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College advisers play a key role in a student’s academic life and therefore should be committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, two student fellows for the Advising Success Network say.
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Academic advisers play an important role in the development of a student, with roles designed to provide help with course sequence, guidance on progress toward a degree, selection of a major and advice on career and internship opportunities. Most students don’t select their adviser, according to a 2023 Student Voice survey from Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse.
Of the students surveyed, 76 percent said they were automatically assigned an academic adviser by their institution, a practice that places greater importance on who is hired and filling these roles.
Advising Success Network student fellows Ariel Merritt and Jameitha Griffith-Ross sought to better understand the hiring and recruitment process of advisers. After speaking with administrators and staff at a number of institutions, they developed a report—published in January—that identifies six points toward creating a more equitable, diverse and inclusive advising process with students at the forefront.
Study: Students Lacking Advising Support in Higher Ed
The 2023 Student Voice survey on academic life from Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse found 45 percent of students hadn’t been advised on courses and course sequences required for graduation, and only 52 percent had been advised on their degree progress toward graduation.
Of students who met with their adviser, 11 percent found it difficult to get an appointment with their academic adviser, and 6 percent have never met with an academic adviser.
The need: The fellows’ first goal was identifying that students were a priority in hiring, “as they are the main ones impacted by this student-facing job,” Merritt says.
As a student, Merritt chose to participate in this project because they did not have a positive experience with their adviser.
“Something that I wish I had from an academic adviser is someone who actually took the time to get to know me and my experiences while helping me succeed academically,” Merritt says. They are a third-year undergraduate at Drake University, majoring in sociology.
As a low-income, first-generation student of color, Merritt says their adviser did not place enough care on their identities and the impact they have on their experience as a student. In an ideal situation, an adviser would serve as a mentor, supporting students in a personalized manner, they say.
Griffith-Ross is a nontraditional student who started her college degree in 1997 and will graduate this spring from Jackson State University. In her academic career, she saw a lack of care and compassion for students.
“I wasn’t given the tools from advisers … to matriculate through college the way I was supposed to,” Griffith-Ross explains. “So this study was … just kind of spot-on for me.”
The study: Griffith-Ross and Merritt spoke to around 10 institutional representatives, as well staff from the National Academic Advising Association and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, about their advising hiring policies and gleaned best practices or opportunities for improvement.
Institutions represented included two-year, four-year, private, public and historically Black colleges and universities.
“When it comes to HBCUs, [DEI] is not something that we normally talk about with them … but those colleges and universities are open to everyone,” Griffith-Ross says. “And when I walk around my campus, I see a lot of people that don’t look like me. So who’s advocating for them in those places?”
Based on their research, the fellows established five goals for diverse and equitable hiring practices:
- Establish top-down hiring practices. Institutions with diverse hires at the administrative level created a positive trend of diverse hires throughout the institution.
- Collect data. Identifying the student demographic breakdown and how staff members reflect that diversity can assist administrators in identifying where progress has been made and future steps for improvement.
- Recruit equitably. Equitable recruitment practices should include removing certain requirements to a job description, asking candidates about their own commitment to diversity and inclusion, and removing implicit bias in résumé reviews by having multiple reviewers.
- Involve students. At institutions that solicited student feedback, that voice became a deciding factor in hiring.
- Create retention efforts. Beyond recruiting and hiring diverse candidates, administrators should use retention strategies like pay raises, bonuses, health and well-being programs, and remote work opportunities to keep staff.
Student voices: At the interviewed institutions, the fellows found a variety of levels of student involvement. Some institutions had students read applications, but most rare was to have a student interact with a candidate or be involved in the decision-making process, Griffith-Ross says.
“The students are the ones working with advisers, so it would make sense that they have a say in what they would like to see,” Merritt explains. “The universities that did use student input found that students were often the deciding factor, which says a lot about the importance of students in the hiring process.”
However, some institutions did not use student feedback at all, and several institutional representatives were surprised at the notion of using student input in hiring.
The next steps: Having students involved not just in the interview, but in the hiring decision, should be a top priority for institutions, Griffith-Ross and Merritt agree.
Merritt recommends adding a student to the hiring committee because it also makes students more aware of how roles are filled.
Are students playing a key role in a student success effort on your campus? Tell us about it.
