First Year Experience: Advising

The report looks closely at how academic advising departments have adjusted to the pandemic and how they are helping students to confront its consequences. Data and commentary in the report is sourced from 41 colleges and universities in the USA.

This 100+ page study presents data from 45 colleges and universities about their academic advising efforts. The report helps its readers to answer questions such as: how large are academic advising staffs and how fast are they growing, if at all? How many students seek academic advising? What kind of workshops are being offered by academic advising units and how effective are they?

Based on responses that Ohio community colleges provided on CCRC's Guided Pathways Scale of Adoption Assessment (SOAA) as well as on semi-structured follow-up interviews, this report examines how these colleges--which have been engaged in guided pathways reform for several years--are innovating within the model to provide personalized support during onboarding (extended in many cases through the first year, until students have chosen a field of interest, developed a plan, and taken and passed program gateway courses) to help students gain early academic momentum.

The hope is that this roadmap will guide students throughout their college careers so they are prepared when they move on to the next transition. As I worked last summer on redesigning my college’s roadmap for the first-year students, I began to think of all the milestones that cannot always be plotted out for students on a simple sheet of paper.

Pre‐college advising programs exist in most disadvantaged high schools throughout the United States. These programs supplement traditional advising by high school guidance counselors and attempt to help underrepresented and disadvantaged students overcome the complexities of the postsecondary admission and financial aid processes. Existing evidence on these programs often uses within‐school randomization where spillovers and alternative supports may confound estimates. We provide the first evidence on a whole school intervention resulting from a school‐level randomized controlled trial in the United States.

Developed by the What Works Clearinghouse™ (WWC) in conjunction with an expert panel, this guide draws upon studies of effective postsecondary student advising systems and practices. The expert panel believes the impacts of advising are magnified when advising is integrated within a broader structure of holistic student support.

Guided Pathways is a comprehensive reform approach whereby community colleges fundamentally redesign their programs and support services in ways that create clearer, more educationally coherent pathways to credentials with strong labor-market value.