in and they may struggle with the specific course load. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not cut out for that specific major or program. It could be because they have a lot of stuff going on at home. Or it could be financial reasons, it could be a lot of everything’s going on. But most advisors don’t actually take that extra step to look into that.

Another thing was if we could do some sort of a thing to hold an advisor accountable, like there’s some sort of survey. So instead of like advisors being assigned based on last name, it can be more so, if it’s more so personality based, so they can understand what’s actually going on with you.

Student:

So we talked a lot about how we want to reduce the amount that we’re charging or that we want to give money to students. However, it’s not creating a learning aspect to it. So students are missing out on a critical part of how to use their money in the most effective ways. So we’re able to give them scholarships. But, how are we making sure that they’re using all of those things to the full potential, that next year they’re still going to be able to enroll and complete?
But we need to make it a more national level of talking about financial wellness for students. Because it leads to mental health as well and physical health.
Student: I’m a student that sits on our board of trustees. And a really big thing for Purdue that we’ve been proud of for the past few years is our tuition freeze. instead of looking at the idea of, “How do we get scholarships to students? How do we just assume that tuition is raising every year or just a matter of fact?” It’s, “Why don’t we look at the tuition itself? How do we look dollar for dollar, how we are providing them a better education?” If something we can’t justify as providing a better education to the student, why are we spending money on it?

UMC:

Question to the students from Syverud.

Gretchen:

If you’re a student, raise your hand. Do you like the word predictive analytics? How do you feel about that?

UMC:

A student responds.

Student:

I study economics and anthropology and a huge aspect of economics is taking data and applying it to larger social issues and social constructs. But a lot of anthropology is combining the two because I think about how much these numbers in this data actually represent people, so I was a little off put by the idea of predictive analytics because a lot of the times you have to recognize the coders, due to the world that we live in, they’re approaching things from racial and class biases and this then comes through with the code. So, to actually assume that black and brown students from lower income communities are going to do worse than students just by nature, I believe is a false assumption and I feel like it’s really important that administrators and schools actually ask the students, “What do you need? Have you ever filled out the FAFSA before? Do you feel college ready? Do you feel like you’re financially literate?” These students are no longer 10-year-old children They are young adults. Let students have some accountability, give them back their agency. Let them tell you what they need.

Student:

last spring another graduate student and I served as peer mentors for a UB seminar, a freshman seminar, specifically designed for students who had previously failed the course. So it was literally a class for failures. many students started by asking their faculty members for help. So it was interesting to hear that with all the resources on campus, students still feel most comfortable in many situations, reaching out first to their faculty members. So at these big R1 institutions, they’re research-first schools, not teaching schools and faculty members just don’t have the time to address these students’ concern, which is worrisome, right?
And then the other one was a couple of students had mentioned going to counseling services, but as soon as you walk in the door, you sign in and it’s what’s your person number? And so everything at these big schools is, what’s your person number and students had actually voiced to us that they felt like a number.

UMC:

Here’s Syverud again.

Gretchen:

Empowering students to define their own success and create their own plan translates to maybe being a little put off by the 15 to Finish or four years graduation is a measure of success.

UMC:

Students elaborate.

Student:

Right before we walked out of that room, one of the other students actually asked all of us, I think it was about 15 of us. And they’re like, “Who does not like this vision for a campaign, 15 to Finish, any of that.” And I am pretty sure over 90% of us raised their hand. We go to college to get an education, to get a degree. But, so, as an engineer it’s quite literally impossible to finish in four without experiencing some mental illness or just going through it. But also when I’m earning my degree, I want to be learning in my classes.
I want to be able to have knowledge that I’m able to put forward in the job market, in graduate school, whatever I plan on doing next when I finish, when I complete my degree.
But also if I want to finish it four and I have to take summer classes now my summers are away from me doing research, getting an internship, doing something that will help me after I leave the institution. So for us, we didn’t feel that finishing in four is the best motto. It’s finish when you can finish. I know that everyone’s trying to get us out of school, have a degree. But definitely I don’t want to be an individual—because if I exit, if I graduate with a degree and I don’t have a job afterwards, I just started back from the beginning.
Student: I work in the Dean of Students Office as a student advocate and part of my role is to oversee compassionate medical withdrawal process for the university. And one of the major things that I hear from students about why they are reluctant to do that is because it’s going to make it longer for me to graduate. I won’t graduate in four years. I won’t be able to do this. I won’t be able to do that. And basically, for these students that are already struggling with issues, half our withdrawals, more than half are due to mental health reasons.

For these students that are already struggling with these issues, sometimes this Finish in Four campaign can make people feel like they are failing. When really they’re actually stopping and getting help for something that is out of their control. And so, I understand why we have these campaigns and I think they are important to an extent, but I do think we have to be mindful on how we present them to students.

UMC:

Martha Bradley, Sr. Associate Vice President For Academic Affairs at the University of Utah, concludes the summit.

Martha Bradley:

Some of you may know that the U of U Health Sciences is actually really famous for the exceptional patient experience.
So, building on that success, we launched what we called the Exceptional Educational Experience, or E3. And what that meant in the first year was to do research about the student experience, but listening to students. When asked about the exceptional patient experience, then-VP of Health Sciences, Lorris Betz said, “A medical experience is only exceptional if the patient thinks it is.”
So, we’ve taken that to heart and we’re listening to what students have to say about their experience at the U. Their comments fell in four big buckets. Navigating. Think about all the obstacles our students experience. Belonging. And many of you have talked about belonging in different ways today. Learning. They’re here to learn. They tell us that when they walk in the door. And then thriving. So if a student is held up for weeks waiting for the results of his financial aid application, they are going to interpret it as us not wanting them to attend.

If a student cannot find a person on campus to look in the eyes and have them advise them about ways they could enhance their experience or solve a problem, if they can’t find a way to connect to a community, they will feel like they don’t belong, that we don’t value them or respect them, that we don’t hear them. And as we say in Utah, “What the heck?” Right? If a student sits in a classroom and a lazy teacher doesn’t necessarily prepare as well as they should have or doesn’t respond to emails or doesn’t give thoughtful assignments, they will be unmotivated. They will be uninspired. And most importantly, they will fail to thrive. If a student can’t pay their bills, if they can’t find support for the issues they face, if they are so overwhelmed that they want to throw in the towel, they will. They will drift away and disappear.

So how do we fully engage students who have to hurry to work at their second job so they can feed their family and pay their rent? And then we invite them to sit for an hour in the lobby of the library and listen to a brown bag lecture. They will cave and they won’t be retained and they won’t complete. And their lives will be changed and it will be our bad. So remember when one of us said, “What’s getting in the way of their graduating?” Remember the next part? It’s life.

Do you remember the comment? “I’m really bad at asking for help.” But if we listen, these wonderful students who spoke up today, if we’ll listen to them. They want us to know how to make the connections between what we ask them to do and their lives in the future. They want to connect to a community that is larger than the one that they came in with when they began and that anchors them and gives them meaning and a sense of belonging. They want to know about our opportunities, but also about our distractions. If there’s going to be an interruption in terms of traffic or a construction site makes it impossible for you to walk across campus as you plan, they want to know.

They want better communication. Students have told us at this meeting, education is power. It is giving me a voice. At undergraduate studies, we had a retreat last Friday and we had a student and parent panel at the end and we had been focusing on the Exceptional Educational Experience. We asked the students to talk about an exceptional educational experience they had had and to a person, they mentioned a human interaction. It was when another human on campus had shown them kindness. It was a human who engaged them on a deeper level than they had to, that might’ve been out of their job description, but was willing to engage in this interaction.

The parents were so interesting. The parents hoped that we would be kind. And I remember, and I’ll never forget a particularly poignant moment when one student, Abdul said, “Just remember my face,” and he had this wonderful face, “Remember my face.” So, when we are focusing on retention and completion and the metrics we worship because of the forces we feel from the legislature or performance-based funding, we must never forget the faces of our students. Of Abdul or Lizzie or Aspen or Sidney or Quincy or Samora. They have trusted us to help them have a wonderful life and it’s honest to deliver. Let’s all be all in. So, thank you so much for being here with us on our campus. We’ve loved having you here.
UMC: Thank you for listening. Find the audio recaps of the preceding sessions at collegecompletion.utah.edu.

College Completion Summit Audio Recap
University Marketing & Communications
Leveling the Playing Field: Achieving Equity in Completion panel discussion

UMC:  This is an audio recap of the College Completion Summit hosted by the University of Utah and the Lumina Foundation.

On September 30 and October 1, 2019, the College Completion Summit brought together presidents and senior leaders from public universities that have significantly advanced their college completion rates.

Dhanfu Elston, vice president for strategy at College Completion America, delivered a keynote for the panel discussion titled “Leveling the Playing Field: Achieving Equity in Completion.”

Dhanfu Elston:  So, for us, equity has been and continues to be at the forefront of our scale of adoption. We realize that there are some foundational challenges around equity. What we know is that underserved populations of students tend to be overrepresented at the less selective institutions, which oftentimes have lower graduation rates and fewer resources. We know that. We know that too many students of color are frequently stuck in a traditional model of remediation. We know that too many students start out without being on a firm track from how this aligns with their academic and their career goals and their life goals. And then we also know that we have more and more students enrolling part time and, at the same time, we realize that fewer of these part-time students are succeeding.

So, when we talk equity, we’re talking about some of these big issues that are in front of us. And then when you think about the metrics and the evidence, what we also realize is that there is a moral imperative for knowing the data. As we go around the country, having this conversation around college completion, it’s always a great conversation when you talk about national data. Everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s a challenge. We need to work on that.” And then you say, “And here’s your state.” And they all, “Oh, yes, problematic.” And you go, “And here’s your institution.” And they’re like, “Oh, that can’t be right. That data can’t be right.”

And where we are now, talking about equity, is that now we’re even digging deeper beyond the aggregate of our institutions, and we’re saying, “what does our campus look like for Latinx students or for African-American students?” And these are the conversations that we have to have. So, when I say there’s a moral imperative around knowing the data, that’s what I’m talking about.

UMC:  This is David Lassner, president of University of Hawai’i.

David Lassner:  So, let me mention some of our specific equity and gap programs. One is Early College, which has been a remarkable equity program for us. It has helped us close gaps in college attendance and persistence and now graduation rates. We are now driving that into pathways, to drive purpose much farther in. We have incorporated our equity goals into our performance funding, so campuses are rewarded for making progress. Thank you, Tennessee, we’re starting a promise program and trying to drive that into our four-year universities as well. I don’t know if any of you are aware of the SNAP Employment and Training Program, but it’s a way to get federal matching funds for food and other life expenses for students who are career oriented. Kudos to our students who are here. Our student government started a food bank, so we’re helping our students that way. Lots and lots of underrepresented minority grants are out there, especially for STEM fields, and our faculty have become really good at getting those, including for summer bridge programs.

And lastly, let me say, because organizational structure came up, one of the things that we are now looking at UH Manoa is not overlaying student success on top of student affairs and academic affairs, but actually blowing those two up completely and recreating two new approaches, one called student success and one called educational excellence. And everything has to be focused on one or the other, or we don’t know why we have it.

UMC: Here’s Monica Brockmeyer, associate provost for student success at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She discussed three ways that her university is addressing the disparities of college completion. She describes the second example here.

Monica Brockmeyer:  The second way we did that had moved towards closing our disparities is through a pilot program, our Warrior VIP. It’s an impact program that students are representing from the VIP program here today, and we use that really as a pilot where we synthesized our advising, our strategic care, our analytics, our study skills, tutoring, everything we invested in, we did it in that and delivered that in a very focused way on the needs of our incoming students in that program with an eye towards equity. And the recruited students for that program, at the point of admissions, using data also to suggest that they might benefit from having that extra support. I’m really, really excited to say that our very first pilot year, our students were retained. Our Black students in VIP outperformed our White students across the board on our campus with their retention in the second year. In the first year. I was crying, I ran to the president’s office. You know our president, he’s very serious. But we’ve continued that in our second year to really say that our students are with the VIP program and also in our FYS for our study skills course outperformed the rest of the campus.

UMC: Here’s Timothy Rennick, senior vice president for student success at Georgia State University.

Timothy Rennick: One of our most recent changes was we had the huge problem as recently as three or four years ago, 2015, 19% of our confirmed freshman class never showed up for fall classes—the problem known as summer melt. These are mostly low-income, first-generation students who do everything right leading up to college. They graduate high school, they take the ACT or SAT, they get into college, they confirm they’re going to go, but they never end up attending.

And when we took a hard look at ourselves, it was clear that we were the problem. There were about 14 different bureaucratic steps we were expecting students to complete in between finishing high school and starting college, a time when they are no longer in contact with their high school teachers and counselors and not yet on our campus. And so what we did in the summer of 2006 is became one of the first schools in the country to pioneer an AI-enhanced chat bot to help students through that summer period. The chat bot is an automatic texting platform we built with a knowledge base of over 2,000 answers to commonly asked questions by our incoming students.

The reason I’m mentioning all of this as part of an equity panel is, in the first three months we had that chat bot operating, between June and August of 2016, we had over 200,000 questions answered. We ran a random control trial with a research out of the University of Pittsburgh, and what she found is not only did all students benefit from this particular intervention, but disproportionately, the students who benefited were our Pell students, were our first-generation students, were our underserved students, the students who, in the past, would have gotten tripped up by all that bureaucracy during the summer.

UMC: This is Nikos Varelas, vice provost for undergraduate affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Nikos Varelas:  We have created a leadership network. We have identified where custom predictive analytics, students who need the extra help in order to be retained to the second year. And we added coaching, freshman coaching. We give them $200 a semester for one year only. We connect them with career-services coaches. We provide work on campus and also workshops in order to strengthen practice. That program, for two years in a row, has increased retention for these students 20 percentage points.

We tried to increase the number of students who graduate in four years and, as a matter of fact, in the last three, four years, we increased the four-year graduation rate by 7 percentage points. And we’re breaking the records every year. Even this year, broke the record from last year.

When students finish their first year but they are not at the sophomore status and they are assigned by six-credit hours or less, so what we do is we offer them over the summer sessions where they take two courses, they pay one and we pay the other. So that way they can speed up their degree process.

UMC: Here’s keynote speaker Dhanfu Elston, vice president for strategy at College Completion America, with the main takeaways from the hour-long discussion.

Dhanfu Elston: I think that there are so many opportunities in this work. You know, higher education, as one of my colleagues on the panel mentioned—there are things in society that we didn’t cause, but higher education can be a solution to many of those issues. And so, that’s exciting, you know what I’m saying, I think that’s what drives many of us, and that’s what makes sure that we’re committed to the work.

First of all, we had an amazing panel of individuals. And what I love about sitting around these key players in higher education is that there’s nothing better than a story that this work can be done. So, when we’re talking about closing opportunity gaps and equity in higher education, there’s a reality that a lot of people have realized that this is urgent.

This is something that institutions have to do and it’s not just about my campus and how it’s going impact us and our standings and our rankings, this is a moral imperative for our country and we have to have more minoritized populations. Whether that be Pell-eligible students or whether it be rural students. We know that race and ethnicity constantly overlap in those issues. And so talking through the realities that are in front of us. And the fact that people are doing it. That there are campuses that are doing it well. So, when people say it’s hard, well of course it’s hard. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a thing. But to recognize there are institutions that are recognizing that level of commitment, that’s just really exciting.

I love it and I shout it from the rooftops when we hear these stories of institutions doing well and there’s frustration that there are too many students still not doing well and not being served as well as they can be. So, we’ve got work to do. We’ve got work to do. These kinds of conversations where you have a network and community of individuals all pulling in the same direction, has to be part of that conversation because we have too many institutions that don’t get a chance to learn and develop and grow in this process. It’s not where we want it to be, but the national agenda, and the national narrative is taking place. We’re involving not just institutions, but legislators and governor’s offices and the general public, families and cities in this conversation around the importance of college completion knowing that that is going to have hug implications for areas that serve high populations of students of color.

UMC: Thank you for listening. Find the audio recap of the next panel discussion, “Data and Technology Contributions to Completion,” and other summit proceedings at collegecompletion.utah.edu.