Where does student success in US higher education live, and what is it, exactly?

[image credit: Pavel Danilyuk]

In 1975, Vincent Tinto published his now “paradigmatic” theory of departure (Braxton, 1999, p. 93), effectively starting a conversation about what students needed so that they could remain enrolled in higher education through the completion of a two- or four-year degree. Now, nearly 50 years later, that conversation persists, but has evolved and refocused greatly – putting the focus not on what students themselves could do, but, rather, what institutions need to do to create conditions that foster success. That question remains somewhat unanswered, save the fact that there is no panacea, no silver bullet, to solving the completion challenge.

What know is that those doing the work to foster success do not usually fit neatly into one specific division of an institution. Oftentimes, they are working across administrative and academic boundaries in a liminal, third space to create boundary-spanning structures and supports to further students’ success. At the same time, however, how the need for these structures and supports came about, who would staff and fund them, and how they would fit into the broader ecosystem of a given institution still needed to be explored.

To that end, John N. Gardner, father of the movement to redefine and enhance the first-year in college at American colleges and universities (and later, around the globe), and I set out to better understand how individual institutions of higher education were defining and supporting student success. In late 2019, we sent a survey to chief academic affairs officers at nearly 3,000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States to determine two key things:

1. How were institutions organizing themselves to support student success?

2. Did academic leaders deem “student success” a bona fide profession, akin to academic affairs (i.e., those areas that govern curricula, oversee academic schools and faculties, or programmes of study, etc.) or student services (e.g., counselling, disability services, financial services, advising)?

What we learned, unsurprisingly if one were to take a broad view of American higher education, is that myriad ways exist to organize an institution. When specifically organizing around students’ success, many models and levels of centrality emerge – including having no distinct organizational structure whatsoever. Even the question as to whether those working specifically to ensure students persist to completion constitute their own field of study cannot be answered distinctly: 19% of respondents indicated they did not believe it was a profession, with another 20% not really sure one way or the other. The remaining 61% of survey completers were confident that there is, in fact, a profession and/or a field of study ripe for recognition, codification, further understanding, expanded literature bases, and growth.

This aligns with Huisjer’s (2021) posting elsewhere in this blog where he relates that through understanding “ the complexity of what is involved in a successful student learning experience, and indeed even what we mean by a successful learning experience” (para.3), we would then be able to actually address and build components that met students’ needs in ways that did not previously exist.

So where, exactly, does this leave us? Well, in a few places:

1. More research needs to be done about what “student success” actually is – its definition, application, attainment, assessment – beyond the broad American definition of being retained through graduation.

2. Specific attention needs to be paid to the “Third Space” in higher education focused on ensuring students succeed, especially, of course, within the United States. But given that “student success” is a global focus, we would argue similar attention is needed beyond our shores. More and more colleges and universities are working to enhance conditions within which students can persist to a degree, but few fully recognize the need for intentionally-connected higher educators and offices, as well as institutionally-curated experiences that exist outside of the specific bounds of academic affairs or student services.

3. The efficacy of various adaptations, interventions, structures, and loosely-coupled efforts need to be more fully explored and examined, and, later, presented and published.

What is clear – both from this research and from examining the state of affairs within at least American higher education – is that much more concerted effort must be placed on creating systems, programs, and administrative structures that improve students’ outcomes. It is also readily apparent that the work currently being done offers hope for helping students succeed, and ready-made blueprints from which institutions can be inspired to implement their own approaches to successfully educating today’s students and tomorrow’s workforce.

It is our conclusion that when we have 61% of our first survey respondents indicating that “student success” is a discreet profession within higher education, we American higher educators need to be further pursuing this initial line of research and practice, and in concert with our global colleagues, working in and studying this “Third Space.”

Works cited

Braxton, J. (1999). Theory elaboration and research and development: Toward a fuller understanding of college student retention. Journal of College Student Retention, 1(2), 93-97.

Huisjer, H. (2021). Student support services and the third space: Spanning the boundaries of learning ecologies. Third Space Perspectives – Exploring Integrated Practice. https://www.thirdspaceperspectives.com/blog/studentsupportservices