The Emerging Focus on Academic Operations

Why academic operations can no longer be an afterthought if we care about student success

Since the concept of student success emerged in the 1970s, colleges and universities have been continuously evolving their practices to better meet the needs of their students. Institutions have overhauled advising models, introduced new programs for first-year students, and focused on increasing student engagement.

Despite the emphasis academic administrators place on student success, the foundational elements of running an institution—academic operations—are often overlooked in that conversation. Academic operations includes the management of the curriculum, catalog, and course scheduling—functions that ultimately allow students to access their education.

While other units on campus are standing up new initiatives, academic operations at many institutions continue to be run with manual, disparate processes that impact students. Changes to the curriculum, catalog, and course schedule are done via spreadsheets, legacy technologies, lengthy email chains, and in some cases, even sticky notes. For administrators managing these complicated processes, just making it through another cycle is considered a success. But how are students being impacted when these processes aren’t optimized for their needs?

Start with Scheduling: Student Needs Can’t Come Last

Scheduling is a great example of the role academic operations plays in student success. Studies have shown that the number of credits a student takes in their first term and first year is a strong indicator of whether they will complete their program on-time. Data from state universities in Georgia showed that 54% of students who took 15 or more credits in their first semester graduated within 6 years. Yet, only 43% of their peers who took 12-14 credits and just 22% of students who took 7-11 hours in their first semester graduated within 6 years.

Despite this, data from Complete College America shows that the majority of students are not taking a full course load (30 credits) in their first year. Institutions looking to support persistence and completion should identify preventable roadblocks that keep students from taking a full course load.

Course accessibility is one of the challenges students face when trying to take a full course load. In a 2019 survey, one in three community college students reported they were unsatisfied with course accessibility and offerings during registration. In many cases, course accessibility has more to do with how the institution operates than how a student chooses their course schedule.

“It is easy to say students aren't following the plan or process. But we have to look at ourselves and say are we making it more difficult for students to get through? And what data do we have on this? Roadblocks come up. Students can't get into a class and it can make students change what they do that semester. How often are we doing this to students?” - Dr. Casey Weber, Executive Director and University Registrar at Weber State University

The way institutions currently create their course schedule is an important starting point to enable students to access the courses they need. Surveys have shown that faculty availability ranks as the most important factor for course scheduling, while data collected from student plans of study ranked least important. Deprioritizing student needs in scheduling practices creates challenges for students trying to access courses, such as:

Required courses are scheduled at the same time, forcing students to choose between them and delay taking courses they need for completion.
Frequently overfilled courses remain under-scheduled, creating access bottlenecks.
Courses are scheduled at times that students are unavailable, inhibiting their ability to take key courses to progress.

Support Underserved Students with Course Accessibility

While all students are impacted by inaccessible course schedules, underserved student populations are especially impacted by course schedules that aren’t created with their needs in mind. In a recent conversation with 35 higher ed leaders, we asked which groups of students they’re most concerned about accessing the courses they need to stay on track. Nearly half (46%) said they are most concerned about employed students and 26% said they are most concerned about low-income students accessing the courses they need.

Close to 70% of students hold jobs and of these working students, 43% are also low-income students, so higher ed leaders will need to intentionally consider the needs of these students when creating course schedules.

One way institutions can promote success for working students is by ensuring the course schedule allows students to complete their studies either before or after they have to go to work. Limiting long periods of time between classes helps ensure students aren’t required to be on campus for extended periods of time, which may interfere with their work schedules.

Students should also be able to complete all courses during the same time of day for each term. For example, if a student signs up for a program with the expectation that they will take classes at night, that expectation needs to be fulfilled throughout the course of their program. They shouldn’t complete two terms only to find out as they attempt to register for the third term that none of the classes they need are offered at night.

Curriculum Agility: A Core Competency to Meet Emerging Student Demand

While scheduling is top of mind for many administrators, updating and presenting new curricula and degree pathways is another area ripe for innovation.

As programs continue to change, institutions that can respond more quickly and use data to effectively program demand will be able to recruit and retain more effectively. Leveraging historical course enrollment and predictive demand data enables administrators and faculty to quickly adapt offerings in response to emerging student trends.

Similarly, catalogs published in real-time that highlight core offerings will be key to driving interest from prospective students and keeping current students on-track as they chart their degrees. Out-of-date course catalogs may provide students with inaccurate information on what requirements they need to meet for completion. Other times, students may have to navigate conflicting curriculum information presented on the website, in the catalog, and in degree planning tools. Providing consistent and transparent information across all areas of academic operations is key to student progression and confidence in the institution.

Innovating Academic Operations: From Data to Digital Transformation

Historically, administrators haven’t been able to adequately implement student-centric solutions or identify barriers because they didn’t have the right tools. Data to analyze information such as course distribution throughout the day and week, course and section fill rates, and student pathway data has been incomplete at best and inaccessible at worst. However, tools to improve academic operations and implement student-centric practices now exist.

“Our tools haven't historically made interdepartmental collaboration easy and that's where there is great opportunity for us. We can ask for that data and use it. We can look at scheduling conflicts. This requires smarter systems and algorithms though. But we now have the technology and resources to throw at this situation to make it manageable." - Dr. Jessie Muehlberg, Associate Registrar, Curriculum Management, and Scheduling at Stanford University

For institutions looking to take a holistic approach to student access and completion, transforming academic operations is the new forefront of student success. The innovators in academic operations will be taking an integral step toward becoming truly student-centric and digital first.

This content was paid for and created by Coursedog. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.