Dive Brief:
- Campus Technology profiles retention technology systems in action at Ramapo College of New Jersey and Muskegon Community College, both of which use analytics platforms to highlight academic struggles, outstanding bills and other challenges which may result in a student being flagged as ‘at risk.’
- Administrators say retention technologies are only as good as the planned response for when students underperform.
- Both schools are reporting incremental increases in retention, graduation rates and academic performance, expecting the best results to bear in three-to-four years.
Dive Insight:
Predictive analytics and real-time assessment technologies are being embraced by campuses and officials throughout the nation, and on the surface appear to be good investments. But for the presidents and CIOs who have to make these purchasing decisions, they have to know the timetable and effectiveness of ROI upfront.
Both of these schools say it will take a few years to see the full results of how retention technology benefits their campus. But asking tech vendors the right questions, getting faculty buy-in before the technology is purchased, and helping students to understand their responsibility in performance, are all strategies which retention technology should support — not the other way around.