It’s no secret that institutions are on a crusade to improve student outcomes. The reasons and motivations are varied. It can be for reputation, funding, or even competitive purposes, but it is clear that this new student success mandate is here to stay. What is less clear, however, is how institutions will go about achieving...
Guided Pathways Gaining Traction Guided Pathways is not a particularly new idea, but it is rapidly becoming the buzzword for universities and colleges attempting to improve student outcomes. With graduation rates remaining stagnant and funding dollars directly tied to this key metric, institutions are doing everything they can to move the needle. One of the...
The Financial Aid Myths There are plenty of myths circulating around financial aid. One is that financial aid is hard to qualify for, even if you are low income. Another is that high school students are aware of college financial aid opportunities. Yet another is that institutions will help students properly complete their financial aid...
The Financial Aid Grind There’s something students and financial aid staff have in common: they both suffer from process overload. As much as students struggle to complete all of the paperwork and keep track of their course eligibility, financial aid offices are laboring over applications, disbursements, and documents in hopes of remaining compliant with the...
Are Guided Pathways The Key to Graduation? When students enter their post-secondary journeys, they begin with the end in mind: graduation. They apply, enroll and begin their experience in the hopes that in two, four, or six years, they will graduate their program of study and move into the workforce prepared. They understand there are...
Why The Student Experience Is Such A Big Deal Higher learning institutions are intimately familiar with the “student experience.” They live and breathe it every day, understanding how their very existence is based on how successful their students are while in their schools. Thanks to the Department of Education’s Title IV mandates, schools with better...
The Importance of Student Engagement and Why It’s So Hard You don’t have to look for long to find research on the importance of student engagement. Boiling it down, student engagement is often the difference between student success and student failure. Students who are more engaged simply do better. They are more likely to reach...
College Access Is No Longer The Primary Focus Decades ago, higher learning institutions were out of reach for many. Access and affordability were the top concerns. Either the admission policies were too stringent, there were limited ways to pay for an education, or the costs simply out of reach. Many opted to immediately enter the...
What Are Guided Pathways? Higher learning institutions are hearing quite a bit these days about guided pathways. According to Community College Research Center (CCRC), “College students are more likely to complete a degree in a timely fashion if they choose a program and develop an academic plan early on, have a clear roadmap of the...
The Challenges for Students and Higher Learning Institutions We’ve heard so much about President Trump’s first 100 days – what has been accomplished, what has yet to be accomplished, and new policy changes. Every U.S. president is subjected to scrutiny when it comes to this 100-day milestone. One of the hot issues for this administration...
Looking Forward Student success has been a hot topic in higher education for some time. While its concept is nothing new, how it is defined and measured is continually evolving. Student retention and graduation rates are among the more common and valued metrics used to measure student outcomes, however, these measurements are attracting some company....
The Case for Mobile Organizations have gotten smart. They realize if they want to reach and engage their customer base, they are going to have to go mobile. Pew Research recently reported that smartphone use among Americans is up to a staggering 77 percent. That may not seem surprising until you realize how much that...
Video Killed the Radio Star It wasn’t too long ago that we heard this song playing on the radio. It seems hard to imagine a life without television, sitting in front of a radio and listening to our favorite television programs. But the radio star wasn’t the only cultural phenomenon that died with technology. With...
The Evolution of Student Success In the past, student success wasn’t really top of mind for most higher education institutions. What mattered most was enrollment numbers, tenured professors, grants and other metrics of success. These were bragging rights, differentiators campuses could use to recruit more students and gain the admiration (and high rankings) of industry...
Making Financial Aid Work for Every Student Financial aid is available to all students, whether they realize it or not. They don’t have to be of low-income status or have stellar test scores; they simply need to apply. On average, about 80 percent of students do apply for some type of financial aid, whether it...
We had a chance to sit down with George Amalor, founder and CEO of HighPoint Technology, to go in depth about his vision, why he started HighPoint nearly two decades ago, and how the company has been so successful. What inspired you to start HighPoint? I was working for years as a consultant, implementing PeopleSoft...
Mobile Mania The development and use of mobile apps have skyrocketed in the past few years. Back in 2014, Nielsen found that people were spending 89 percent of their media time on mobile apps and only 11 percent of their time was being spent on mobile web. This trend has continued, as 98 percent of...
