Friday, July 18, 2008

Admissions, Retention, Zeno and Academic Insanity

By some definitions, higher education is truly crazed. Places of self-defeating insanity. For example, an educational leader I know loved to tell others that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing that has failed over and over again and expecting different results.” He, like most every other higher education administrator really may have believed that so he, and they, repeated it every time it seemed to fit. But, when things demanded solution, he actually did the same things that failed over and over again. He did not see that as insanity but as using tried and true administrative and academic approaches to solve problems – even if the solutions were ones that had failed or resulted in long-term disaster.

Considering that oft quoted definition, the situation universities, colleges and career colleges find themselves in now and how they are going about trying to work their way to solutions, it can be concluded that higher education is insane.

The problems are really not all new. Costs are exceeding revenue. Demands are outpacing the ability to fund them Tuition, fees and expenses have surpassed available resources for many families. Internal costs continue to rise faster than revenue can be raised to meet them. Capital deferments and outstanding debt grows. Budgets are being tightened. Competition for traditional, non- and neo-traditional students has never been greater. Technology needed to stay current increase in cost and amount. The only really new part of the problem is that student loans are starting to dry up at a pace that will increase inability to afford the costs to attend and graduate.

The solutions are also not new. They haven’t worked in the past really but well let’s use them again. The major way that universities, colleges and career schools seek to solve the problems is tried and untrue – increase enrollment by increasing new student numbers and build new buildings to attract new students. Yet, more students yield and increase in the demands for services, sections and often tutorial assistance. All require additional expenditures which are usually not provided so the new enrollees turn into attrition numbers. Or even if the services, additional sections and people are provided, students leave anyhow so even more students must be recruited to take their place and add more to the overall population.

But, this Lucy at the Conveyor Belt approach to a solution simply shows how insane academia is as the solution itself sooner or later breaks down and takes quite a lot with it including people and success. Lucy is given the job to box cakes as they come down on the conveyor belt. She does this fairly well but then the bakery owners want to increase the number of boxed cakes. The belt speeds up to push her to speed up but that causes more and more cakes to fall off the belt. The bakery owners do not see the insanity behind their decision and just keep demanding more and more boxed cakes until all the cakes are falling off the belt and Lucy just gives up. Every cake that falls of the track is not just a lost sale but lost investment in the creating of the cake. The lost cakes not only mean that the day’s production has been hurt. It also means the long term ability to meet projections and the buyers’ needs are not met which can cause a longer term negative effect on sales and client retention.

This is similar to what happens with college admissions when given a higher enrollment goal almost always with the same staff and time.

When admission offices are pushed to speed up conveyor belt of enrollment goals, the people in them respond with a combination of enthusiasm and dread just like sales people in any business. And make no mistake, recruitment and admissions are sales. The enthusiasm is from the belief that “we can now show them what we can do. Hit our numbers and be rewarded for doing so.” The dread comes from the reality that the competition is strong, the market saturated, the product not that different from any competitor and “I am going to have to work even harder and longer if I am to succeed most often with not much more resources.” As well as a recognition that population for most schools is really an embodiment of one of Zeno’s paradoxes that will just yield them even more work and increased demand.

The Greek philosopher Zeno devised a paradox that illuminates the paradox of achieving population goals through admissions for most schools. Achilles and a tortoise are running a race. Achilles assumes he will win so he gives the tortoise a head start. But Achilles finds he can never catch up. Before Achilles can surpass the tortoise, he must get to point A, where the tortoise started the race. But when he gets there, the tortoise has moved to point B. When Achilles gets to point B, the tortoise has gone to point C, and so on. As a result, Achilles can never catch the tortoise even though he may get closer and closer because the Tortoise will always stay at least one point ahead. The only way Achilles can catch up is if the tortoise stays still at one of the points achieved.

For colleges and universities, the tortoise is student population which is controlled not just by admissions but equally, maybe more so by retention. Retention is a constant, steady and eventually winning strategy that is the only real way for admissions to ever catch up to demand. And to carry the analogy one fabled step forward, it is the tortoise, not the hare that finally will win the race. That is the race for population, graduation and mission success. It is also the winning strategy for admissions who should, no must focus on not just bring them in, but keeping them too. Otherwise they, like Achilles and the hare must inevitably fail.

Or as Lewis Carroll summarized the situation with the tortoise as retention and Achilles again admissions and population. Oh yes, the Bank referred to, well, it is simply the budget where the institution must go constantly if it does not understand the analogy and value of retention.

Here narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full.

The Tortoise was saying, "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century -- would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught-Us?"

"As you please!" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!"

We are quickly filling up our dates for school opening convocations and workshops in August and September as well as customer service week (Oct 6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Thursday, July 10, 2008

A High Point in Customer Service

It always does my heart good (along with Lipitor) when I read about a school that gets the message. It makes me feel like there are people who do listen, get the point about customer service and retention and implement suggestions and solutions.

There is an article in the recent Chronicle of Higher Education about High Point University in North Carolina. This university not only gets the message; it goes well beyond it to shoot for what it calls WOW! High Point even has a VP of WOW! The article discusses how High Point has jumped into the deep end of the service pool in providing its students services beyond what anyone would normally imagine.

Free ice cream from a truck that circles the campus looking for hungry students. Valet parking. Live music in the cafeteria. Birthday cards from the president. A campus beautification program. Wake up calls. Concierge service. Starbucks gift cards. Even a campus hot tub. The University also has a web site that focuses on the user (could be a bit better with a personalization program such as Leadwise but it is one of the better ones even without it).All in all, the article makes High Point sound like a real life version of the movie Accepted – except the university has not forgotten the all important academics that students really come to a university for.

President Nido R Quebin is a leader who knows his business and how to serve students it seems. Yes, he was able to put in place some low hanging primary-level services such as the ones above. But, he has also spent the last three years and millions of dollars working to build the academic and national standing of High Point.

In an on-going email discussion with President Quebin, he points out that he is rather disappointed with the reporting on his University thus far. He has reason to be. Most of the reporting has focused on the whiz bang primary-level service treats like free ice cream. It has been a primary frustration I have also as encountered over the years as I have worked to get people beyond the belief that customer service is superficial pandering. And pampering that really cheats students of what they come to college for – learning, graduating and getting on to their careers and life. As Principle 13 of the 15 Principles of Good Academic Customer Service puts it:

Do not cheapen the product and call it customer service.

No cheap grades. No pandering

If you would like a copy of the Principles, just click here:

President Quebin reported to me that:

most of our investment went into academic improvements: building of 4 academic buildings ($50mm), adding an Early Alert program to monitor student success in the
classroom, establishing a Learning Excellence program (academic services for those who need it),
technology to the hilt in each classroom and a fulltime IT trainer for faculty,
Experiential learning program that involves every freshman in the community,
enhanced Study Abroad (14 countries) and Internships, etc.

According to Pres. Quebin

The best ROI (financially & behaviorally) comes from the Early Alert program in the classroom where every professor watches and reports each student’s success patterns (and we follow up to ensure each student attends class, does work, gets tutoring, etc) and the Excellence In Learning program which provides significant personalized attention to students who need it (ADD, etc).

Pres. Quebin and High Point's success again establishes my on-going contention that attendance and concern are two major customer service issues if a college is to increase retention and student success.

When I asked about the effect of the additional services on retention, he wrote that

…retention has grown measurably. Fall to Spring it was at 96.2%. Overall Spring to Fall in mid 80’s. Graduation rates have increased too and our US News standing among comprehensive colleges in the south advanced from #15 to #6.

These are very impressive results. President Quebin and his team have been working very hard to boost the most important customer services of an institution of higher education – the ones that contribute to learning. Sure everyone loves free ice cream, hot tubs and live entertainment but the academic customer services are the ones that really count. He and High Point should be recognized for that.

We are quickly filling up our dates for school opening convocations and workshops in August and September as well as customer service week (Oct6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Available soon from

The Administrator's Bookshelf

Friday, June 27, 2008

Earn and Learn Again Vs Churn and Burn

There have been an increasing number of calls and emails from schools seeking training for their admissions’ departments the past six months. As a consulting group, we are pleased to help out. But I am amazed when we tell the schools they can save money and increase profits by focusing on retention.

“Retention! No, we can solve all our problems if we enroll more students”.

But they can’t enroll more students. That’s why they call us. But then they don’t listen. They still focus on a churn and burn approach. Enroll them. Bring them in. Greet them at the front door and wave bye to them and your revenue as they flee out the back. As a result, schools continue to have problems meeting revenue and mission goals.

Let’s look at the realities. If an admissions department enrolls 50 students on Monday but only 25 show for the first day of classes, how many students were enrolled? 25. Yet you paid to have all 50 recruited and processed at an average cost of $5,640 each. That means an immediate loss of $141,000. This loss is partially from inappropriate sales technique but mainly from not focusing on retention from day one.

The fuller loss can be easily calculated by multiplying the 25 students times your annualized tuition as discussed in my new book Customer Service Factors and the Cost of Attrition. If the school’s annualized tuition is $12,000, that means an additional $300,000 lost. Just for one start. If there are six starts, total attrition losses could be $2.646,000. For most schools recapturing some on that $2M-plus would be good. That is why we are so busy helping schools on retention.

When I was the Chancellor of a proprietary career college the truth was that we seldom hit our admission goals. Competition was increasing. The available market was starting to shrink due to competition and costs. Tuition went up every year and we were about to hit a price point at which the ROI would be questioned more and more by potential students and their families/buying committees. We would soon hit that point at which we were pricing ourselves beyond our target market. Yet admission goals were raised by corporate for every single start. The goals were raised even though the school did not hit its earlier goals. A guaranteed way to assure failure financial if we focused on new enrollment alone. But we didn’t.

I realized the most important number was not new students but total population. Money was made if we kept population. So we began to focus on retention.

Sure we kept working at improving our admission approaches and tried to change the sales methods to adapt to the actual mindset of potential students rather than that of the admissions rep. For example, they seemed to think they should keep talking and dumping more and more information on the potential student’s head as if they were an educational landfill. Sooner or later, the student would agree to fill out an application just to shut them up I think. Applications could be up but real enrollments, those who showed for classes and paid tuition, not so much.

We brought in the top sales coach in the world, Stephan Schiffman and used his excellent books that lead to sales success. We also tried re-aligning staff to focus on strengths such as setting appointments and closing sales. But a hallmark of churn and burn is the comfort in failing; to keep doing the same thing that isn’t working. So the admission’s team went back to its losing ways each and every time with the blessings of regional admission’s directors who only cared about admissions of course.

But I hate failing so we hired a student retention group. But to illustrate the inability of churn and burn-oriented groups to change to succeed, I was told by I could not use the title “Vice President for Retention Services”. That would take away from admissions and make a negative statement. So I hired a VP of Student Services who focused on retention. We also hired intervention counselors whose job was to contact every student at least every other week and any student at risk at least twice a week to see what we could do that was legal, ethical and in the students’ best interests to help out. We did all we could to meet their needs and especially their return on investment concerns and goals.

We also put in place a Rapid Response Retention approach that sought out problems that caused students problems each day and then solved them ASAP so the solution could be implemented the next day. The only rule was to determine if the solution was legal, within rules and regulations; ethical and to the benefit of students.

Bottom line – The college did not hit admission numbers but did return a quite solid profit every year based on a retaining students so they could graduate (Oh, for not-for profit schools just slip the term surplus or the phrase fund balance in here. They are the same as profit within a fund accounting system not-for-profit college or university). Students hit there goals and we hit ours. Would anyone refuse that?

By the way, since we offered two and four year degrees, we increased our ability to upsell associate degree students into the BA programs since they were also happier with the school. Again, a win-win for everyone.

So the message here? Admissions is good and necessary but retention really makes the revenue grow.

Move away from failing churn and burn approaches that assure fiscal failure. Focus much more on retention and embrace what we call Learn and Earn that we teach schools and is discussed in the upcoming book The Power of Retention: More Cutomer Service in Higher Education. Simply put, there are ways to keep students learning so they graduate and get to their goals while you keep earning.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Increasing Enrollment by Stitches

A quick apology for not posting recently. It has been a very hectic and busy time. I completed the rewrite of new book The Power of Retention which will be out in July through The Administrators Bookshelf. I have also been traveling all over the US and Canada giving workshops, training and presentations on customer service for colleges, universities, career colleges and educationally-related corporations. But the postings are back and here is one now.

Career Education Corporation may not have always done everything perfectly well but it did create a brilliant process that successfully stitches students into the fabric of each college. Their process of getting a student from the initial application to the show, actually coming to school, is one worth emulating for every college or university, for-profit or not.

Think of an enrollment as a quilt with many pieces that all have to be put in place properly to make it attractive and strong and you have some idea of what the stitch-in process does.

The “stitch-in process” begins with the smile at the reception desk through the fully executed orientation for all students at all schools. If done correctly, students are never allowed to believe that they are not the most important aspect of the college once they apply for entry. The admissions reps must call the students and follow-up on any aspect of the enrollment process that may still need to be completed as well as to just say “hello. How are you doing? Any information I can give today?”

When students accept enrollment, a real person will contact them personally. That person, the stitch-in director, becomes their constant reference point from that moment and after they show up for classes. The initial contact must be made within 24 hours of acceptance. Time is not allowed to elapse between the initial interest and the call. The contact is a person who not only must love students but be absolutely proficient and a true believer in customer service. There is no issue too small or big for him or her to immediately tackle. There is no such thing as an impossible task. Every call must be completed. Every concern answered and removed. The contact person assumes the role of the collegiate mother for the student and will fight for every one of them as the student was his or her own child.

The contact at the college not only learns the student’s name, the student learns the stitch-in director’s name as well. This generates a unique bond between student and college. It provides something most colleges do not provide; a personal contact, a real human being of flesh and blood with a name. That is the most important primary part of the link actually.

In Cheers, Sam did not have to know everyone else’s name because they all knew his. They could call him by his first name and that always created a very special bond. They could walk in the bar and call out “hi Sam” and even if he did not know their name, a wave back or a “Oh yuh, hi” could make it seems as if her did know and the bonding to the bar was felt. Of course, Sam did know most people by name and that is certainly key. In the same way, most enrollment managers at CEC schools do remember most every student’s name and their profile. If they didn’t the student had a precious thing, the first name of someone who will be there in the large impersonal college just for them. That name Get a name Give a name exchange and first person contacts stitch students in like nothing else.

Every time a positive contact is made, each issue solved, every anxiety removed, another stitch is put into the quilt that is the college-student relationship. And these stitches are what will strongly help keep students in the college.

Quick pitch: We are quickly filling up our dates for school pre-opening convocations and workshops as well as customer service week (Oct6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

A Professor and a Student Walked into a Bar........

There is a core concept behind much of positive customer service in college or for that matter anywhere. Smiling.

Not only is it great for increasing customer service and retention, it has wonderfully salutary and powerfully positive effects for you too. Smiling creates huge returns on a very small investment. And according to a study completed by the British Dental Health Foundation, smiling can save you weight too!

The British Dental Health Foundation, co–ordinators of National Smile Week (May 15–21) — the biggest oral health event in the UK calendar — spoke after scientists revealed that a smile gives the same level of stimulation as eating 2,000 chocolate bars or receiving £16,000 in cash.

The clinical tests, carried out on volunteers in Scotland, measured brain and heart activity as participants were shown pictures of people smiling and given money and chocolate.

The results were analysed by psychologist Dr David Lewis, the author of The Secret Language of Success, who said that seeing a smile creates what is termed as a 'halo' effect, helping us to remember other happy events more vividly, feel more optimistic, more positive and more motivated.
Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the Foundation, commented: "We have long been drawing attention to the fact that smiling increases happiness both in yourself and those around you, so it is good to receive the backing of this scientific research.

2000 bars of chocolate! And the halo effect. When you smile, it causes other to do so too. During a workshop at the University of New Brunswick, Canada, I proved the strength of smiling by putting a smile on my face and going up to members of the audience. Eevery one of them responded with a smile. Now, whether it was because they felt the power of a smile or because they were thinking I had gone mad and best smile back to keep me from some odd behavior focused on them, I can not say for sure. What I can say for sure is they all smiled back, even one who had done her best to tell through a rigid frown and body language to state to me she was not going to buy anything I would say. In fact, after I got her to smile just by grinning at her while talking about smiling, she lost the frown and relaxed the rigidity in her body for the rest of the workshop.

If we smile, we release endorphins and serotonin which some obtain though marijuana use. So, smiling can save you more money, loss of job if caught and no lingering pot smell on your clothes to make your colleagues wonder if they need to create an intervention for you.

Smiling also has been found to reduce stress, lengthen life expectancy, lower blood pressure and make the smiler appear younger and more attractive. Maybe that explains the attraction Jerry Lewis to the French?

Smiling also makes you appear to the viewer as if you are pleased to see him or her and that produces a halo effect. The other person feels happier as a result and will even like you more. This is true even if your smile is fake. A faked smile will have as much positive effects as a real one for the viewer. Granted a real one may be stronger and thus produce greater effects on the viewer and yourself, but a faked one is a great start.

Moreover, when you smile it is fairly impossible to sound as frustrated, tired or even as angry as you may really feel. Your voice and one will have a more positive, upbeat, perhaps even friendly tone caused by the smiling. The smile-influenced voice will carry out to anyone hearing it and affect their mood too. Even if a person cannot see your smile, he or she will hear it such as when talking on the telephone. That makes the listener feel better and even welcomed.

So, SMILE

Monday, May 19, 2008

Selling Failure for All

Today’s Doonesbury cartoon in the local paper takes us back to the fictional Walden College. In it, a potential student is being given the “money walk” a traditional college tour. The College tour guide Zipper explains that “for the next hour I’ll be walking backwards through the campus of Walden College”. Not fictional. Walking backwards is a required ability for a tour guide. Zipper goes on to add that Walden is the nation’s number one safety school. “In fact,” Zipper states to the potential student “I am authorized to admit anyone who completes this tour.” Again not fictional. For most colleges and universities the goal of admissions is to “make the numbers and pay the bills.”

In fact, I would argue that for most schools nowadays being selective means they select most everyone who applies. There are very few schools that have the luxury of actually being selective. They are the 306, maybe 310 name brand schools which actually get more applications than slots open. And of course, if your school is an open door institution, selectivity is anathema to its mission. But for most schools, even open door institutions, admissions is a numbers game especially now that budgets are not matching expenditures.

Schools will sell a spot in an in-coming class to most anyone who shows interest. And it is selling no matter what euphemistic academic label we may give it. Maybe it is not selling a used car but it is not really that distant from it when one looks at the tactics, approaches and pressures to hit the numbers that an admission’s officer – salesperson faces. The major difference is that a car salesman gets a commission and can earn more money while we in academia settle for the belief that we are engaged in a more humane sales job and work longer hours for less pay. And a car salesman does not have to travel as much to attend those oh so glorious and wonderful Admission Fairs. Wahooooo!

One of the earlier versions of the Principles of Good Academic Customer Service used to have a statement that there must be a match between the school and the student. In other words, don’t sell a student a college or university he or she can not succeed in or will be unhappy attending. If you do, you can also count on losing that student. When you do, all the costs of recruiting, admitting, enrolling, entering, orienting, and processing that student will be lost. This is not an inconsiderable sum either. We have figured it at an average of $5460 per student. So every student you lose costs you not just tuition but the acquisition costs.

This is not just good customer service advice; it is very important and solid retention law. But it is a law that butts up against the divided priorities and accountabilities within an academic institution. Admissions goals are not necessarily equal to those of enrollment management or academics for example. If you are one of the very few schools to have a person whose title indicates a responsibility for retention, then you are acutely aware of the conflict. But not to worry, so very few schools have yet realized that retention is important that they have not put anyone in this untenable role of worrying about keeping the students the school worked so hard and spent so much money to acquire. I mean why worry about keeping students when there is an unending supply of new potential students out there and so little competition for them. Besides, what ethical responsibility to the students we accepted?

Ethics?

We are a college. Students have to study that in a required course perhaps but we know that is a requirement for them. We already got through that course many years ago. We don’t need to worry about ethical responsibilities to students. We have faculty to worry about and my increasingly large salary. Ethics? Philosophy department which is all adjunct anyway so it can’t really be all that important and they can’t complain anyhow of we replace them.

Just because we accept them and in so doing tell them either directly or by implication that they should be able to succeed here and that means learn and graduate does not mean we have to coddle them with attention and tutoring in areas they may be having difficulty in. They are college students after all. They should be able to do the work we present to them even though we know they are weak and not up to our standards. They simply aren’t of real college quality but that does not mean I have to spend extra time to help them learn and grow. They are in college for g-d’s sake and should be able to do what we know they could not do when we accepted them.

Besides odds are very good I am either an adjunct or a full time faculty member (duh) so either way, I really do not have time for students. If an adjunct, I need to drive to my next class at another school at a gasoline cost that exceeds my adjunct pay. If I am a full-time faculty member, the rewards for me are not in teaching or spending time with students but in publishing and research to get a promotion or even better something I can patent and make a lot of money from while using my college position as a fall back guaranteed income and health benefits. I mean, my goals are not well aligned with undergraduate teaching or students.

The faculty are right too. I have been looking at the budget and the welfare of the college. We need to cut back on services and some positions if we are to make the budget for the year. Since I know that I must pick my battles wisely, I will avoid doing what may be right and do the least harmful to me. After all, I don’t want to draw fire what with my evaluation and salary increase on the line. Besides, rile the wrong people and I could get a vote of no confidence. Of that I am confident. So where to cut….counselors. They have little power. And tutors, even less. More adjuncts. Library but not research collections if we are to get the grants… And yes, we can not replace admissions people and still up their goals. That’s it bring in more students and provide fewer services for their success. Then we can hit our numbers.

Goals. Good in soccer. Maybe not admissions

Admissions has a simple number to achieve. X number of new students. Now I must and want to say that most admissions people want to do a good job but there are times when doing something as silly as keeping a job does get in the way. If I am an admissions rep at the average school and my given goal is to recruit and get applications from 100 students but I am only at 50 with three weeks to go…. Well, I may become a bit less concerned about their ability to succeed. I will start to take applications from only those we select to go here. We select you if you have the application fee.

Oh but wait. The admissions committee will never accept weak students. Uhuh. Who is the committee at your school? At more and more colleges, the admissions committee have become rubber stampers since they know that if the college does not meet its enrollment numbers, there will be problems and they could come home to roost on them. It is easier to blame admissions for recruiting weak students and “just take the best of what we are given.” No matter if the students accepted are very likely to quit. I wrote fail first but there are so few students who fail because of poor grades that this was not a good choice of words.

This is all part of why the country and its colleges and universities whether they be public, private or for-profit have such horrendously high non-graduation rates. NCHEMS 2006 graduation rates (2006 is the most recent available) show two year students graduation at a rate of 29.1% in three years and four year students graduating nationally at a rate of 56.4% in six years. Oh yes, I am aware that students take longer to graduate and some take as long as 13 years. But c’mon, these rates are embarrassing and indicative of our own failings. Especially failing at recruiting students and then helping them to succeed.

I am 5’5” tall, overweight and getting to feel old some days. If I were sold an entrance to a camp that stated it was to prepare people to get into the NBA, you would quickly see I was sold a false dream. “Boy that camp ripped you off. What an unethical group of @#$%I am 5’5” tall, overweight and getting to feel old some days. If I were sold an entrance to a camp that stated it was to prepare people to get into the NBA, you would quickly see I was sold a false dream. “Boy that camp ripped you off. What an unethical group of @#$%$&s. Or you can rationalize it and say”well, at least the camp would allow him to try and achieve his dream. It gave him the chance.” Or you can rationalize it and say”well, at least the camp would allow him to try and achieve his dream. It gave him the chance.” Or you can blame me for trying to do something that I should have known I was not capable of doing. But I do not think any of us would believe the camp was right in taking my money and accepting me as potential NBA material.

Well, too many of our colleges, universities and career colleges are NBA camps. And that is not what we should be.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

NSU Idea of Retention Does Not Add Up

Assistant Professor of Mathematics has left a new comment on your post "Schools Budgets Aren't Flush":

Ummm...what, exactly, is "CSF1 = [(P x A = SL) x T]"? I can tell you one thing for damn sure: it isn't an equation. Hell, it isn't even a well-formed mathematical

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