"Allowing adults to select program formats that are appropriate for their life schedules is key to persistence. Sometimes classroom instruction will be ideal, other times a hybrid course—offering a mix of classroom and online learning—will be most effective, and at times, offering a fully online course will be most convenient to the student’s hectic schedule.">Carol Aslanian

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Carol Aslanian

Best Practices to Gain, Maintain and Retain Adult College Students

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PEOPLE WITH IMPACT INTERVIEW - Carol Aslanian President, The Aslanian Group

Carol Aslanian is considered a national authority on the characteristics and learning patterns of adult students and access to higher education for place-bound and time-bound students. An upcoming panelist at EducationDynamics’ National Dialog on Student Retention, Ms. Aslanian shares her insight on the best practices in the retention of adult students in the following interview.

Q: In an increasingly competitive marketplace within post-secondary institutions for the adult student, how can a university expand or regain its market share?
Carol Aslanian:

There are several steps that can be taken. First and foremost, every institution should regularly conduct market research for several reasons: First, to get a lay of the land in terms of what adult students want, and where, when and how they want it. Secondly, to learn more about the competitive landscape and market shares among providers – including your institution. This information is vital to the underpinning of steps and actions needs to be match your institution’s supply to the demands of the adult students. Market research is crucial for keeping institutions up-to-date and relevant in a highly volatile marketplace, and it should be a regular and on-going activity within your institution to gauge the market and how it is behaving.

A second step for expanding market share, and something most colleges are not doing as well as they could, is tracking and following up with prospective students. It’s one thing to know what prospective students want, where they reside, and how to appeal to them through outreach activities, but the true challenge lies in the follow up. Once you get an inquiry from a prospective student who has contacted your institution, it takes steady, ongoing, frequent, and often personal contact to convert interest to demand and convert prospects to enrollments.

A third way to expand market share is to consider multiple formats in the delivery of instruction. Adult learners today not only want classroom-based instruction, but are increasingly favoring online and hybrid instruction. Most institutions that serve this market pool must offer online opportunities along with classroom-based opportunities.

Q: In your opinion, what are the key best practices in retaining adult students?
Carol Aslanian:

The question is: What do we mean by retaining—what exactly is retention among adult students? We recently completed a study in a major metropolitan area where half of the adult undergraduate market was not seeking a degree. So when a student leaves an institution after only three courses, have you lost them or did they get what they wanted and went on to other roles in life? Many institutions mistakenly think everyone is aiming for a degree. At most two-year community colleges, students often come in indicating they intend to get a degree, generally for financial aid purposes, and they declare degree goals when in fact, they are not in pursuit of a degree. They may be intending to obtain a certificate or complete a licensing program or a handful of individual courses or even transfer courses to continue onto a four-year institution. Therefore, in considering how well your institution retains adult students, you must understand well what their original intent was. If their goal is a degree and they don’t finish their degree, then it is fair to say that the institution didn’t retain the student to the best of its ability. For students that were not aiming for a degree in the first place, degree completion should not serve as the basis for retention. I would estimate that less than half of adult undergraduate learners ages 25 and older do not intend to get a degree when they return to undergraduate education. They are looking more for other credentials and short-term instruction to accrue career skills they need to move on professionally. That said, the definition of retention should rely upon the goals of the individual student as opposed to the goals of the institution.

Another best practice in maintaining adult students involves conducting student satisfaction surveys among current students to analyze what is going well, what the problems are, and to probe deeply on the thoughts and opinions of the institution’s students. These surveys can also help to determine what areas of instruction or support services need to be improved to retain students for longer periods. Feedback may be as simple as they can’t accommodate to class schedules being offered, the parking spaces are insufficient, or the payment schedule is too difficult to manage.

Another way to retain adult students is to shorten time-on-task. Long, drawn-out study programs are no longer appealing to most learners over 25 as adults want to see the light at the end of the tunnel and results quickly. We need to accelerate and compress their programs to get them out the door with the credentials they need to move on with their careers, and achieve this in the shortest amount of time possible.

Finally, another way to retain adult students is to offer courses in multiple formats. An adult’s life schedule is often complex. There could be some times in the year where they have more time than others—they might prefer online courses in the fall when they have to get children back to school, while classroom-based instruction might work better in the late spring because they have more time to enjoy the interaction with a professor present. Allowing adults to select program formats that are appropriate for their life schedules is key to persistence. Sometimes classroom instruction will be ideal, other times a hybrid course—offering a mix of classroom and online learning—will be most effective, and at times, offering a fully online course will be most convenient to the student’s hectic schedule. Colleges that offer courses in multiple learning formats have a better edge on retaining the adult student population.

Another aspect of retention to bear in mind is these adult learners don’t go away—many students stay in the community in which they have learned as an adult, so it is crucial to develop programs and products that keep them attracted over a lifetime. They may want a degree in their thirties, a certificate in their forties, advanced credentials in their fifties or a training program in their sixties to move into a different career arena after retirement from their long-term job obligations.

Q: Every institution is different—how can they determine their unique areas in need of improvement to improve persistence?
Carol Aslanian:

To achieve this end, colleges should conduct follow-up analyses of recent leavers and find out why recent students didn’t come back. Maybe they just stopped out, but keeping in touch with them and offering different ways of motivating students to return to the classroom, for example through hybrid, online or classroom instruction, can be tremendously effective in regards to persistence. I’d encourage institutions to have conversations with those students that have left—they can tell you what was bothering them, what needs to be changed systematically throughout the institution, and how to follow up with students that have not left but stopped out. Institutions need to be in steady contact to catch these students at the right point in their lives so that when they are ready to resume study, your foot will already be in the door before another institution reaches out to them.

Another aspect for an institution to consider is bringing in outside resources to observe and assess their policies and practices. A third-party analysis of recruitment, marketing strategies, programs, schedules, logistics and services can provide insight you can’t glean from within. One thing I’ve learned from having conducted these kinds of audits is that many staff members within an institution cannot be as straightforward, clear and direct about what they think is right or wrong for fear of stepping on each others’ toes. Third-party outside individuals can help convey to staff what they can’t say to each other.

Q: You are a panelist at the upcoming National Dialog on Student Retention, presented by EducationDynamics. What can an attendee expect?
Carol Aslanian:

People that attend the conference will be able to learn about both about national and local patterns of retention and recruitment. Some initiatives that work on a national scale not may not be appropriate or effective in the Southwest or New England, so local templates will be addressed as well. We will also touch on internal resources that can be utilized to improve retention. There are many options that are available internally to analyze retention issues and behavior, but institutions have challenges in analyzing their own data over past years—who is coming in, who is leaving, what characteristics do they bear, and what outreach is most appealing? This internal data are crucial to determining what is working at the institution and what is not. External resources will also be addressed as institutions often need external options to help them in this day and age. Given the increasingly competitive higher education marketplace, we can’t do it all ourselves. Some institutions, for example, have turned to call centers so as to not miss an opportunity to follow up with a prospective student immediately. Many institutional staffs do not have the capability to achieve this quick turnaround in light of other responsibilities and obligations. Using external resources allows schools to do what they do best while specialists handle portions of the administrative and recruitment techniques and initiatives.

For further reading on the topics discussed above, Ms. Aslanian recommends:

1. http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/

2. http://mcgrawmarketing.com/blog/

Carol Aslanian, President, Aslanian Group, Inc.

Carol Aslanian is President of the Aslanian Group, a leading consultancy in adult student market research. For more than 20 years, Ms. Aslanian served as director of the Office of Adult Learning Services at the College Board in New York. She also served as Director of the Office of Community College Relations for the College Board and assisted in enhancing the mission of the Board in service to community colleges.

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