USA Funds Symposium Participants Learn to ‘Mine’ Data in Retention Efforts

Student-retention expert Lana Low believes that the use of data is key in schools’ planning and implementation of successful retention strategies. “What gets measured,” she said, “gets done.”

At the recent USA Funds^® Symposium, “Adopting the Plan — Models for Student Success,” Low shared her tips for “data mining.”

Institutions, Low said, are in a reciprocal relationship with students: When students are successful, so is the institution. Retention is a byproduct of student success, and student success is a byproduct of goal attainment.

Students set goals for themselves, and institutions set goals for their students. When students' goals don’t match institutions' goals for them, attrition is likely to occur. Low recommends data mining as a way to determine how to avoid that attrition.

Data mining, or analyzing data to quantify information and trends, is important for the following reasons:

• When you have data, you remove assumptions.
• You can learn what students think about your institution if you ask them — while they’re still enrolled.
• Data can help you prioritize your retention strategies. Data helps create a sense of urgency to act.
• Data that supports your success helps sustain momentum.

“You can’t easily refute quantitative data,” Low told symposium participants. “No matter how good your retention plan, you can’t sustain the effort if you don’t have the quantitative data to back it up.”

Untapped resource
While most professionals in the institutional setting realize that they are surrounded by data, they may not realize that many of these data sources are untapped and could be valuable to them, Low said. Data mining uncovers student challenges in the academic, personal, institutional and social areas. The process also uncovers some institutional challenges, which Low recommends that school officials tackle by asking themselves the following questions:

• How does the interaction between your students and your institution’s culture impact retention?
• Who are the students who come to you for assistance?
• How do you get students engaged in learning?
• Are you asking students to value something you value — but they don’t?

Once schools establish the need to mine their institutions’ data, they should determine how to organize the data, what data will validate their schools’ retention challenges, who “owns” the data on their campuses, how they will use the data, and if the data is accessible. A worksheet that symposium participants used to consider these issues in discussing their own retention problems is posted on the USA Funds Web site.