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Student Lifecycle Management >> CRM Meets the Campus

2/1/2007

By Matt Villano

Improving Retention

At DePaul University in Chicago, technologists led by CRM Craft Lead Audrey Bledsoe turned to SLM not just to improve years to graduate, but to improve the retention picture, overall. The eighthlargest private university in the nation, DePaul has about 23,000 students. But after spending a semester or two at the university, too many DePaul students (in some cases, as much as 20 percent) were dropping out or transferring to other Chicago-area schools. A 2005 internal study revealed that they either were stymied by unclear graduation requirement specifications; frustrated by trying to juggle family, work, and school; thwarted by DePaul's lack of at-risk student programs; or prey to any combination of the three factors. "Our students didn't have the help they needed to keep school first," Bledsoe explains. "While some of the responsibility for overcoming the challenges lay with them, it was up to us to improve our side of the situation, as well."

Naturally, those improvements included SLM. DePaul incorporated technology from Oracle into an exhaustive pilot effort known as Students Together Are Reaching Success (STARS). Geared toward first-year students, the STARS program was designed to help students adjust and enjoy a positive introductory experience. Via modules that interfaced with the PeopleSoft CRM 9.0 solution, the program revolved around an e-mail effort designed to follow student planning and performance on particular degree tracks.

Based upon information gleaned from the program, the school then matched a focus group of 275 at-risk students to peer mentors who monitored progress and helped students set and attain goals. Most of these students were commuters and in danger of failing, and Bledsoe reports that the program also facilitated connections with more professional, bona fide advisers—full-time counselors who engaged students through e-mail over school breaks, when loss of regular communication has proven to significantly contribute to dropping out. "The purpose was to provide this group of students with information about where to go for help with financial aid, registration, and other vital needs," she says. "We wanted to keep them in the educational environment, and make them aware of the valuable services that were available to them and the things that they should know."

While it's still too early for dramatic results, the STARS program has shown real signs of success. In just a few months, DePaul saw a 50 percent student response rate to the STARS e-mails. Overall, the school also experienced a 4 percent boost in the retention of STARS students. On a more basic level, Bledsoe notes the program has enabled DePaul to establish an ongoing dialogue with these students, build relationships with them, and offset attrition. Down the road, she notes, numbers can only improve.

But at DePaul, the impact of SLM evidently extends far beyond STARS. After Bledsoe broadcasted news about the success of the pilot study, a number of other DePaul departments contacted her and inquired about implementing SLM. One of these was the university's Graduate School of Business; another, the School of Education. While many of the followup projects are still in the planning stages, Bledsoe says she is excited at the prospect of expanding SLM elsewhere in the institution. "The word has been spreading around the school," she boasts. "In the end, it doesn't really matter what department you're in: Acquisition and retention are issues that are important to everybody."

Down the Road

Oracle's Barnes points out that in scenarios such as those at DePaul and CSU, a school can set the stage for SLM to expand naturally into other areas, moving beyond recruitment and retention into human resources, financials, and more. Currently, Oracle's standalone product is sold against either homegrown enterprise systems or other enterprise systems in the marketplace. As the solution becomes more widely adopted, however, Barnes predicts that Oracle will offer SLM in a more centralized approach as a technology that incorporates analytics and other forms of business intelligence for an even more comprehensive solution. "We will continue to evolve the way we bundle the products, so that institutions can either acquire pieces that meet their specific needs or the whole solution set," he says. "Ultimately, we see our product being part of a very robust ERP."

Despite this forecast, perhaps the biggest challenge to the future of SLM is its newness: Many colleges and universities may not be familiar with what student lifecycle management technology can do. Clearly, internally marketing the successes across a campus will help get the word out. In a more perfect world, institutions of higher education will learn to manage student relationships the way successful companies manage their customer relationships: carefully and diligently.

WEBEXTRA :: View CT's webinar on this topic, "Strategies for Managing the Student Lifecycle," here.

Matt Villano is senior contributing editor of this publication.

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