Questions for Boards

Recommended Resources

All Resources

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.

Sources: “Hear the Voices of Your Students and Invite Them to Serve,” AGB Blog Post by Lynnette M. Heard, October 19, 2020
“Educating Students for an Uncertain Future” by Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, Trusteeship September/October 2020

 

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:

Board Responsibility for Equitable Student Success

Toolkit
AGB

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

Navigating Our Volatile Environment by Placing Student Success at the Center of Strategy

Blog Post
Lisa Foss

Linking Student Debt and Student Success

Blog Post
Lisa Foss

Building a Strong Board-Faculty Partnership for Student Success

Blog Post
Lisa Foss

All resources.

Blog Post
Workforce and Graduate Education: Where Are the Opportunities?
January 17, 2020 - Accounting for about 22 percent of student enrollment in four-year U.S. colleges and universities, graduate and professional education is no small part of the higher education ecosystem. It is a complex landscape, featuring programs that focus on scholarship and professional …
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Blog Post
Institutional Advocacy: Ithaca College and Empowering Students
December 20, 2019 - Filmmaking is one of the most effective forms of storytelling to a wide audience. Some films have galvanized society to change its behavior, or to come to a new understanding on an important topic. Other movies exist to break us …
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AGB Alerts
AGB Policy Alert: the College Affordability Act (CAA)
On Tuesday, October 15, the House Education and Labor Committee Democrats introduced the College Affordability Act [CAA] (H.R.4674), their proposed comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Then, on October 29, 30, and 31, the committee marked up the …
Read Article
Blog Post
Institutional Advocacy: CSUniverse
October 11, 2019 - California State University recently released a new digital publication titled “CSUniverse.” Its entire purpose, in the words of Editor Brenda G. Wong, is “to share the stories that illuminate who we are as the California State University System.” In an …
Read Article
Trusteeship Article
Focus on the Presidency: Linking Educational Attainment and Economic Prosperity
The University System of Georgia (USG) prides itself on its place within the US public higher education landscape. Governed by a single board of regents, we are a system of 26 distinct institutions that range from public research universities to …
Read Article
Trusteeship Article
A New Way to Gauge Student Success Rates
As federal policy makers once again turn their attention to reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, there is no doubt that “accountability” will be a central point of discussion. Most policy makers define accountability as institutions providing meaningful evidence that …
Read Article
AGB Reports
The AGB 2018 Trustee Index
The AGB 2018 Trustee Index is the second annual survey of college and university board members about those issues they see as the most pressing facing the sector and the institutions they serve. This AGB survey, conducted in collaboration with …
Read Article
Trusteeship Article
Hungry and Homeless: Tackling the Crisis of Basic Needs Insecurity
The number of students on the nation’s college and university campuses who do not have enough to eat or a safe place to sleep is a growing crisis. The problem of basic needs insecurity appears to affect most, if not …
Read Article
AGB Reports
Return on Investment in College Education
AGB is pleased to share this second publication in a series of informational briefings developed as part of The Guardians Initiative: Reclaiming the Public Trust, an effort to educate and engage trustees as advocates on key issues in higher education. What …
Read Article
Trusteeship Article
Focus on the Presidency: Helping Students Finish What They Start
Several years ago, American higher education was challenged by Lumina Foundation to play a major role in increasing the proportion of Americans with a high-quality college degree to 60 percent by 2025. One of the most vital pieces in this …
Read Article

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