This report looks closely at the current management and strategies of academic advising efforts in 33 American colleges and universities. It gives detailed data on budgets, advising sessions, advising sessions online, advising staff size and much more for the academic years 2019-20, 2020-21 and estimated for 2021-22. In addition, the study looks at the length of time it takes to complete online counseling sessions, providing detailed data for norms and benchmarking, It also precisely specifies the percentage of the advising workload accounted for by staffs devoted exclusively to advising, by faculty and by students themselves.
Data in the 145-page report is broken out separately for type and size of college or university, and for public and private colleges, and by tuition level. In addition, data is broken out for academic advising programs for entire institutions and for those aimed at particular student populations, such as athletes or international students, and for those aimed at particular departments, such as nursing or distance learning.
Survey participants also comment on their plans for online counseling, currently, in the near future and post pandemic. They discuss how the pandemic has impacted their advising operations and overall student retention policies, giving detailed data on the use of various communications technologies and the percentage of staff working from home, and projected to work from home in the future. Other issues include use of paid and unpaid mentors, use of Zoom and general advice for peers.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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Mean advising staff size is expected to increase by 4% for the 2021-22 academic year.
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9.38% of survey participants use peer mentors who work from home.
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For the private colleges in the sample, 35.45% of online advising sessions were completed in less than 20 minutes.
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For colleges with fewer than 1,500 students, faculty who perform duties other than advising accounted for 61.67% of advising sessions.
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Prior to the pandemic, a mean of 7.37% of advising sessions were conducted online.