Improving student success, and thereby increasing retention and boosting four-year graduation rates, is a challenge familiar to all higher education institutions whether they are large or small, public or private. With the national four-year college graduation rate average hovering around 50 percent, the industry has an obligation to confront the issue and take steps toward solving it.
In 2000 I wrote an article for the Journal of College Admissions called “Admissions: The Job You Keep.” It was a tribute to the difference my admissions counselor made when I was choosing a college in the early 1990s and a reflection on everything I appreciated about the admissions profession after three years in the field. In the article, I told the story of how I helped advocate for an applicant in a way that took me full circle back to my own college search experience.
