Guidance and supports for post-secondary students

Before making investments in guidance and supports for post-secondary students, city and county leaders should ensure this strategy addresses local needs.

The Urban Institute and Mathematica have developed indicator frameworks to help local leaders assess conditions related to upward mobility, identify barriers, and guide investments to address these challenges. These indicator frameworks can serve as a starting point for self-assessment, not as a comprehensive evaluation, and should be complemented by other forms of local knowledge.

The Urban Institute's Upward Mobility Framework identifies a set of key local conditions that shape communities’ ability to advance upward mobility and racial equity. Local leaders can use the Upward Mobility Framework to better understand the factors that improve upward mobility and prioritize areas of focus. Data reports for cities and counties can be created here.

Several indicators in the Upward Mobility Framework may be improved with investments in high-quality programs. To measure these indicators and determine if investments in this strategy could help, examine the following:

• Preparation for college: Percent of 19- and 20-year-olds with a high school degree. This is available from the American Community Survey.

• Employment opportunities: Ratio of pay on an average job to the cost of living. These data are available from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

• Social capital: Number of membership associations per 10,000 people and the ratio of residents’ Facebook friends with higher socioeconomic status to their Facebook friends with lower socioeconomic status. These data are available from the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns and Opportunity Insights’ Social Capital Atlas, respectively.

Mathematica's Education-to-Workforce (E-W) Indicator Framework helps local leaders identify the data that matter most in helping students and young adults succeed. Local leaders can use the E-W framework to better understand education and workforce conditions in their communities and to identify strategies that can improve outcomes in these areas.

Several indicators in the E-W Framework may be improved with investments in high-quality programs. To measure these indicators and determine if investments in this strategy could help, examine the following:

• Access to college and career advising: Ratio of number of students to number of full-time equivalent (FTE) counselors or percentage of students using academic advising and career counseling services.
• First-year credit accumulation: Percentage of students attempting and completing sufficient credits toward on-time completion in their first year: 30 credits for full-time and 15 credits for part-time students
• Post-secondary certificate or degree completion: Percentage of students completing a certificate, associate’s, or bachelor’s degree within 150 percent of the program's intended length.
• Post-secondary persistence: Percentage of students who continue enrolling in college (including transfers to other colleges) or complete a credential the following year, captured for up to 150 percent of program length.
• Unmet financial need: Average net price (cost of attendance minus grants, scholarships, or tuition waivers from all sources) minus average expected family contribution (EFC), as calculated by Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

• Hire qualified advisors and coaches with similar backgrounds as students: In many cases, students may find it easier to build a trusting relationship with an advisor or coach from a similar background, such as first-generation college graduates and non-native English speakers. This can provide additional social and emotional support to students who might feel isolated or alienated from college life. Positive social interactions with coaches may help mitigate stigma when students inquire about tutoring, approach professors, or require assistance if they are struggling in or out of the classroom.

• Address the needs of rural residents: Students from remote, rural regions face special challenges that make it harder for them to persist at college and complete graduation. They can be economically and academically disadvantaged, especially in math and writing, and many are away from home for the first time and feel out of place. Advisors should be trained to understand and support their specific circumstances and needs to increase retention and degree completion rates. For example, they should be able to talk about career planning for people who want to return to their home communities, and not only those seeking to stay where the college is located.

• Make cultural sensitivity a priority: Ensure that all staff members are trained in cultural sensitivity, including language and how advisors and coaches speak to students. They should be aware of the needs of individual students and student groups, and when possible, directly address these concerns. Community colleges, for example, frequently enroll large numbers of student parents who have family responsibilities and are juggling childcare and schoolwork.

• Students: Informing students and prospective students about the range of available structured programs and/or advising and coaching supports and services is a priority and should encompass a variety of messaging channels, both on and off campus. While social media campaigns may be more effective in reaching some students, advertising in public transportation and locations can be equally effective, especially in a large urban environment, along with direct mail campaigns to where students live.

• Parents/guardians: Proactive outreach is required to ensure parents and guardians are aware of the support programs and coaching/advising opportunities that are available to students and how they can support them to successfully complete their degree programs. Parents should be kept informed about programs, benefits, application deadlines, and changes to programs, with materials available in multiple languages for a wide array of family backgrounds.

• High school counselors: Programs aimed at smoothing the transition from high school to college begin with school counselors, as they are frequently responsible for providing information and college planning as students consider postsecondary educational opportunities. Counselors play an important role to help students understand their options and how support programs will benefit them when they go to college.

• Government officials: Support and advocacy from government officials can increase the likelihood of a program’s success through increased investment and championing the effectiveness of coaching as part of the broader higher education system and infrastructure. It can lead to increased public funding, public-private partnerships, and raise awareness among students and parents of available resources.

• Institutional leaders: Campus managers and decision-makers are responsible for establishing, designing, and running programs and ensuring they remain a priority. They oversee implementation and effectiveness, facilitate communications across campus units, and encourage student participation. Leaders also encourage closer collaboration and integration between high school and college programs, and encourage a higher level of buy-in from campus staff (professors, tutors, bursars, etc.), to whom a coach often refers students for additional services.

• Local businesses, philanthropists, and community organizations: Partnering with local businesses, philanthropists, community organizations, nonprofits, and faith-based organizations can help offset costs beyond public resources. Local businesses and a regional chamber of commerce, for instance, can assist with book scholarships and cover transportation costs. In addition, employers, along with economic development agencies, especially in rural areas, can help build capacity for well-defined career tracks.

• Partner with high schools: Programs that begin in high school can provide a pathway to a secondary education, especially for students who were not considering attending college. Working with high school counselors, these programs enable students to earn college credits, introduce students to college and financial options, underscore the importance of having a college degree, and facilitate smoother transitions to college life.
• Hire student-centered advisors or coaches: Well-trained advisors and coaches can be instrumental in helping students adjust to all aspects of college life, which for many students can be complicated to manage. A coach can help students adjust to class schedules, handle class work assignments, and guide them in how to obtain financial aid and housing. Coaches should therefore have experience in a higher education setting and be familiar with student-facing engagement and effective college access and success strategies. Experts say social workers and staff from youth development and school counselor backgrounds often have the appropriate education, training, and background in relationship building that make them ideally suited for coaching and advising roles.
• Prioritize building trust with students: An essential first step in an advisory role is to establish a strong rapport between the advisor and advisee, wherein the student regards the advisor as someone they can easily approach to speak with on any topic. Frequent meetings with the student foster this relationship, enabling the coach to recognize and understand the issues they may be facing and suggest opportunities and resources to help them realize their academic, personal growth, and career development goals.
• Cultivate a sense of belonging: In addition to helping students transition to college, both in and out of the classroom, it is also critical to focus on helping students feel that they belong and are part of their campus community. Advisors and coaches can be instrumental in helping students feel more integrated in their campus experiences. These can include orientation programs, associating with peers in the same academic program, engaging in campus activities and organizations, and establishing regular and consistent interactions with both faculty members, from the start of college to graduation.
• Embed guidance programs campus-wide: In addition to individualized support, guidance programs should be integrated fully across all campus activities and units. These include personal, academic and non-academic supports such as financial literacy and social-emotional counseling. Regular communications and coordination with faculty is critical for sharing information about student needs, challenges, progress, and scheduling along with integrating faculty to provide specialized advising and mentoring.

• Benchmarks: All dimensions of coaching and advising programs should have established and quantified benchmarks to measure student success and inform effective program practice.. Benchmarks should include enrollment targets, minimum credits a student must attempt and earn each semester to graduate promptly, the frequency of student-advisor meetings, retention rates, and progress toward degree completion. This hard data allows an advisor to know how a student is doing in real time, or how a specific student cohort is progressing, and can be used to assess if the program is being implemented as intended.

• Communications: Frequent communications between a student and advisor or coach are critical not only to keep track of the student’s progress but also to establish a trusting relationship between the two. Data can include the number of text messages and emails exchanged between an advisor and a student, the information contained in those communications, and how quickly messages are being answered. Analyzing this data can help an advisor better understand when a student is likely to respond and adjust the timing of communications to fit their schedule (e.g., work, parenting, studying).

• Coaching sessions: In addition to texts and emails, individual and group face-to-face meetings are crucial to building rapport between advisors and coaches and students. Program leaders and directors need to know what percentage of advisors/coaches meet with students regularly and are maintaining benchmarks for student engagement, and how to add flexibility to the scheduling to accommodate students’ needs.\

• Perseverance: Evaluating performance over time is an indicator of program success, such as how many students continue to come back for coaching, engage with services, are likely to return the next semester, transition from part-time to full-time study, and ultimately persevere in their efforts to complete their degrees on time.