FIU gets serious about increasing on-time graduation rates

FIU has taken bold steps to get students on the right academic path. These include requiring them to declare a major upon admission to the university and giving them 24/7 access to tools and feedback to move them toward their ultimate goal: on-time graduation.

The high-tech, high-touch Graduation Success Initiative (GSI) is FIU’s response to what several years ago was recognized as an unsettling pattern: more than a quarter of students who had earned at least 60 credits—which defined them as juniors—had no declared major, and many of those would continue to stumble in pursuit of a degree.

At the same time, graduation rates for those who did have a major looked pretty good, explains Douglas L. Robertson, the dean of Undergraduate Education. “We saw that once we got students into a major, 77 percent graduated on time,” which, by nationally recognized definitions, translates into six years for students who enter as freshmen and four years for those who enter as transfers.

Dean Douglas L. Robertson

“So you see, there’s kind of a Bermuda Triangle, this region that’s between entering and getting into a major,” Robertson says. “People get lost in there.”

The GSI provides a lifeline to those caught in the Bermuda Triangle by giving students the opportunity to complete an online occupational-interest assessment that links their highest interest areas directly to a searchable database of information on all FIU majors, including the “Major Maps,” a semester-by-semester guide to on-time graduation.

Fully 95 percent of the Fall 2012 entering class, the first to take full advantage of all the components of the GSI, came in with a major. And the five percent who were still undecided were given the default major called “exploratory studies.”

“That is a curriculum that is designed to help them get a major,” Robertson explains.

Once a student has decided upon a major, he or she is assigned to an advisor within the academic unit that houses the major. A significant number of academic advisors are being hired each year to achieve the 300:1 student-to-advisor ratio that defines best practice nationally. Unlike in the past, when professors served as the majority of advisors—they do still remain available to mentor students—full-time professional advisors are now the norm. They are charged with understanding the minutia of graduation requirements and keeping on top of the progress of students in their caseload and proactively counseling them when potential problems arise.

If a student registers for a course that was not in his or her original course of study, the automated “My_eAdvisor” tracking tool issues alerts to both the student and advisor. This tool also allows students to communicate with their advisor by asking quick questions and scheduling meetings as necessary. And if a student ignores a request from the advisor to meet—say for failing or consistently scoring poorly on required courses, or for skipping over a required course in a major sequence—he or she could be locked out of the registration process until the meeting takes place.

“What was happening was [a student] would pile up semester after semester of bad choices,” such as switching majors or avoiding a required course that might be especially difficult for the student, “and that could go on for years without anybody detecting it,” Robertson explains. Now an advisor sends up a red flag.

On the other end, the university can rely on the system to better gauge how many students will need a particular course during the next academic year to proceed in a particular program. That will make it possible for personnel in academic departments to plan for and offer the right number of sections so that students don’t have to wait until next semester or longer to complete requirements.

“We’re trying to take all the obstacles out of the way,” Robertson says. He adds that for many students the greatest obstacle to graduating on time is the need to work long hours at paying jobs or take care of family duties. The university recognizes that such responsibilities cannot be controlled by FIU or, often times, by the students themselves.

“If they are [falling behind] for those reasons, fine,” Robertson says. “But if they’re doing it because of bad choices, then that’s something we can work on.”