Making the Case for Student Lifecycle Management

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Case Study

Making the Case for Student Lifecycle Management

7/25/2007

By Mike McLean

In today's increasingly competitive higher education environment, we face rising demands to attract and keep the best students, improve the quality of education, and keep costs down. These are lofty goals, but they are attainable if institutions learn to examine their business processes and leverage technology to manage the entire student lifecycle -- helping improve service to students, from recruitment through graduation and beyond. If higher education institutions do not embrace this concept and start nurturing these valuable relationships, they risk disconnection from students and the loss of competitive edge.

California State University: Examining the Student Lifecycle to Accelerate Time to Graduation

A few years ago, the California State University (CSU) began to address the issue of time to graduation. The system's four-year graduation rate was only 24.5 percent, and 76 percent of our students were taking six or more years to graduate. While some of the CSU's students intentionally took more than six years to graduate, we wanted to provide students the opportunity to graduate in a reasonable timeframe. Some of the factors hindering timely graduation were the lack of availability of the right courses at the right times, limited understanding of graduation requirements, or lack of an academic plan. We sought ways to improve students' paths to a degree.

The university began an initiative to better manage student relationships from "cradle to grave." Our Campus Actions for Facilitating Graduation initiative sought to improve time to graduation through a variety of efforts including providing students with clear, efficient, and well-supported pathways to graduation; increasing efficiency in academic programs; providing tools to help students identify and track their paths to graduation; enhancing advising tools; and establishing common monitoring and feedback processes.

Technology Is an Important Tool in Student Lifecycle Management

Early on, we realized that technology would add to our success. It is possible to manage the entire student lifecycle without technology, but it is much less efficient. Student lifecycle management (SLM) software significantly reduces time spent on gathering information because it consolidates and automates information systems so that faculty, staff, and advisors can obtain student information right away -- where previously they needed to consult multiple information sources, including paper files in many cases. This frees up time, allowing staff to focus on education-related responsibilities.

The CSU is in the process of implementing Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions across our 23 campuses as one tool to assist in facilitating graduation. As a part of the CSU's Common Management System (CMS), the software provides functions that give insight into student information necessary for the program's success. Our staff can obtain student records on demand -- for example, when an advisor meets with a student, she/he can log in to one secure source and instantly pull up the student's transcripts, current schedule, financial records, etc.