Why this is important.

Student success is central to the mission of higher education. Colleges and universities strive to prepare students to join the workforce and become leaders in their fields and engaged members in their communities. In today’s rapidly evolving economy, students must cultivate diverse skill sets beyond narrow technical training to become truly successful.

It is up to colleges and universities to provide students with the tools to success. AGB empowers our members to focus on student success in all its forms—student work readiness, graduation rates, personal growth, and retention rates— to ensure their students’ successful transition from the classroom to the workplace.

The idea of student success has become much more comprehensive and complex. Boards must be ready to create policy and metrics to ensure that student success is actually occurring.

Questions for boards.

Click below to reveal key questions for your board to consider:

Goals

Consequential Questions:

  1. Does our current mission statement reflect our institutional commitment to student success?
  2. Does our board have clear goals and benchmarks in place for measuring student success?
  3. Does our institution adhere to narrow definitions of student work readiness based on job-specific technical skills or have we adopted more inclusive and expansive notions of skills that span careers?

Sources:

“A New Way to Gauge Student Success Rates” by Terry W. Hartle, Trusteeship July/August 2019
“Educating Students for an Uncertain Future” by Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, Trusteeship September/October 2020

Metrics

Consequential Questions:

  1. What is our completion rate? How have these numbers changed over time?
  2. How many of our students have graduated with jobs? How have these numbers changed over time?
  3. Did our students acquire the tools they needed to get and keep a good job during their time with our institution?
  4. Do our graduates have a higher income because they attended college?

Sources:

“A New Way to Gauge Student Success Rates” by Terry W. Hartle, Trusteeship July/August 2019
“Educating Students for an Uncertain Future” by Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, Trusteeship September/October 2020

Ongoing Success

Consequential Questions:

  1. Given today’s student debt crisis, is our institution doing everything in its power to financially support our students?
  2. How is our institution preparing our students to thrive at a time of profound economic and democratic disruption?
  3. How successful is our alumni network in connecting recent graduates with alumni regarding job opportunities?

Sources:

“A New Way to Gauge Student Success Rates” by Terry W. Hartle, Trusteeship July/August 2019
“Educating Students for an Uncertain Future” by Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, Trusteeship September/October 2020

We carefully curated these staff-picked resources for you:

Measuring Student Success Beyond Completion

Trusteeship magazine, March/April 2024
By David Tobenkin

More of What We Need

Trusteeship magazine, March/April 2024
By Kristin D. Hultquist and Harrison Keller

All resources.