Monday, August 31, 2009

The Need for Qualified Hope in Retention

Two weeks of illnesses, deaths, funerals, anniversaries of deaths and coaching parents who like me had lost a child had put me in a funk. Even the numerous requests to give talks, workshops and retention audits did not lift my spirits quite enough it seemed. But then I read Jerome Groopman’s book The Anatomy of Hope which somehow made it into a clearance for a dollar table at Barnes & Noble. In the book, Dr. Groopman, an oncologist and the Recanti Chair of Medicine at Harvard discusses the concept of hope and that led me to realize there is an aspect of retention and service that is too often not included in the literature or consideration. There is a strong emotional aspect to retaining a student that is extremely important. It may even be the most important aspect finally in whether or not a college, university or school will retain a student.


The emotional aspect is discussed in articles on ROI and Customer Service Factors and the Cost of Attrition as a significant factor in understanding student emotional considerations in applying to and staying at a college. This is presented in the section on affective roi. Affective ROI deals with feelings, the student’s attachment to the school. In it simplest consideration, the student calculates whether or not he or she feels as if the institution is returning the emotional investment being made into the school. The calculation deals with social equity Do I feel I at least a balance of investment I am making coming back to me in care and concern for me as an individual”? The affective focus also considers the student’s perception of the value of being associated with the college.


There is also the student’s concern with whether or not I feel I am valued and important to the school beyond the tuition I am paying. This is also expressed in statements such as “All you care about is my money” and “Hey, I pay your salary”. Heard those? Then you heard core affective roi concerns of a potential dropout.


The affective roi is a crucial emotional component that the student must appreciate positively from the interaction with the college if he or she is to stay. So how do you help form appreciations of caring, valuing and social equity? These simplest indicators and expressions include such simple things as smiling at the student, greeting him or her, interrupting what one is doing when the student needs help, being there for office hours, offering additional help and certainly listening and then helping. The college must do all it can to make the student feel as if it cares about him or her as a full individual.

The sense of valuing is of primary concern. It is something I learned more about while reading Dr. Jerome Groopman’s book. The first two lines in the book are


Why do some people find hope despite facing severe illness while other do not? And can hope actually change the course of a malady, helping patients prevail


I have often spoken and written and spoken about students as patients and we in higher education as doctors. Like medical patients, students come to us to find out what they need to do to get better, stronger, more intellectually and professionally healthy. We prescribe them the medicines of books, lectures, training, homework, papers and here and there a placebo quiz that we believe will make them more fit.


But we like medical doctors have our flaws. We are taught an area of expertise in a discipline as are medical doctors. We become sociologists, engineers, historians, educational curriculum experts, biologists, physicists, even neurolinguists as medical colleagues become orthopedists, oncologist, pediatricians, and neurologists. They and we even specialize within our specializations in similar ways – an historian focusing on the first two months of the French Revolution like a surgeon specializing in the left hand with expertise in the phalanges (yes they exist).


So, we as our medical colleagues know a great deal about our area and focus on the issues involved in that specialization. We listen to students about the same 18 seconds doctors do before we are ready to give an answer from our discipline. And we even have our Dr. House’s as shown by a note on a faculty office door. The note stated “I do not keep office hours because I am too busy but if you need to talk to me, you can try to callme.” We also have our Kildare’s, Marcus Welby’s, Hawkeyes and even a Dr. Cox or two.


Keeping Hope Alive In his book, Groopman explores the very valuable role of hope in the success of patients getting better. He finds that some patients have none and they seem to die more than those who do have at least some active hope. The ones with hope believe they can beat the cancer and often undergo painful treatments because after hearing all the risks and discomfort, they still believe they might work. They might allow for another extra year or even full remission. He also discusses patients an experiment at Baylor College of Medicine in which patients who had arthritis in the knee were led to believe they had surgery to correct it although they didn’t. They were given a placebo surgery without any arthroscope being used; just four small cuts where a scope might have been inserted. Their belief they had surgery allowed them to recover use of the knee without pain without the corrective procedure. The four small cuts along with being informed of the benefits and issues involved in the surgery created hope and belief.


An Bicycle of Qualified Hope in Action The hope the surgeons created made me recall a student who attended Briarcliff College on Long Island. This student did not have a good preparation for college either in his studies, or his intellectual development. He had remedial/developmental needs in basic areas like writing, math, even reading. But he met an admission’s rep who laid out an full program of developmental courses an challenges he would face and overcome. Then she provided him the longer course and goal of graduation. She made him believe he could do it. With dedication, work and more work he could succeed. He was given a clear shot of what I call qualified hope. That’s qualified hope not blind hope.


He was not told by the rep “Sure you can graduate and we are here to help” in a way similar to some doctors trying to boost the sprits of a patient even if there is a minor chance the treatment might work. Sort of like the doctor in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life telling a person who lost a leg to a tiger “Oh, it’ll grow back. A couple days of rest and you’ll be right as rain.”


No, this student was told what he would have to do, what the treatment protocol demanded if he were to have a chance to graduate. He was told what he hads to do and what we would do. He was given qualified hope. He would have to work hard, do all his assignments, take developmental classes, ask for and get extra help outside of class when needed, not miss any classes and he could have a possibility to graduate. No guarantees but we will be there to help.


He believed the rep and the people he met at the College so he developed faith in the prognosis. When he needed help, he got it. When he needed to be told he was not doing something correctly, he was told. And when his car broke down and he missed a day of classes, he was called to see where he was and what the problems were. We stayed in touch and continued a running prognosis with cures.


That phone call boosted his trust in the college. His trust that the school really did care and would be there for him. If we called when he missed a class, we were letting him know that he really was important. But his car was dead. He didn’t have the money to repair it. He live twelve miles away. But he had faith in the college. This student trusted that Briarcliff did care and would live up to its promises. So he turned to his qualified hope and a bicycle with full qualified belief that it would get him the twelve miles back and forth. No mean feat on Long Island roads and highways.


And he rode that bike to college every day no matter what the weather. He even rode through a snowstorm that had shut the school because to get to an 8 o’clock class he had to leave before we could announce the decision.


And was he angry?


No. He wasn’t. He just asked if he could stay in the library and read until the storm stopped. Since we were there anyhow, why not? We also made sure he got some hot coffee to warm up, brought the bike inside and told him how amazed and proud we were of him. Almost as proud as when he graduated.


Yet other students who had many benefits of a good high school, a reliable personal car, came from a well to do family drop out of colleges and universities every day. Why? Not lack of skill.


Lack of hope or being given false, unqualified hope.


Instilling Hope from Within We can all instill hope, qualified hope in our students. How? By providing a clear picture of a possible future and how it can be achieved. Even if the path is hard arduous and required extra work and plodding through. They need to know what to expect. As Dr. Groopman does not hide the fact that chemotherapy can be grueling and even painful to his patients who will need to decide what their course of action will be, we need to let our patients, certainly our weaker students know what the academic therapy will entail so they can make a decision that is right for them As an oncologist would want a patient with a small window of success know what is ahead and let them decide if they have the hope and belief they can prevail, we need to do that with students who are in need of knowing.


Oncolgists know that some patients will decide to forgo the chemo knowing it likely will not produce enough benefit and accept their fate, so some students really should so the same. Or as patients can choose between different doctors and courses of treatment according to their levels of strength and hope, so we should do with students who we know will likely nor benefit from our college but might do okay within another. Just as it does a patient with an untreatable tumor for example false hope, it does a college no good to accept a student who will soon drop out. Sure it may help a rep meet a quota but it only adds to the next goals for admissions since that drop out will need to be replaced. (oh don’t tell me you don’t have quotas for reps. Call it what you will but we all now people are evaluated on numbers!)


And one more thing. We have to also have informed hope and belief in our selves and our schools. We must believe we can do a good job of helping others if we are well prepared and concerned. As Groopman writes


I learned that it takes much more than mere words to communicate information and to alter affect…I try hard to let patients read in my eyes that there is true hope for them. …for a physician to effectively impart real hope, he has to believe in himself. ..

But I assert that he (the patient) needs to know a at least minimum of amount of information about his diagnosis and the course of his problem; otherwise. His hope is false, and false hope is an insubstantial foundation upon which to stand and weather the vicissitudes of difficult circumstances. It is only true hope that carries its companions, courage and resilience through. False hope causes them to ultimately fail by the wayside as reality intervenes and overpowers them. (P. 209-210)


IF THIS ARTICLE MAKES SENSE TO YOU, YOU WILL WANT TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE BEST-SELLING NEW BOOK ON RETENTION AND ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE

THE POWER OF RETENTION:

MORE CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

by clicking here


AcademicMAPS is the leader in increasing student retention, enrollment and revenue through research training and academic customer service solutions for colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as businesses that seek to work with them
We increase your success
Contact Us Today


“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.”Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.”
Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster, breath of fresh air, and a burst of passion.”Shelly S, Lincoln Technical Institute


Monday, August 17, 2009

Enrolling the Family to Increase Retention Success

Many colleges believe that as soon as they get an application from a student, they are on the way to an enrollment. We know that is not true. This is just one part of a much longer process that leads through to graduation. The path of the actual enrollment process is a long and demanding one guided by the stitch-in process. But what many schools and universities do not recognize is that more than one person needs to be stitched into the many pieces of the quilt that is enrollment and retention.


It is as important, if not even more important to sell to, then enroll the entire family. The issue of the buying group has already been discussed. Now it is time to talk about how to go about enrolling the family. It is actually an easy process and one that reaps major benefits.


If the college enrolls the family, it involves them in the success of the student. It does begin with the buying group but does not end there. Here are seven steps to enrolling the full family or the people who will be the support group to the student.


Seven Steps That Will Enroll Families and Increase Enrollment and Retention


1) When you send the requested information like the view book, sales brochures, invitation to meet with a rep, an application to the student, mail a separate and specifically-targeted mailing to the family.


For example, should a student ask for an information packet, also send one to “the family of…” This smaller packet should have a letter welcoming the interest of the student and the family. True, they may not yet know the student has shown interest in the school but by contacting them you let them know and start the sale to them as well as the potential student. You then have the opportunity to help shape the discussion in a favorable light.


In the letter, let the family know how the school is a good academic and PRACTICAL choice. Talk about the jobs graduates get or grad schools they get into. Obtain permission from some of your successes to mention them and their stories in the letter which points to the short brochure also include.


In the letter also provide the name(s) and telephone numbers or email addresses of any campus contact people should they have any questions. If you have a parent website and/or FAQ, direct them to it. And invite them to campus along with their son/daughter. Start forming your buying group.


2) Create and include a short, graphic and picture heavy brochure that has been created not for the potential student but for the family. Again, if you have success stories, show their pictures and a short story. Certainly show pictures of graduation. That is what they are buying – graduation and success for their children. Provide a picture of the person who they can contact. All this reinforces the letter and reinforces one another.


By the way, if your school has many adult students, you will want to have a separate brochure with adult success stories and husbands and wives helping one another then celebrating at graduation.


3) Include the family in mailings about open houses, tours, new student parties. Have welcoming pre-class start parties for parents and family members so they can meet other parents and family members like them. This can create additional bonds to the school and people engaging in the same adventure. People like to see others like them or doing similar things to provide an internal checkmark against the “Am I doing the right thing?” Nothing says yes like meeting others with the same question saying “yes” too.


And invite children. Provide some babysitting and play for them in another room or area so they can have fun at the school and their parents can spend time on the college, not watching the kids. For older kids, set up a TV, a movie and some refreshments. Moreover, if done correctly, you can start planting a seed for future enrollment growth.


4) Stay in touch with helpful information on the financial aid process, how registration works, payment plans and any other information that could be helpful to families of potential students. Keep this all short and in a relaxed tone. Skip all the academicese, that in-group tech and slang we use to show we are in academia. Something as common as FAFSA for us may be an acronym puzzle for others. Call it the form that you may have to fill out for federal financial aid. We call it a FAFSA – the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. If you want to explain the FAFSA and process, the Wikipedia WikiAnswers is a good place to start. It even explains SARS which may sound like a disease to those who don’t know academic technoslang.


5) When you send out acceptance letters, also send one to the family. By now, you may also have the names of the parents, husbands, wives and even some other family members. If you have them, use them.


Congratulate them as well as the student. Welcome them to the university, college, career school or community college. Then provide a short discussion of what is next for them and the student. Make certain you provide important dates, deadlines and resources as help for them. Also for dorming students, perhaps include a list of what students CAN bring to their dorm room. Be absolutely certain to let them know that the list is not a the student should have… but an it’s okay to have…


Invite the families to a family-only event at the school. Sure they will be at the student and parent orientation but make the people who are paying the bill special. They are the ones who will be there the night the student calls or announces this is just too much for me or I don’t want to study algebra any more or I’ll just never make it here or they just don’t care about me here. Give them the experience of the personal concern the school has as well as some of the resources that can help their family member make it through the I want to quit night. Make them believe in the college by you showing you believe in them.


6) When there is a success or good news story for or at the school, let the families know as well as the students. For example, if the student is a business major and a business grad gets a promotion, it is time to let everyone know about it. Send an email to all the business majors and their families and tell the success story that began at your university.


7) Keep the families in the loop as an important part of their student’s success. Send them emails about events at the school. Let them know when an important date is coming up weeks in advance. For example, an email about finals week can always be helpful especially if you include some helpful things they can consider.

For instance …the coming week can be a tough one for some students. It is the week of final exams for the semester/quarter. This is a time when students are studying hard and even all night to review or read material that might be on an exam.


It might be a good idea to just call to let your son/daughter/husband/wife know now that you know it is a tough week coming up and you are right behind them. Tell them to contact you any time he or she wants just to talk or even to let go some steam or anxiety. Be there for the student. Some families like to send a finals week survival kit with some comfort food, cookies, candy, and whatever their student might enjoy while burning the midnight oil or compact fluorescent light bulb.

And know that if studying gets to be a bit much, we have XYZ to break it all up. The cafeteria is open all night for example for a break, a snack, a cup of coffee or some cake to keep going. And we are all available for a discussion break too or for you to call us and let us know of any issue you wish to discuss. Our special family finals line number is….. and our email is ……..


The Benefits of Enrolled Families


These are seven steps to enroll the family. There are more of course but start with these and you will, your students and your families will enjoy college more. That way, you and they will experience college better, stay moiré and graduate at higher rates.


Oh by the way, it is certainly not only okay but a great idea to include grandparents in all of this. They may be an important part of the student’s family. In fact, it could very well be that they are helping pay for the education. They can also be a valuable contact resource for students who sometimes prefer talking with grandparents about some things than parents. Grandparents can be seen as a more moderate and one step removed so safer to talk with. So, include them as well.


What does enrolling the family mean for you? Well, more income immediately and another benefit later. Increased alumni participation and donations. The more students feel attached to the school, the more they give. And parents can also be a donation source. There have been some major gifts to colleges and universities from parents who are thankful for the help and assistance they provided their sons and daughters, husbands or wives, and grandchildren.


IF THIS ARTICLE MAKES SENSE TO YOU, YOU WILL WANT TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE BEST-SELLING NEW BOOK ON RETENTION AND ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE

THE POWER OF RETENTION:

MORE CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

by clicking here



AcademicMAPS is the leader in increasing student retention, enrollment and revenue through research training and academic customer service solutions for colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as businesses that seek to work with them
We increase your success
Contact Us Today



“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.”Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington


“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.”
Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick


“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster,


Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Increasing Enroillments - Buying Groups and Enrolling the Family Part 1


More and more colleges and universities are working aggressively to increase their under-represented student populations. That is a euphemism for students of color, first of family attendees and quite non-traditional learners. But many schools are running into immediate retention issues between the application and the show – between the decision to apply and the equally important to show up for classes - for this population. There are a few simple things to do to increase applications and actual show rates, i.e the percentage of applicants who actually show up and attend.

To increase retention from application to show success is to realize that choosing to attend a particular college is finally a group decision; not that of the applicant alone. Therefore, it is important to enroll and stitch in the entire family.

The Buying Group

Most every college, university, community college and career school make the error of focusing on the individual. Marketing is to the individual potential student.. The interview is with the individual potential student. Paperwork is sent to the individual And the application is completed and signed by one potential student.

But the discussions are with the student’s buying group and they will finally have the greatest sway over a student’s decision to attend or not. So who is the buying group? All those who have any investment in the student attending, or not attending school. For a younger student, this would be the family or grandparents. Perhaps brothers and sisters. Whoever will be assisting with paying and moral support can be part of the group. For an adult learner, the buying group would include a spouse for example, and even perhaps older children.

The buying group is the people with whom the potential student will consult on the effects and costs of going to school. For example let’s say an out of work wife decides to study criminal justice. She has likely spoken about it with her husband. He may even have been okay with the idea; maybe even supportive. She goes to the school, meets with an admissions rep and completes an application. Then she tells her husband she applied and will be taking classes in the early evening.

Hold on! The husband now sees the reality. He will have to be home to help with dinner. Clean the dishes. Oversee homework. Gets the kids in bed and whatever else she normally did. Wait a minute! The husband is supportive of her getting a degree but maybe not as supportive of doing the work. He gets buyer’s regret and conveys it to her. College may not be as exciting a prospect for the family now. And between the application and the first day of classes, there may well be hindrances placed in the way by the spouse. He may well rethink her decision to go to college.

Will she show up for the first day of classes?

Perhaps. But to make that a probably, the college should have made certain that her buying group was with her at the interview and decision. If she brought her husband and even the kids, they all could have gone through the admission process, looked at the issues facing them with her attending school. They could and would likely have discussed them right then and there. Any issues or problems could have been aired and probably resolved.

Further, it is the role and obligation of the admission’s rep to put forward any possible questions for discussion. But this should be done as an assistance to the group. For example, “Okay, let’s take a minute to discuss a likely class schedule and hours so we can better plan for your success.” This way the hours the family member will be away from home do not come as a surprise and the group can work through the possible issues to resolution and support. I recall an interview in which the wife found out she’d be in classes when the couple’s two young children would need to be bathed and put to bed. She worried that she wouldn’t be there for them. “Hey, not a problem. You’ll show me how to do it and I’ll do it so you can get to school”, the husband responded. Dinner? “Just make it up before you go and I can microwave it.” A young woman with a baby and no sitter during the day with her buying group there will almost always get Mom or Grandma to volunteer. But this needs to happen in the pressure of the group.

Being in a group with a unified goal of one of them getting an education and moving ahead does place a certain amount of pressure on each member to help out. The buying group is there to support the objective and the person trying to get there. They would not be there giving their time otherwise. Unless of course one member of the group is there to try to quash the decision. And if that is the case, at least the rep has an opportunity to try to convert the naysayer or at least get issues out and discussed. With the group there. all the issues and questions are raised, discussed, resolved.

Moreover, when the decision is made by the group, it is a much stronger affirmation. For instance, if a young soon-to-be high school graduate is there with his parents for the interview and discussion, they can be brought into the decision as active parties. They can have all their issues resolved. They can even meet with a tuition planner and have a good sense of how school will be paid for rather than just hitting a brick wall when a bill comes in the mail. If they support the decision to apply, they can become the reps and the college’s strongest allies for the student going to and staying in school. After all, this is their decision too as part of the group. They are not going to want to have their decision shot down without a fight.

Equally important is that if buyers remorse kicks in for the applicant, there is a group of people who can help him or her get over the remorse hump. They were there when the initial decision was made and so they will support themselves in their support. Cognitive dissonance will push them to reinforce their initial decision and support.

In Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) (Hartcourt:2007) Tavris and Aronson discuss the virtuous circles that can create a spiral that starts with a deed that helps another or an organization and increases another’s attachment to the person or organization.

BTW, it is just fine to let parents bring their children. In fact, it can be a plus. They can get a good experience at the college and make the parents feel even more comfortable with the decision or support for an older child. Just make sure you provide things for the children to do. For example, get some customized college coloring books made up for the kids to color in. Have some toys for the kids to play with. Lollipops can also make them very happy if the parents agree. For more on this aspect read http://academicmaps.blogspot.com/2008/08/creating-beautiful-pictures-to-aid.html

The group buy also provides the opportunity to enroll the family. Not actually enroll them in actual classes but in a psychic bond with the college. A bond that can and will become a very powerful force in encouraging the student to succeed.

Enrolling the Family – the next section is available by clicking here!!!

IF THIS ARTICLE MAKES SENSE TO YOU, YOU WILL WANT TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE BEST-SELLING NEW BOOK ON RETENTION AND ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE

THE POWER OF RETENTION:

MORE CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

by clicking here


AcademicMAPS is the leader in increasing student retention, enrollment and revenue through research training and academic customer service solutions for colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as businesses that seek to work with them
We increase your success
Contact Us Today


“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.”Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.”
Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster,