Paul Fisk knows what it’s like to enter the complicated waters of becoming a transfer student. Every day, he helps new students embark on their journey at the U with community college credits in hand and a plan to graduate quickly. As a transfer program manager in the Office of Transfer Student Success, his job is to make sure their transition is smooth, and that every credit counts.

“It’s an often confusing and complicated process,” Fisk says.

Until this summer, he walked students through the gauntlet of credit transfers and onto a graduation path in a vacuum, disconnected from the web of counselors and success coaches — as many as five or more — who guide each student along the way. Now, after adapting a unified process that connects all of those advisors, Fisk can see where students may fall through the cracks, and he can intervene.

This change in Fisk’s workflow is one of several key projects launched this year that diagnose and address seemingly minor problems that, cumulatively, could derail students from graduating. According to a National Institute for Student Success (NISS) study of the U this spring, small changes like this, focused in four main categories, can have a major impact on students who are struggling to pay for tuition, failing classes, or dropping out altogether. The campus-wide Navigate U initiative, incorporating recommendations from NISS, is an integral part of achieving the university’s Strategy 2030 goals for the next five years — including lifting its six-year graduation rate from 64 percent to 80 percent.

For Fisk, the changes are already having a noticeable effect.

“This is much faster to identify how to help students,” Fisk says. “Catching problems early can mean the difference between getting someone to switch a class before it’s too late and having them complete an entire semester. Transfer students aren’t trying to take a long time and spend a lot of money, so this is really important.”

Why care about completion rates?  

In the argument for the value of higher education, students often grapple with the cost of earning a degree, weighed against the promise of attaining a better lifestyle with more education. As costs for college — and everything else — continue to rise, that decision becomes more difficult. The longer it takes a student to graduate, the more it costs, and the harder it is to justify the investment.

The objective of Navigate U is to build on the U’s significant student outreach work, identify unintended barriers to student success, and implement scalable solutions that can help more students graduate on time.

“We do not accept the status quo as good enough for the students at the U,” said Vice Provost for Student Success Chase Hagood. “We are reaching for a constant state of improvement. Navigate U means we can do more of this work together.”

At Georgia State, where NISS is housed, students come from areas that typically have the highest unemployment rates, highest default on mortgages, and highest financial need. Twenty years ago, Georgia State’s graduation rates were dragging, with African American and Hispanic students graduating at even lower rates than white students. That’s when the school decided it needed to change.

“We realized, if we are going to improve our graduation rate, it is not by changing the students we admit,” said Timothy Renick, NISS founding executive director, in a presentation to leadership at the U. “It is by changing the way we serve students we admit after they arrive on campus.”

After implementing targeted changes, Georgia State’s graduation rates improved by 70 percent, students in every demographic group performed better, and the equity gap disappeared.

At the U, low-income students who are eligible for Pell grants graduate at a rate that is 13 percent less than non-Pell eligible students. While the average bachelor’s degree at the U takes an extra 13 credit hours to complete, this adds stress to low-income students who are more affected by the increase of cost related to the added time it takes to earn a degree. In turn, the U’s most vulnerable students face increased risk of not earning a degree — and thousands of dollars lost.

“We make promises to students and their families about a brighter future, and if students are coming and leaving without a degree that is a loss,” Renick said. “Those with a college degree have more life choices, better access to health care, longer life expectancies — this is not a small issue. We are taking these students’ money; we owe it to them to give them every chance to succeed.”

At 64 percent, the U’s six-year graduation rate — the percentage of students who receive their degrees in six years or less — is 16 percentage points higher than the state average, and one percent higher than the national average. However, with a 4-year graduation rate of 34 percent, the U is the lowest in the Association of American Universities by about 17 points.

In the last two years, the U changed the way it gathers data on student progression, began integrating student advising services across several colleges, and implemented simplified general education requirements to address some of the obstacles that can delay graduation.

“It is incredible to see the immense effort our faculty and staff have put toward addressing the challenges students encounter in higher education and at the U,” said Provost Mitzi Montoya. “We are deploying new tools to provide campus leaders with the data and resources they need to move the needle on student success. It is an exciting process that has a long way to go. Looking at the impact this work will have on students, I know it is the right thing to do.”

The road to success

 In Montoya’s view, “success” means that all students have the support they need to graduate at the same time as their peers. Currently, Hispanic students at the U have an average graduation rate of nine percentage points less than their white peers, and Black students have a graduation rate of eight percentage points less overall. As the U better understands how to help students, it must pivot in ways that will help all students succeed.

NISS recommended four key actions to close the equity gap at the U: 1. Standardize advising systems and practices to ensure students receive consistent, proactive support across all units; 2. Align student communications and provide a centralized platform for them to receive answers to their questions; 3. Empower units to make data-informed decisions through better access to timely and actionable data; and 4. Create standardized pathways to ensure first-year students are introduced to college supports and guided into the right academic field. The entire report is available online.

“This presents some of the biggest opportunities we have here at the U to make progress,” said President Taylor Randall. “As I think about our path to becoming a top 10 public institution with unsurpassed societal impact, this is perhaps the single greatest metric — our completion rate — that we can make the most progress on as we begin to work together in a different way.”

Work on these recommended changes has begun in earnest through the Navigate U initiative and across campus. Earlier this year, a new model for integrated student services — a Navigate Hub — was launched in the Colleges of Social and Behavioral Science and Humanities, and the School for Cultural and Social Transformation. The Office of University Analytics and Institutional Reporting was created to centralized analysts and establish a data warehouse. This summer, leadership groups across campus began work on addressing classes with high failure rates; examining classes that are too full, or not full enough; creating functional pathways for students in every degree to graduate in four years; aligning academic advising; and developing interventions for students who delay enrollment. The groups, comprised of associate deans and department chairs from across the university, are expected to meet throughout the upcoming year to troubleshoot solutions.

“We have the ability to know more than we’ve ever known,” Hagood said. “With all of that information, and the knowledge of where our students are and how to empower them, we are getting ready to knock it out of the park.”

That’s good news to Fisk, who prides himself on helping students out of tricky situations. For him, the daily quest to shepherd transfer students is somewhat personal. Not too long before his undergrad journey, his mother paved the way. She stopped going to college when Fisk was born, and when he was in high school, he saw the difficulties she faced when she went back to finish her degree.

“I see a lot of people who have a similar experience — they took a long break and came back,” Fisk says. “I have a soft spot for that.”