Blog
For higher-ed leaders.
Practical ideas and research on retention, engagement, career readiness, and building leadership programs that work.
How to assess career readiness at an institutional level
Four assessment methods, why they disagree in a predictable direction, and how to build a career-readiness measure that survives program review.
Student engagementBelonging and student mental health: what campus programs do
Half of college students rate their mental health as fair or poor, and a third tell no one. A campus program is not clinical care, but it changes who notices.
Measuring outcomesBuilding a co-curricular record your campus will maintain
Co-curricular record projects stall on a decision, not on software: nobody defined what qualifies. Decide the taxonomy, the validator, and the destination.
Career readinessCareer readiness vs. employability vs. work readiness
Career readiness describes the person, employability describes the market, and career preparation describes the institution. Swapping them costs you a metric.
Measuring outcomesChoosing a student assessment instrument you will keep using
A short instrument run consistently for four years beats a comprehensive one run twice. Name the decision first, and take the baseline before launch.
Student retentionCo-curricular involvement and student persistence: the link
Involvement correlates with persistence on every campus that measures it. The real question is which part you can build, and which part is selection.
Student retentionCommunity college retention: what to do with a 63% median
The median public two-year institution retains 63% of full-time students, 14 points below private four-year institutions. That gap is structural.
Designing a career-readiness program from scratch
Five structural elements, a developmental sequence from exposure to articulation, and the two capacity questions that decide if the program survives.
Career readinessDurable, soft, transferable: naming career-ready skills
The same skills have been called basic, soft, 21st-century, transferable, human and durable. Each label encodes a claim, and the newest changes how you assess.
Student engagementCampus engagement for adult and returning learners
Adult learners do not decline campus programming out of disinterest. They decline it because it is scheduled, priced, and framed for someone else.
Student engagementEngaging the college students your staff never see
Every campus has a population that never walks into a student affairs office. Reaching them is a routing problem, not a promotion problem. Four mechanisms work.
First-year retention tactics that fit the academic calendar
Most first-year retention plans fail on scheduling, not on strategy. Here is what fits into weeks one through fifteen when staff are already committed.